The president of EcoHealth Alliance, a virology research organization often included in discussions about the origin of COVID-19, is set to testify in a public congressional hearing next month.
Republicans from the House Oversight and Energy and Commerce committees jointly announced that Peter Daszak will appear before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on May 1.
In its press release regarding Daszak's forthcoming testimony, Republican leadership accused EcoHealth of utilizing taxpayer funds to support risky gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Republicans are also demanding from EcoHealth all electronic correspondence and phone records between the organization and the NIH dating back to 2019, along with all documentation pertaining to grant projects from UNC, Georgia State University, and several Chinese institutions since 2014. The committees are also seeking information on any cyberattacks targeting EcoHealth since 2019. This information is anticipated to be provided to the committees by mid-April.
EcoHealth, a global nonprofit dedicated to ‘preventing pandemics’, has faced scrutiny from House Republicans since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns have centered around its research projects in China, which were funded by the National Institutes of Health, amid fears of a potential connection to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Republicans are also raising doubts about the accuracy of several responses given by Daszak during his closed-door transcribed interview with the committees in November, particularly concerning the funding for a specific EcoHealth project intended for the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
In 2018, EcoHealth, along with the WIV and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, submitted a grant proposal for coronavirus research to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
During his transcribed interview with the committees, Daszak asserted that the project was intended to be carried out solely at the University of North Carolina. However, documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests disclosed Daszak's private communications indicating that a substantial portion of the project's work would be conducted in Wuhan.
The research entailed manipulating the spike proteins on different novel SARS-CoV viruses, which would subsequently be administered into “humanized mice” to evaluate their ability to induce SARS-like illness.
This project was declined by DARPA, and the team did not pursue alternative sources of funding.
According to a spokesperson for the Democratic members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the funding and reporting practices of EcoHealth have been a matter of bipartisan concern.
Source: The Washington Examiner
