A research grant is once again on track following a protracted political standoff that placed a 2020 Coronavirus study on hold.
Former president Donald Trump made the implication that the virus, rather than a wet market, originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China while he was in office. China insists that a wet market, and not the Wuhan laboratory, is where the virus really started.
Coronavirus Pandemic Prevention
Trump’s theory was adopted by several Republicans, and the disagreements between the two explanations have harmed relations between the United States and China.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which was then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, agreed to pay a grant that would have allowed EcoHealth Alliance, a New York charity, to collaborate with the WIV to study bat coronaviruses, which was revealed after the hypothesis gained public attention.
The grant supported gain-of-function research, which tests several viruses to determine what factors increase their contagiousness. By allowing scientists to prepare a response in advance of a pandemic, such as developing vaccines, the research helps prevent pandemics.
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EcoHealth Alliance’s Future Research Plans
The grant was given under former President Barack Obama’s administration in 2014, and it was kept going for a while under President Donald Trump until the epidemic struck in 2020, at which point Trump put pressure on the NIH to stop the grant.
Politicians attacked the management of the grant and claimed EcoHealth Alliance was complicit in the pandemic, putting the organization at the heart of a political and scientific conflict.
According to a Science article, many scientists believed that Republicans were unfairly criticizing science and that the uproar that followed was the product of political meddling.
The group White Coat Waste Project, which made public the fact that the WIV received funding for its research from taxpayers, is still opposed to the award and spoke out strongly against it on Tuesday.
In the words of the group’s senior vice president, Justin Goodman said, “The batty taxpayer-funded grant should be de-funded, not refunded. It bankrolled EcoHealth Alliance’s dangerous animal studies in Wuhan that certainly caused the outbreak.”
After agreeing to adhere to stringent criteria and receiving a $2.9 million grant from the NIH, EcoHealth Alliance will begin its research three years from now.