(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) EcoHealth Alliance, the NGO whose “gain-of-function” work on coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Technology may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has been chastised for numerous grant violations by the National Institutes of Health,” according to Just the News.
In a letter posted to Twitter by the House Oversight Committee Republicans, the NIH informed Drs. Aleksei Chmura and Peter Daszak that it had imposed “specific award conditions on EcoHealth’s active awards.”
According to the Republican members, the letter “confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan.”
?Oversight Republicans are getting results.
@RepJamesComer recently requested NIH provide its communications with EcoHealth & Peter Daszak.A letter dated January 6, 2022 now confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan. pic.twitter.com/XeOtyS6kK5
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) January 11, 2022
In the letter the NIH “identified non-compliance within EcoHealth’s subaward agreement and invoices with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
The NIH also made reference to EcoHealth’s “history of fail[ing] to comply with several elements of the terms and conditions of grant awards,” mostly having to do with “monitoring requirements.”
Given that history, it is perhaps worth inquiring why the suddenly-conscientious NIH has continued to inundate EcoHealth with cash for world-historically dangerous research.
And it is worth asking why the NIH in response delivered what amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist, encouraging EcoHealth to “implement a Corrective Action Plan” in order to continue to deserve taxpayer money.
EcoHealth has been under fire recently for FOIA revelations, which prove that the research firm actively sought to hide its involvement in coronavirus research in China.
EcoHealth “sought to delay temporarily the release of taxpayer-funded viral sequences early in the COVID-19 pandemic in part because Chinese authorities had not yet approved the data’s release,” according to the Washington Examiner.
