The president of a prominent virology research organization often implicated in debates over the origin of COVID-19 will testify in a public congressional hearing next month, a key step in the House investigation into the cause of the virus.
Republicans from the House Oversight and Energy and Commerce committees jointly announced that Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, agreed to testify on May 1 in a public hearing run by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
EcoHealth, an international nonprofit organization with the mission of preventing pandemics, has been the subject of scrutiny from House Republicans since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic over fears that its research projects in China, funded by the National Institutes of Health, may be linked to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
A spokesperson for the Democratic members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic told the Washington Examiner that the funding and reporting practices of EcoHealth have largely been a bipartisan concern.
“Testimony and documents reviewed by Select Subcommittee Democrats raise serious concerns that EcoHealth Alliance disregarded federal reporting requirements that ensure grantees are accountable to the American people,” the spokesperson said.
Gain-of-function research
In its press release on Daszak’s upcoming testimony, Republican leadership accused EcoHealth of having “used taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Gain-of-function is the process of genetically altering a virus cell to give it a new characteristic that makes it either more likely to spread or present with new symptoms in humans. What scientific experimentation fits the precise biomedical definition of gain-of-function is hotly debated among the scientific community.
EcoHealth Alliance spokesperson John Feigelson told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the committees’ announcement of Daszak’s upcoming testimony “continues to misrepresent the work of EcoHealth Alliance and makes several inaccurate allegations about Dr. Daszak’s previous public statements.”
“The public nature of our work and our long-standing collaborations with Chinese scientists made us a target for speculation about the origins of COVID-19, beginning in early 2020 and continuing to this day,” said Feigelson, adding that EcoHealth’s work has “direct benefits for the health of the American people [and] strengthens national security.”
Feigelson previously told the Washington Examiner that his organization did not support any gain-of-function research at the WIV, saying that any public associations between EcoHealth and gain-of-function “are based either on misinterpretation or willful misrepresentation of the actual research conducted.”
Controversial DARPA project
Republicans are also questioning the veracity of several answers that Daszak provided during his closed-door transcribed interview with the committees in November regarding the funding for a particular EcoHealth project to be conducted at the WIV.
In 2018, EcoHealth, 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 said the project was supposed to be conducted exclusively at UNC. Documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests, however, revealed Daszak saying in private communications that a significant portion of the work for the project would be conducted in Wuhan.
“I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team,” Daszak wrote to collaborators Ralph Baric of UNC and Shi Zhengli of the WIV at the time of the project.
The research to be conducted involved manipulation of the spike proteins on various novel SARS-CoV viruses, which would then be injected into “humanized mice to assess [the modified viruses’] capability to cause SARS-like disease.”
When this project was referenced in previous reporting, Feigelson told the Washington Examiner that this project was rejected by DARPA and the team did not attempt to find alternative sources of funding.
“The only incontrovertible fact is that the proposal was rejected by DARPA for funding and the work was never done, and there is no evidence to suggest that any other sources of funding were secured,” Feigelson told the Washington Examiner.
Feigelson also previously said that, if the project were approved by DARPA, the research would have been carefully overseen by the Department of Defense.
Objectives of the hearing
Republican leaders said the discrepancy between Daszak’s transcribed interview testimony and the documentation raises serious concerns.
“These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview,” Republican leaders wrote to Daszak in a letter along with Thursday’s announcement of the hearing. “We invite you to correct the record.”
Feigelson told the Washington Examiner, “Dr. Daszak looks forward to answering the [committees’s] questions, clarifying the areas of misunderstanding, and informing them about the vital research that EcoHealth Alliance conducts globally.”
Republicans are also requesting from EcoHealth all electronic communications and phone records between the organization and the NIH since 2019, as well as all documentation from grant projects from UNC, Georgia State University, and several Chinese institutions since 2014. The committees are also requesting information on any cyberattacks on EcoHealth since 2019.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This information is expected to be delivered to the committees by mid-April.
“The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview,” Republican leaders said.
