OPINION:
Wuhan lab funder EcoHealth Alliance has finally been cut off from federal funding and referred for yearslong debarment by the Biden administration, with support from congressional Republicans and Democrats, for violating federal grant rules and its role in funding dangerous animal experiments with bat coronaviruses in China.
As The Washington Times has reported, both the National Institutes of Health and EcoHealth’s research partner at Colorado State University, or CSU, have confirmed that the funding suspension applies to the disgraced nonprofit’s troublesome taxpayer-funded plan to build a new virus lab and import bats from Asia for experiments.
As an infectious disease physician who has cared for hundreds of patients with COVID-19 and the policy chief of the watchdog group that exposed the bat lab project, I applaud this development. Anyone concerned about public health, wasteful spending or animal welfare should, too.
Federal records obtained by the White Coat Waste Project, or WCW, show CSU is constructing a bat lab for which EcoHealth was supposed to import hundreds of Asian bats that are natural hosts for deadly viruses for use in an array of risky pathogen experiments. The price tag for taxpayers so far is $13 million in state and federal funds.
EcoHealth and CSU have also not been transparent about this project and its risks. CSU has even claimed to the press: “This isn’t a bat COVID lab. … We’re not working with Ebola or Nipah virus.”
Nonetheless, animal testing with viruses seriously threatens public health no matter where it is conducted, and CSU’s own labs are leaky.
Recently released internal CSU documents obtained by WCW also detail a disturbing pattern of recent lab incidents with bats and other animals that exposed workers to pathogens, including coronaviruses, Zika, rabies and tuberculosis, according to a report published in The Daily Mail. Other CSU lab accidents exposed staff to pathogens, including plague, Q fever and valley fever. None of these accidents were publicly reported.
The former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Biden administration’s FBI and Department of Energy, and 7 in 10 Americans believe that an accident in Wuhan’s EcoHealth-funded bat coronavirus lab was the likely cause of the pandemic.
We shouldn’t import this scary scenario to our own soil.
In recent years, CSU has also been cited for violations of the Animal Welfare Act for negligence that caused the deaths of dozens of bats. Concerns have been raised about how an escape of EcoHealth’s imported bats could threaten native species, too.
This project is also a massive waste of money. CSU has been conducting research on bats for over 20 years, spending tens of millions in taxpayer money from federal agencies, including the NIH, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and Department of Energy. Despite all the time and money spent, the CSU website does not contain any evidence that this experimentation on bats has helped even one single human. Why should taxpayers invest millions more?
CSU and EcoHealth’s bat lab scheme poses unnecessary risks that threaten our health, safety and national security. With nothing to suggest they can produce meaningful results to help humans, this bat lab is an extremely poor investment of taxpayer money and does not merit support.
Defunding EcoHealth is a good start, but we hope taxpayers will join us in urging Congress to cut all funding for this misguided and menacing project as lawmakers craft federal spending bills for 2025.
• Dr. John P. Lieberman is an infectious disease physician based in Denver. Justin Goodman is senior vice president at the White Coat Waste Project, a government watchdog.
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