The National Institute of health (NIH) confirmed in a media inquiry that The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, funded research on bat coronaviruses through the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, which received approximately $600,000 in U.S. taxpayer funding between 2014 and 2019. The president of the coalition told the White House that it should “blindly accept” the WHO report that the virus was unlikely to have been leaked by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, was the only U.S. representative on the WHO delegation to the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research at the beginning of the outbreak.
There have been rumors that the virus was accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute, causing a global outbreak. The Daily Caller, a U.S. online media outlet, said the lab’s researchers, through the nonprofit organization “EcoHealth Alliance,” obtained a $600,000 grant from the U.S. government to study the coronavirus in bats in the past.
“Peter Daszak, president of the Ecological Health Alliance, was the only U.S. member of a World Health Organization delegation that visited China in February to investigate the disease. The report said that Daszak had told the White House that it should “blindly accept” the WHO report that the virus was unlikely to have been leaked by the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research before the WHO released its findings. The U.S. intelligence agency had suggested that in December 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virus had a suspected case of Wuhan pneumonia, which Datsyak did not consider credible.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the EcoHealth Alliance was granted $3.7 million by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study coronaviruses in bats in China back in 2014. But because of the alliance’s close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, the NIH terminated the grant last April, saying that “the nonprofit’s work in China is inconsistent with the goals and priorities of the agency’s program.
However, the NIH told the EcoHealth Alliance last July that it would resume funding if certain conditions could be met. One of those conditions was to arrange for an independent team to investigate a trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research to confirm whether the lab already had the SARS-COV-2 virus that caused Wuhan pneumonia before the first infection occurred in December 2019. Dazak told the media that the NIH conditions were “ridiculous” and that his job and profession was not that of a detective.
However, the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research still holds a valid foreign research institute certificate on the NIH’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare list, which expires on January 31, 2024; this means the institute can continue to collect U.S. taxpayer money to conduct animal research until 2024, according to reports. The report said that this means that the institute can continue to receive U.S. taxpayer money to conduct animal research until 2024.
A spokesman for the U.S. National Institutes of Health said it was not aware of any direct or indirect U.S. funding for animal-related research at the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research; according to the government website USASpending, the last Time the Ecological Health Alliance allocated money to the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research was in May 2019.
On the other hand, the EcoHealth Alliance received a new $7.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a research center for emerging infectious diseases. Dazak emphasized that the new grant will not be used for any research in China.
Anthony Bellotti, president of the White Coat Waste Project, an independent watchdog group, said the government should no longer fund the EcoHealth Alliance and launched an independent investigation into the organization to ensure whether their funding of animal research in China is linked to the outbreak.
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