Non-compliant EcoHealth Alliance should be defunded
Conn Carroll
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Since China refuses to cooperate with any outside investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s possible role in the creation of COVID, we will never know for sure if the virus did originate from the lab and what possible role EcoHealth Alliance played in funding their research.
We do know that despite claims that COVID formed naturally in bats and then jumped to humans, no bat has been found that had the version of the virus that originally spread first in Wuhan, then the rest of China, then the world.
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What we also know is that EcoHealth Alliance did not follow federal regulations when it partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study bat viruses. That is the conclusion of a new Inspector General report from the National Institutes of Health.
According to the IG, EcoHealth “did not ensure that subawards were compliant with Federal requirements, did not ensure compliance with subrecipient monitoring and reporting requirements, and did not comply with certain public disclosure requirements associated with reporting subaward funding.”
Because EcoHealth failed to follow the law, the NIH’s ability to “understand the nature of the research conducted, identify potential problem areas, and take corrective action” was compromised.
The NIH IG has recommended that NIH stop funding any research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that doesn’t go far enough. EcoHealth has proven that it cannot be trusted no matter where the research is being done.
Fortunately, Republicans in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation to ban all federal funding of EcoHealth.
“It is unconscionable that EcoHealth Alliance repeatedly funneled American taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab controlled by the Chinese Communist Party that conducts dangerous and potentially deadly research,” Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) said when introducing the Defund EcoHealth Alliance Act.
In the Senate, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) is also calling for a ban on EcoHealth funding. “While NIH certainly shares in the blame, EcoHealth Alliance is ultimately at fault for failing to tell the world what was really going on at China’s Wuhan Institute,” Ernst said. “We can’t afford any more of EcoHealth’s ‘prevention’ efforts. That’s why we must permanently ban them from receiving taxpayer dollars ever again.”
Ernst and Reschenthaler are right. Hopefully, their EcoHealth funding ban will make it into the next congressional spending bill.
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