A nonprofit group run by controversial COVID-19 scientist Peter Daszak received a $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study other viruses in Southeast Asia, the New York Post reported.
EcoHealth Alliance received $653,392, the first installment of the grant, Sept. 21.
The grant is being administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is leaving the position at the end of the year.
The Post noted that previously released emails have shown that Daszak and Fauci have a close friendship. The newspaper said Fauci received a "personal thank you" from the EcoHealth chief in April 2020 for supporting the theory that COVID-19 spread naturally from bats to humans.
Previously, EcoHealth Alliance was granted millions of dollars and directed some of the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where some believe COVID-19 leaked, according to the newspaper.
The Post added that Daszak has so far declined to answer lawmakers' questions about EcoHealth's work with the lab in Wuhan.
"This is like a bad sequel with the same plot and characters, but a bigger budget," Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told the Post.
"It is absolutely batty that NIH would give another cent of taxpayer money to EcoHealth when the group has failed to respond to repeated NIH requests about … turning over information about the dangerous experiments it was conducting in China's state-run Wuhan Institute.
"EcoHealth's president has demonstrated his total disregard for scientific inquiry by covering up what was really happening in Wuhan."
In April, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee called on the National Institutes of Health to investigate EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak for a possible "cover-up" and "fraud."
"Our review of EcoHealth Alliance's reports about its humanized mice experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) using funds from the National Institutes of Health shows pervasive discrepancies, inconsistencies, and omissions in its progress reports and renewal application that raise serious questions about scientific and ethical misconduct, violations of NIH policies and regulations, and possible false statements and fraud," the GOP members of the House panel wrote in a letter to NIH acting Director Lawrence Tabak.
"Accordingly, we request the NIH investigate Dr. Peter Daszak, the Principal Investigator of R01AIll0964, and other EcoHealth officials to determine whether certain data related to mice deaths and other material information were intentionally withheld during the peer review process for EcoHealth's grant renewal application."
"R01AIll0964" is the identification number of EcoHealth's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant from June 2014 to May 2019.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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