EcoHealth’s COVID bat-testing lab upended by feds’ spending ban

When the federal government shut down taxpayer money going to EcoHealth Alliance, the company linked to the Wuhan virus lab, it may also doomed the firm’s plans to start a bat research lab in the U.S.

EcoHealth had been working with Colorado State University on a lab in Fort Collins, north of Denver, winning millions of dollars in federal grant money to create a bat colony to study zoonotic diseases. EcoHealth had been tasked with procuring the bats that would be used in the research.

The Covid Comeuppance

One by one, the shibboleths that our public-health authorities put forward as reliable guidelines for behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic are being revealed as scientifically baseless health theater. The question is whether anyone will learn from this.

HHS looks to debar group at center of COVID lab-leak theories

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has initiated the process of debarring the infectious disease nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) from being awarded federal funds, citing a lack of “responsibility” necessary to participate in these programs.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic shared the letter signed by HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisitions Katrina Brisbon to EHA President Peter Daszak.

HHS suspends funding from organization that funded Wuhan virus research

The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday suspended all federal funding for the nonprofit research organization EcoHealth Alliance for misleading government agencies about their taxpayer-funded research project. 

The announcement follows a long-term House investigation into EcoHealth’s potential involvement in the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The organization came under intense scrutiny during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic for its coronavirus research projects conducted in Wuhan, China, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Scientists Backtrack, Admit Proposed Virus Experiments Could Have Been Done in China

A scientists with close ties to China and the U.S. government is now saying that risky experiments he proposed—which some experts believe could have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2—may have been done, deviating from earlier statements.

Another scientist involved in the proposal also says he doesn’t know if the work was done.

“To the very best of my knowledge ... the work hasn’t been done,” Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, told a congressional panel this week.