Sen. Joni Ernst said Monday that the Pentagon plans to complete a $2.8 million grant this year to test “high-risk pathogens” overseas through a controversial U.S. nonprofit organization. He said there is no sign that the Biden administration will stop research into “pathogens with pandemic potential.” In Guinea.
The Department of Defense began funding Georgetown University in September 2021 as a three-year Defense Threat Reduction Agency project focused on “reducing the risk of fever-causing pathogens” in Guinea. Grant database indicates.
EcoHealth Alliance said despite concerns from lawmakers and scientific experts that the Manhattan-based nonprofit had used U.S. taxpayer dollars in the past to fund “dangerous” research. Received a grant as part of the project. The city where the coronavirus pandemic began.
“Given that EcoHealth has used tax dollars to fund dangerous research in China-run Wuhan, it is clear that EcoHealth cannot be trusted with money or dangerous diseases,” said Ernst, R-S.C. Iowa State) told the Post.
“That’s why Congress approved my proposal to audit defense funds going in and out of EcoHealth to pay for bat experiments in China and elsewhere. Even after my donation, more money has already been sent to EcoHealth. They are being donated to the Alliance. We must stop them before they are used to make the world less secure.”
The scientific study aims to “reduce the risk of fever-causing pathogens” in Guinea. Grant database Georgetown University researchers say they plan to “test blood samples” taken from human patients and “assess bats, dogs, rodents, and livestock that patients may have come into contact with.” Center for Global Health Science and Security.
The researchers have partnered with EcoHealth Alliance for help observing and recording animal behavior, and have paid the organization more than $150,000 so far.
EcoHealth funded experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to enhance the virality of bat coronaviruses, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, according to government records and virus research experts. Suggested other studies that may have led to SARS-CoV-2.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided more than $1.4 million to EcoHealth Alliance between 2014 and 2021 for research that “combined naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with the SARS and MERS viruses. It involved genetic experiments that produced hybridized (also called chimeric) coronavirus strains,” according to a June 2023 federal report.
In an October 2021 letter, NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak acknowledged to Congress that EcoHealth also “failed to report” that it had produced more than a “1 log growth increase” in new coronaviruses.
These experiments may have constituted gain-of-function studies, with NIH documents confirming that the growth rate of humanized mice increased by up to 4 logs, or 10,000 times, over the original virus. The Intercept report.
Tabak said the NIH grant could not have created the new coronavirus because “the sequence of the virus is genetically very distant,” but another proposal from EcoHealth is currently being linked to the Wuhan study. It has been cited as “definitive” evidence that the leak occurred from a certain location.
In 2018, EcoHealth submitted a grant proposal known as Project DEFUSE. The proposal would have tested bats for coronaviruses to make them more transmissible.
EcoHealth Alliance Chairman Peter Daszak tried to “downplay” the fact that much of the research would be done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to give DARPA “a sense of security,” according to a draft proposal obtained by EcoHealth Alliance. According to US Right to Know.
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected this request. However, this research may have continued with researchers in Wuhan with funding from the Chinese government.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told the Post that other Project DEFUSE documents raise the genetic evidence that COVID-19 is manipulated “to a smoking gun.” Ta.
In an earlier statement regarding the disclosure, an EcoHealth spokesperson said the proposal was an “incomplete or early draft” and that claims that viruses were made from it were “misleading and out-of-context citations.” “This is a falsehood based on the facts and a lack of information.” Understand the process by which federal grants are awarded. ”
“As this study was not selected for funding, claims about these details are by definition based on a review of incomplete information and are highly misleading,” the spokesperson added. Ta.
The Department of Energy and the FBI subsequently determined that the most likely explanation for last year’s coronavirus pandemic was an accidental leak from a laboratory, and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said it was a new He even said it was the “only” explanation for the origin of the coronavirus.
The newspaper also contacted EcoHealth about funding the Guinea study. The Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
The White Coat Waste Project, the taxpayer watchdog group that first exposed the funding to Wuhan, said it would “response to ecohealth-related research on viruses that could cause laboratory leaks and create biological weapons.” We are partnering with Ernst to reduce wasteful government spending.
“The solution is simple,” said Justin Goodman, the group’s senior vice president. “Stop the money. Stop the madness.”
Ernst and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) also asked the Pentagon’s inspector general in January to investigate more than $50 million in Pentagon grants to Chinese pandemic research institutes.
