The Biden administration has delivered another blow to the firm that sent taxpayer money to the Wuhan virus lab, announcing it has suspended EcoHealth Alliance’s president from being able to work on government-funded projects.
Dr. Peter Daszak also faces a more permanent debarment from federal funds, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS said he “lacks the present responsibility” to get government money.
“I find that the information in the record constitutes adequate evidence to demonstrate that the immediate suspension of Dr. Peter Daszak is necessary to protect the public interest provided his role as the President of EHA,” an HHS official wrote in the debarment memo, issued Tuesday and released by Congress on Wednesday.
The move comes a week after HHS suspended and began debarment procedures against EcoHealth itself.
EcoHealth used money from the National Institutes of Health to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab at the center of speculation about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The firm has denied funding risky gain-of-function research and HHS has not concluded that it was implicated in the pandemic. But the department has found that EcoHealth failed to report on a potential red flag involving the research, breaking the terms of its funding arrangement with NIH.
After the outbreak of the pandemic, EcoHealth also failed to get the Wuhan lab to provide information on its work, breaking another part of the deal that requires grantees to have control of their subgrants. HHS said EcoHealth failed to include those terms in its deal with the Chinese lab.
The company, in a statement, said it will contest the debarment. It said HHS was using “false assumptions, misrepresentations, misunderstandings of the science involved and selective use of the evidentiary record” to debar EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak.
“It is ironic and unfortunate that EcoHealth Alliance is being unfairly persecuted at a time when our research on emerging pathogens is more important than ever, and pathways of human infection are once again becoming a growing cause of international concern,” EcoHealth said.
Dr. Daszak has become a focal point for those who say the U.S. was playing with fire with its investments in risky coronavirus research.
House Republicans had been pushing HHS to shut down taxpayers’ support for him as well as EcoHealth, and they cheered the move.
“This step comes just two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released substantial evidence of Dr. Daszak’s contempt for the American people, his flagrant disregard for the risks associated with gain-of-function research, and his willful violation of the terms of his NIH grant,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who leads the select subcommittee investigating the pandemic.
The congressman also said Dr. Daszak could face sanctions from Congress.
“It appears that Dr. Daszak may have lied under oath about his relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and his compliance with NIH grant procedures,” the Ohio Republican said.
The White Coast Waste Project, which battles against taxpayer funding for animal research and which helped expose EcoHealth’s relationship with the Wuhan lab, said the chain of events should be a warning.
“Daszak’s catastrophic coronavirus collaboration with the Wuhan animal lab likely caused COVID, killed millions, and cost trillions,” said Justin Goodman, the project’s senior vice president.
“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund any more of EcoHealth and Daszak’s wasteful and dangerous virus hunting and animal experimentation that can cause pandemics and create bioweapons, especially their scary scheme to build a new bat virus lab in the U.S.,” he said. “Daszak is the latest domino to fall but shouldn’t be the last.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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