by Rhoda Wilson, Expose News:
The US Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) has formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and its former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, for five years due to evidence uncovered by the US Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
The debarment comes after an eight-month investigation. Dr. Daszak’s employment with EcoHealth Alliance was terminated from EcoHealth Alliance on 6 January 2025.
Dr. Daszak was the Project Director/Principal Investigator for a grant that involved gain-of-function research, which was initially subject to a funding pause but was later allowed to continue by the NIAID. It has long been believed that this gain-of-function research led to the development of the SARS-CoV-2 virus bioweapon.
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HHS Formally Debars EcoHealth Alliance, President Peter Daszak Fired
By John Leake as published by Courageous Discourse on 19 January 2025
HHS Action Referral Memo announces that “Dr. Daszak lacks the present responsibility to participate in United States Federal Government procurement and non-procurement programmes.”
On January 17, 2025 – just three days before President Trump is to be sworn in – Congress issued a press release with the following statement:
Today, after an eight-month investigation, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut off all funding and formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. (EcoHealth) and its former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, for five years based on evidence uncovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
As far as I can tell, the New York Times did not report this story, though the New York Post did.
More interesting than the superficial news reporting is the HHS Action Referral Memorandum recommending that Dr. Peter Daszak be barred from participating in United States Federal Government procurement and non-procurement programmes.
The Memorandum also states:
Dr. Peter Daszak was the President and Chief Executive Officer of EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] from 2009 until his termination, effective 6 January 2025. Dr. Daszak was the Project Director (PD)/Principal Investigator (PI) for Grant Number 1R01AI110964-01.
I am not sure what to make of this document, which is written in such an arcane and convoluted style that it challenges the attention span of even the most focused reader.
I have been researching this story for four years, and I found the following paragraphs the most intriguing:
9. In a letter dated 28 May 2016, the NIAID contacted EHA concerning possible GoF [gain-of-function] research based on information submitted in its most recent Year 2 RPPR. The NIAID notified EHA that GoF research conducted under Grant Number 5R01AI110964-03 would be subject to the 17 October 2014, United States Federal Government funding pause, and that per the funding pause announcement, new United States Federal Government funding would not be released for GoF research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route. In the letter, the NIAID requested that EHA provide a determination within 15 days of the date of the letter as to whether EHA’s research under Grant Number 5R01AI110964-03 did or did not include GoF work subject to the funding pause.
10. In a letter dated 8 June 2016, EHA provided a response to the NIAID’s 28 May 2016 letter. EHA explained that the goal of its proposed work was to construct MERS and MERS-like chimeric CoVs in order to understand the potential origins of MERSCoV in bats by studying bat MERS-like CoVs in detail. EHA stated that it believed it was highly unlikely that the proposed work would have any pathogenic potential, but that should any of these recombinants show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, or grow more efficiently in human airway epithelial cells, EHA would immediately: (1) stop all experiments with the mutant, (2) inform the NIAID Programme Officer of these results, and (3) participate in decision-making trees to decide appropriate paths forward.
11. Based on the information provided by EHA, the NIAID concluded that the proposed work was not subject to the GoF research pause. In a letter dated 7 July 2016, however, the NIAID informed EHA that should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimaeras generated under the grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain, EHA must stop all experiments with these viruses and provide the NIAID Programme Officer and Grants Management Specialist, and WIV Institutional Biosafety Committee, with the relevant data and information related to these unanticipated outcomes.
Note that various statements in the above paragraphs are inconsistent with what Baric et al. state in their 2015 paper ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus shows potential for human emergence’ – a research paper funded by the NIAID EcoHealth Grant “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
As the authors state in the section on biosafety and biosecurity:
Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol (Project Title: Generating infectious clones of bat SARS-like CoVs; Lab Safety Plan ID: 20145741; Schedule G ID: 12279). These studies were initiated before the ‘US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS and SARS Viruses’ [see HERE]. This paper has been reviewed by the funding agency, the NIH. Continuation of these studies was requested, and this has been approved by the NIH.
As I noted in my series of essays titled ‘The Great SARS-CoV-2 Charade’, one of the silliest lies told by Dr. Anthony Fauci has been his insistence that NIAID did not approve gain-of-function work by EcoHealth.
Fauci has repeatedly asserted this in a loud and vexed tone, as though he is outraged by the mere proposition. And yet, Ralph Baric and his colleagues – including Zhengli-Li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – plainly state in their 2015 paper that their gain-of-function experiments, performed in Baric’s [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] UNC lab and Zhengli-Li Shi’s lab in Wuhan, were grandfathered in, given that they were funded before the 2014 Pause.
Another statement (in paragraph 11 of the recent HHS Action Referral Memo) that deserves special scrutiny is the following:
In a letter dated 7 July 2016, however, the NIAID informed EHA that should any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimaeras generated under the grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain, EHA must stop all experiments with these viruses and provide the NIAID Programme Officer and Grants Management Specialist, and WIV Institutional Biosafety Committee, with the relevant data and information related to these unanticipated outcomes.
Again, it’s tough to interpret this statement, given that Baric et al. had, by their own admission, already generated chimaeras that “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titres equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”
