Federal grant applications claim that the EcoHealth Alliance worked with a Chinese lab in Wuhan to study “Mutant Viruses” while working with American tax dollars.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act 552 pages from the National Institutes of Health regarding grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, which included information about the group’s research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Ecohealth’s Plan To Create Mutant Viruses
EcoHealth explained its plans to use bat coronavirus to create a mutant virus in a grant application submitted to the NIH on June 5, 2013, according to one document in the release.
According to the grant application, “we will evaluate the potential for each isolated virus and those with receptor binding site sequence to spill over.” By infecting cells of a different origin or with a different receptor molecule type with bat-CoVs that we have isolated or sequenced.
In order to determine how much each bat-CoV needs to change in order to use the ACE2, CD26/DPP4 MERS-CoV receptor, or other potential CoV receptors, researchers will process the spike or other receptor binding/fusion protein genes from all of our bat-CoVs and create mutants to see what researchers find.
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Documents Don’t Mention Gain-Of-Function Research
The information included the initial grant application as well as annual reports to the NIH detailing progress, effectiveness, and future funding usage.
EcoHealth Alliance received millions in grants from the NIH between 2013 and 2018.
A portion of this funding originated during the three-year ban on gain-of-function research imposed by the Obama administration.
There is no mention of gain-of-function in the documents, and EcoHealth denies conducting gain-of-function research.
EcoHealth’s CEO Peter Daszak and Wuhan lab director Shi Zhengli reportedly briefed U.S. and Chinese government agencies on their findings.
These included the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The NIH spokesperson stated, “The administration continues to work with international partners to press China to fully share information and cooperate with international investigations into the origins of COVID-19, a top priority for this administration.”
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