New Select Subcommittee Report Recommends EcoHealth Alliance President Debarred and Criminally Investigated, Exposes Failures in NIH Grant Procedures

WASHINGTON — Today, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) issued an interim staff report titled “An Evaluation of the Evidence Surrounding EcoHealth Alliance, Inc.’s Research Activities”. This report details the Select Subcommittee’s comprehensive investigation into the U.S. government’s funding and lack of oversight of gain-of-function research, EcoHealth Alliance (EcoHealth), and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The report reveals serious, systemic weaknesses in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) grant procedures and examines how these failures enabled EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without sufficient oversight.

Overwhelming primary source documents and credible firsthand testimony gathered throughout the Select Subcommittee’s investigation provide significant evidence that Dr. Daszak repeatedly violated the terms of the NIH grant awarded to EcoHealth. Given Dr. Daszak’s apparent contempt for the American people and disregard for legal reporting requirements the Select Subcommittee recommends the formal debarment of and a criminal investigation into EcoHealth and its President. In addition, as a result of NIH’s inadequate oversight of American taxpayer funds, the Select Subcommittee is also recommending immediate Congressional action to improve grant procedures at NIH and NIAID.

“EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak is not a good steward of U.S. taxpayer dollars and should never again receive funding from the U.S. taxpayer. Dr. Daszak and his organization conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the WIV, willfully violated the terms of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk. This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible. It is imperative to establish higher standards of oversight at the NIH. The Select Subcommittee’s detailed and comprehensive report today holds Dr. Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance accountable and sheds light on severe shortcomings in our public health systems,” said Chairman Wenstrup.

Key Report Recommendations

• The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recommends that EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak are formally debarred and cut off from receiving any future U.S. taxpayer funding.

• The Select Subcommittee also recommends that the U.S. Department of Justice conduct a formal investigation into Dr. Daszak.

• Further, the Select Subcommittee recommends eight improvements to NIAID and NIH procedures that will improve grant compliance, increase biosafety and biosecurity of high-risk research, and advance transparency and accountability in America’s federal health agencies.

Takeaways

• EcoHealth Alliance used U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.
  • Evidence obtained by the Select Subcommittee through document requests and transcribed interviews — including with former NIH Director Lawrence Tabak — confirms that EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research at the WIV during the fifth year it received funding from the NIH.
  • Dr. Daszak, Dr. Fauci, and other health leaders have repeatedly played semantics with the long standing, widely understood definition of “gain-of-function” in order to avoid accountability for funding and facilitating this dangerous research.
  • Notably, the NIH removed the longstanding definition of “gain-of-function” from its website on the same day that former NIH Director Tabak reported EcoHealth’s dangerous experiments to Congress.

• EcoHealth Alliance violated its NIH grant terms and conditions by failing to report a potentially dangerous gain-of-function experiment conducted at the WIV.
  • EcoHealth Alliance was required to immediately report any gain-of-function experiment that exhibited greater than “one log growth” — meaning a virus was modified to be 10 times more infectious.
  • Evidence shows that Dr. Daszak was aware of an experiment conducted with EcoHealth Alliance funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that exhibited this potentially dangerous “one log growth” characteristic, yet he failed to report the experiment to NIH.

• EcoHealth Alliance also violated its NIH grant terms and conditions by failing to submit a required research update report — which included details about its gain-of-function work at the WIV — until nearly TWO YEARS after the NIH deadline.
  • EcoHealth was awarded five years of funding by the NIH to conduct research aimed at preventing pandemics. In the fifth year of receiving these funds — which concerningly coincides with the time period immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic — EcoHealth failed to submit its annual research update report to NIH before the required deadline.
  • NIH finally received the report from EcoHealth in August 2021, nearly two years after the September 2019 deadline.

• The Trump Administration identified serious concerns with EcoHealth Alliance’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and instructed NIH to fix the problem. Then, NIH terminated EcoHealth’s grant. Without the intervention of the Trump Administration, EcoHealth may have been allowed to continue its dangerous research.
  • Dr. Fauci and former NIH Director Lawrence Tabak testified that Mark Meadows — Chief of Staff to then President Donald Trump — instructed the NIH to terminate EcoHealth’s grant after the Trump Administration discovered significant malfeasance.
  • The NIH official in charge of grant compliance testified he was unaware of any problems with either EcoHealth or its grant to the WIV prior to the Trump Administration’s intervention.
  • Despite suggestions of political persecution against EcoHealth, NIH leadership supported every compliance action recommended by the Trump Administration after the malfeasance was discovered.

• NIH is currently violating the terms of the WIV’s formal debarment by funding EcoHealth Alliance’s research.
  • NIH reinstated EcoHealth’s problematic grant in 2023 — in part because Dr. Daszak claimed to be in possession of virus sequences and samples that had not yet been tested and were previously paid for by the federal government.
  • When Dr. Daszak applied for grant reinstatement, he omitted the material fact that the unanalyzed samples and sequences were not in his custody, but instead, are in the custody and control of the WIV.
  • The terms of the WIV’s debarment not only prohibit EcoHealth from funding the lab but also prohibit the lab from influencing any activity that is funded by the U.S. taxpayer.
  • Since the untested samples remain at the WIV and are used to influence EcoHealth’s research, NIH’s funding of EcoHealth subsequently violates the WIV’s formal debarment.

Read the final report here, excerpts from select transcribed interviews here, and supporting materials here.

Transcribed interviews with Dr. Daszak and other individuals influential to the findings of the report can be found below:

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