Eco Health Alliance The disgraced research company, accused of using taxpayer funds to conduct gain-of-function research in a Wuhan lab before the COVID-19 pandemic began, has received nearly $100 million from the federal government over the past 15 years.
Between fiscal years 2008 and 2024, the U.S. government provided EcoHealth Alliance with an estimated $94.3 million in taxpayer funding through contracts, grants, direct payments, loans and other financial support, according to a Fox News Digital review of government spending data provided by USAspending.gov.
Fox News Digital reported last year that millions of dollars in federal research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were awarded to nonprofits studying Chinese bat coronaviruses. The Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general released a 64-page report in January 2023 finding that the NIH did not properly follow policies and procedures regarding research on bat coronaviruses. Three Grants to EcoHealth Alliance This amounts to a total of approximately $8 million between 2014 and 2021.
HHS moves to revoke EcoHealth Alliance chairman for not following grant procedures
EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak speaks during a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on COVID-19 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on May 1, 2024. (Andrew Harnick/Getty Images)
As for the total amount of taxpayer funding the federal government has provided to the EcoHealth Alliance since the pandemic began, Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and a fierce critic of the NIH, estimates it to be more than $50 million.
“The U.S. government has provided EcoHealth with over $50 million since the pandemic began, but most of that $50 million has been dedicated to reckless virus discovery and virus enhancement research that may have caused the pandemic,” Ebright said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
The government agencies that have provided the most funding to EcoHealth are the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Defense and the NIH, Ebright said.
Last week, the Ministry of Health and Human Services implemented an immediate government-wide suspension of all funding allocated to EcoHealth.
HHS made the decision citing evidence contained in a House COVID Select Subcommittee on Nonprofits staff-level report that said EcoHealth knowingly violated the terms of a multimillion-dollar NIH grant.
At the time, a spokesperson for EcoHealth Alliance told Fox News Digital that the group was “disappointed with HHS’s decision.”
“We strongly disagree with this decision and intend to refute each of these allegations and present evidence showing that NIH’s continued support of EcoHealth Alliance is in the public interest,” a spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
COVID origins: HHS halts EcoHealth Alliance grant after finding taxpayer funds were used for unsafe research
Security guards stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology as members of a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of COVID-19 visit the institute on February 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
The comments came ahead of HHS’s decision earlier this week to begin formal decertification proceedings against Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance.
on tuesday Letter to DaszakSuspension and debarment officials at the Department of Health and Human Services wrote: “This is to notify you, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, that we have proposed to suspend and debar you from participation in U.S. Federal procurement and non-procurement programs in connection with your respective roles as President of EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. and Program Director/Principal Investigator at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health.”
in Action Introduction MemorandumWhile the report cited several examples of EcoHealth’s failure to comply with certain grant procedures, the same official wrote, “I find the information in the record to be sufficient evidence that the public interest requires the immediate suspension of Dr. Peter Daszak, given his role as president of the EHA.”
In this memorandum, EHA Wuhan Institute of Virology The WIV cited the following reasons for proposing debarment proceedings against Daszak:
An examination of the EcoHealth study, submitted two years late on Aug. 3, 2021, showed that the Wuhan lab’s work “may have led to a greater increase” in viral activity “in violation of the terms of the grant,” the memo said.
Peter Daszak (right) and other members of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus leave the Hubei Provincial Center for Animal Disease Control and Prevention in Wuhan on February 2, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
After the decertification process began, a spokesperson for EcoHealth Alliance told Fox News that the US-based non-profit organisation “does not support ‘gain-of-function’ research at the WIV” and that “any assertion to the contrary is based on misinterpretation or deliberate misrepresentation of the actual research conducted.”
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“The SARS-related research conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology was by definition not gain-of-function research, as it involved bat coronaviruses that had never infected humans, let alone caused significant morbidity or mortality in humans,” the spokesperson added. “Indeed, research on bat coronaviruses conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology could not have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.”
