The Intercept has released a new report today that shows that NIH officials knew EcoHealth Alliance was conducting prohibited gain-of function research experiments. Despite this knowledge, they allowed EcoHealth Alliance to “craft” their own language describing the research they were conducting, exempting themselves from additional oversight. RedState has been reporting for months on this article.
My last several pieces here at RedState have been clear about one thing: EcoHealth Alliance is not to be trusted. It was immediately clear that the NIH had made a mistake when they announced their decision regarding research at Wuhan Institute of Virology based only on EcoHealth Alliance information. EcoHealth Alliance was funded in part by many government grants, including the NIH and USAID. The grants each included research performed at the Wuhan Insitute of Virology. It is a Chinese Military-Controlled Lab that further complicates the accuracy of the data reported.
This latest report from The Intercept leads to an even greater complication: The NIH knew EcoHealth Alliance had conducted gain-of-function experiments and then “adopted language that EcoHealth Alliance crafted to govern its own work.”
In 2016, during the previously discussed White House ordered pause in gain-of-function research, EcoHealth Alliance submitted a grant “progress report” which detailed proposed experiments on SARS and MERS viruses.
An Intercept Report:
The plans raised concerns at the NIH. Two staff members — Jenny Greer, a grants management specialist, and Erik Stemmy, a program officer handling coronavirus research — wrote to EcoHealth Alliance to say that the experiments “appear to involve research covered under the pause,” referring to a temporary moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research that would be reasonably anticipated to make MERS and SARS viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in mammals.
This information does two things: 1) It proves that the reporting we have been doing here at RedState has always been correct and factual, and 2) it proves Dr. Anthony Fauci’s multiple statements to Senator Rand Paul and others, to be total and unequivocal lies. Furthermore, the research wasn’t just on mammals, but more specifically on humanized mice. We have already mentioned that humans are genetically modified to make certain cells of their mice mimic human cells. Researchers can then determine whether these viruses can infect human beings. These viruses may infect people if they infect mice that have been humanized.
What happened next was absolutely horrifying.
Initialy, the staff at NIH appeared determined to enforce the funding pause. EcoHealth Alliance staff were requested further information by the administrators within 15 days. They also stated that they would withhold funding until such information is received. The administrators also requested that EcoHealth Alliance provide details about the changes necessary to allow them to continue their research without exposing themselves to danger.
The next step is alarming to biosafety activists: agency staff adopted EcoHealth Alliance-designed language to regulate its work. The grant documents included several phrases that the agency added to describe the actions it would take should the viruses created by the experiment prove more infectious or deadly.
Let’s be clear about what happened here. The NIH essentially “caught” EcoHealth Alliance breaking the terms of their grant, but instead of yanking their funding, which should have immediately happened, they allowed for EcoHealth Alliance to draft additional language which allowed them to continue but would require them to notify if they created a more dangerous virus as a portion of their experiments. The entire research had to take place in a Chinese Military Controlled Lab.
Dr. Peter Daszak (President of EcoHealth Alliance) is the main character in this scandal. Seit June 5, 2007, I have pointed out Daszak’s role as villain. Daszak was the one who appeared whenever the Lab-Leak Theory emerged. Daszak has proven that there’s no lower than he will go to to avoid scrutiny. EcoHealth Alliance could lose their grant for 2016 because of disqualifying research. Daszak intervened in support of EcoHealth Alliance in emails that were obtained by The Intercept
Daszak responded to the NIH on June 8, 2016, arguing that, because EcoHealth Alliance’s proposed hybrid viruses were significantly different from the SARS virus, which was already known to infect humans, the experiments were not gain-of-function research and should not be restricted.
Daszak also pointed out that the new chimeric SARS-like virus “has never been demonstrated to infect humans or cause human disease,” according to the transcribed emails. And he said that previous research “strongly suggests that the chimeric bat spike/bat backbone viruses should not have enhanced pathogenicity in animals.” The NIH would go on to accept these arguments.
Daszak’s first statement is illogical and doesn’t align with the facts we have at hand. Similarity to known viruses, as we have seen from other articles, is not an enabling factor for gain-of-function or research under the P3CO Framework. These rules will apply to all viruses. They do not exclude those related to deadly disease-causing pathogens. Daszak then goes on to qualify his research by stating that since the new virus “has never been demonstrated to infect humans,” it doesn’t qualify as gain-of-function. There is a problem. Similar viruses have been shown to infect humanized mice’s ACE2 cells receptors, and this has demonstrated that it could infect humans. Lastly, and probably most importantly, his statement that “research strongly suggests that chimeric bat spike/bat backbone viruses should not have enhanced pathogenicity” is total and complete bovine excrement, and Daszak knows it. Daszak not only knows of two UNC researches that found this, but Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance also fund one.
I have already pointed out that the NIH funded both the SARS gains-of function studies and they were conducted in the midst of the imposed pause on funding gain-of functions research.
Yet, the very oversight agency that should have quickly identified Daszak’s comments as misleading manure simply accepted Daszak’s explanation and change to the language of the grant.
In a July 7 letter to EcoHealth Alliance, the NIH’s Greer and Stemmy formally accepted Daszak’s proposed rule. The chimeric viruses were “not reasonably anticipated” to “have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route,” the administrators concluded, according to the transcribed emails.
The language that the NIH later inserted into the grant was strikingly similar to what Daszak proposed: “Should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must stop all experiments with these viruses.”
We now know that the same research led to at least one additional virulent virus being created in 2018. EcoHealth Alliance failed to report the virus’ creation, which led the NIH asking for more information.
EcoHealth Alliance responded to this demand
In a letter sent to NIH on October 26, Daszak insisted EcoHealth Alliance did comply with all the requirements of its NIH grant, pointing out that the group reported the results of its experiment in its year four progress report, which it submitted to the agency in April 2018 — and that no one at the agency responded to the description of the experiment. “At no time did program staff indicate to us that this work required further clarification or secondary review,” he wrote.
Daszak also argued in the letter that the viral growth reported in the year four progress report did not correspond to the viral growth outlined in the rule he himself had devised. “The experiment we reported to NIH actually shows genome copies per gram not viral titer.”
Daszak stated that genetically engineered mice did not grow chimeric viruses faster than the rest of the experiment. “By day 6-8, there was no discernably significant difference among the different viral types,” he wrote.
Let’s clarify. Daszak stated that because the NIH failed to respond to him in his progress report submitted April 2018, which meant that some of the research was completed before the Framework even existed, he used that to license himself to conduct the banned and risky viral research. What’s worse is that he lies about the research, stating that what occurred, which clearly went beyond the language they inserted into the grant, didn’t rise to the level requiring reporting to the NIH.
In the past, you’ve certainly had to trust my reporting (though as we’ve seen, it has been spot-on). But not on this. On this last assertion, The Intercept wasn’t about to let that go unchallenged and sought out additional experts.
The Intercept spoke to virologists and they dismissed both the distinction of viral titer or viral growth. Instead, the emphasis was on the last part of The Intercept’s mouse experiment. This is when viral growth rates had evened.
“I don’t agree with their interpretation,” said Wain-Hobson, of the Pasteur Institute. He described the EcoHealth Alliance’s response as “hairsplitting” and said that viral growth inevitably peters out. “Every growth of a virus comes to a plateau. This has been known since time immemorial,” said Wain-Hobson, who explained that the eventual cessation of viral growth is due to a lack of nutrients. “They have chosen this interpretation because it suits them.”
This is what all of this means. What does all this mean? It is likely that the once-secretive conspiracy between EcoHealth Alliance, the NIH and banned viral research now amounts to a suicide pact. Each organization depends on the other’s survival. They both and the leaders of the organizations continue to lie about their research funding.
However, it is more than that. It confirms every piece of RedState reporting, particularly the ones you have been reading since October 20th. On October 20th, I stated that the NIH Letter had confirmed gain of function research, despite their deniations. On the 21st, I questioned, “Why is the NIH Still Trusting Peter Daszak?” On the 27th, I pointed out how all of Fauci’s Sunday Morning Talk Show statements were nothing more than clever word origami. I shared with you, on the 29th, how EcoHealth Alliance worked in complete disregard of the P3CO framework. The 30th was when I explained why EcoHealth Alliance grants were always intended to finance gain-of function experiments. On the 1st November, however, I demonstrated how the research continues outside the US Government Ban. Today, however, I asked this question in the article that I published:
The first is the fact that only the EcoHealth Alliance grant funding period 2018-2019 progress reports were provided by the NIH. This is a deliberate distraction. The 2018-2019 grant period would have been after the HHS had established the new P3CO Framework, thus qualifying Fauci’s statements that it was within that framework, as “true” (for the record, we’ve already proven even then, it wasn’t). What’s the problem? The EcoHealth Alliance grant has been running since 2014 as we have reported here. Do you have the reports on progress for these years? Is the NIH reviewing the funding of the US Government-Ordered Pause for gain-of function research experiments? Second, why did the NIH accept the EcoHealth Alliance’s progress report as gospel? What was the motivation for lying about the possible creation of a global pandemic pathogen? And third, is why, even after the ever-growing evidence of a potential lab leak, the proof that Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens were created, the total and complete discrediting of the grant project leader, Peter Daszak, and the Chinese Government’s total and complete refusal to allow for a transparent and independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, does the NIH continue to fund the EcoHealth Alliance Grant at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
The Intercept published the article three hours later. We didn’t coordinate and I have never talked to the authors of the Intercept article. Three hours later, I was able to ask those same questions again and their article answered them specifically.
The third, remains unanswered: Why, after everything we still know, are we funding this grant?
This is the end. This is not the end. There’s more, but that’s for tomorrow.
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