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 Health and Human Services Department threw a wrench in those plans after it announced the firm had misbehaved so badly that it can no longer receive government money. HHS immediately suspended EcoHealth from getting funding and said it’s pursuing debarment, which would be a more persistent ban.
Dr. Lawrence Tabak, principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, indicated to Congress on Thursday that the bat lab is in the mix of segments getting hit.
“The suspension includes all grant activities for that organization,” he told the House select subcommittee investigating the coronavirus pandemic.
One leading theory on COVID-19’s origins is that it leaked from bat research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that received some of its funding from U.S. taxpayers via EcoHealth. The firm insists it wasn’t paying for risky gain-of-function experiments, though an inspector general dinged EcoHealth for failing to properly report a worrying development with the research it was funding in Wuhan.
That made EcoHealth’s quest to start a virus research lab using bats in the U.S. questionable.
The White Coat Waste Project, which exposed EcoHealth’s funding for the Wuhan lab and is tracking the Colorado project, said EcoHealth’s vice president is listed as a principal investigator for one of the government grants.
Documents released by WCW show EcoHealth was responsible for capturing bats in Bangladesh, quarantining them, acclimating them to captivity and shipping them to the university to establish breeding colonies.
The project description said animals would be used to study SARS-CoV-2, the virus strain that causes COVID-19, among other viruses.
“The establishment of this resource will lead to a better understanding of how bats host pathogenic viruses without disease and may shed light on events that increase spillover risks to humans,” the project description said. “In turn, this information could lead to development of mitigation strategies to prevent future virus spillover and uncover new strategies for therapeutic treatment of coronavirus and Nipah virus diseases.”
EcoHealth, in a statement, said the letter that HHS sent announcing the suspension listed only three projects covering disease hotspots in Southeast Asia, the Nipah virus in Bangladesh and coronaviruses in Laos, Vietnam and Burma.
The firm said it had “no updates at this time” on the Colorado project.
That contradicts what Dr. Tabak told Congress when he was asked whether the suspension was limited to the projects listed in the letter.
Colorado State University didn’t say what its plans are for the bat lab, but did say it’s halted its work with EcoHealth.
“CSU is a leader in biosafety and is committed to the safety of our community. The university follows the direction of our federal research partners and has suspended its subcontract with EcoHealth Alliance,” said Tiana Kennedy, the school’s associate vice president for communication.
WCW said the federal shutdown should put the entire Colorado lab on ice.
“We’ve been exposing and fighting EcoHealth‘s ‘Wuhan West’ lab in Colorado because the last thing taxpayers need is to import and abuse hundreds of Asian bats for pandemic-causing virus experiments on U.S. soil,” said Justin Goodman, WCW’s senior vice president for public policy. “We hope EcoHealth‘s suspension and debarment spell the end of [former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Anthony] Fauci’s wasteful and scary spending scheme.”
WCW said the Colorado bat lab is one of more than a dozen active EcoHealth projects funded by federal tax money. They are sponsored by NIH, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Science Foundation.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, vowed to make sure federal agencies cut off the spigot for EcoHealth.
“I am following up with every agency to make sure they got the memo that the mad scientists at EcoHealth Alliance should never be allowed to put their hands on bats or taxpayer dollars ever again,” she said.
She also called on the government to adopt new guardrails “to ensure what happened at Wuhan doesn’t happen anywhere else, especially in communities right here in our own country.”
“Since the scientific agencies have demonstrated they aren’t capable of policing themselves, I am calling on Congress to restrict funding for all risky research and am working to make sure that happens,” she added.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican and chairman of the pandemic investigation subcommittee urged the Biden administration to expand its suspension to include not just EcoHealth as an institution, but also its president, Dr. Peter Daszak.
Dr. Daszak has denied funding risky research and blamed computer glitches on his firm’s failure to meet reporting deadlines. NIH says it has conducted a forensic audit and detected no computer glitches, helping fuel HHS’ decision to suspend EcoHealth from federal money.
Dr. Daszak lashed out on social media this week, calling the suspension “raw politics.”
“Reminder — it was NIH that funded China, not EcoHealth, and that was reviewed & approved by NIH & State Dept under both Trump and Obama,” Dr. Daszak wrote.