The appearance of virology researcher Peter Daszak, PhD, whose organization worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to study bat coronaviruses, drew the expected tough questions from House Republicans at a hearing Wednesday, but Democrats weren’t letting Daszak off the hook either.
“Today we’ll hear from both sides that there are serious concerns about EcoHealth Alliance’s failure to comply with reporting requirements for federal grantees — concerns that draw into question whether you, Dr. Daszak, sought to deliberately mislead regulators at NIH and NIAID [the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases],” Rep. Raul Ruiz, MD, (D-Calif.) ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said at a hearing featuring Daszak as the lone witness. “We will also examine whether Dr. Daszak, beyond his obligations as an employee of a federally funded grantee, acted with integrity in his engagement with the possibility that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related incident.”
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) asked Daszak, who is president of the EcoHealth Alliance, about why he appeared to mislead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in relation to the Wuhan lab’s potential participation when his organization submitted a grant application — which was never funded — for proposed coronavirus research to be done in cooperation with the University of North Carolina. “That kind of raises some questions for me,” she said. “Why did you even entertain the thought of minimizing and apparently omitting the extent of Wuhan’s involvement?”
Daszak denied he had done that. “I talked to the DARPA staff right at the beginning … and asked them straight up in an email chain, ‘Is it OK to propose this, to work with colleagues in China on coronaviruses from China?'” he said. “They said, ‘Yes.’ So there was no intent to hide any China involvement. They’re in the proposal.”
Dingell remained unconvinced. “My Democratic colleagues and I want to emphasize the importance of transparency,” she said. “We believe in a full accounting of facts, and I believe we have been very fair with you … But to the extent you’ve considered misrepresenting facts, or done so, we will consider that a very serious mistake.”
Subcommittee chair Rep. Brad Wenstrup, DPM (R-Ohio), highlighted some of the conclusions of an interim report published Wednesday on the issue by the subcommittee’s majority members. “We have found that EcoHealth was nearly 2 years late in submitting a routine progress report to NIH, that EcoHealth failed to report, as required, a potentially dangerous experiment conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that EcoHealth used taxpayer dollars to facilitate risky gain-of-function research, and that Dr. Daszak omitted a material fact regarding his access to unanalyzed virus samples and sequences at the WIV in his successful effort to have his grant reinstated by NIH,” he said in his opening statement.
In addition, he said, “Dr. Daszak has been less than cooperative with the Select Subcommittee, he has been slow to produce requested documents, and has regularly played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function research, even in his previous testimony.” Generally, “gain-of-function” refers to research involving a genetic mutation in an organism — such as a virus — that confers a new or enhanced ability upon it.
Gain-of-function research was the focus of questions from Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) “EcoHealth Alliance never has, and did not do, gain-of-function research, by definition,” Daszak said in response to her question.
“Are you aware of the Wuhan lab conducting that type of research?” Malliotakis said. “No,” Daszak replied. When she asked him why his organization decided to work with the Wuhan lab, he replied, “If you want to work with a foreign country to find the next potential risk of a pandemic, you have to work with labs in those countries. We looked at labs across China; the [Wuhan lab] is the premier viral research [lab] in China” and has a “very good biosafety level.” He estimated that in total, his organization has received about $60-$64 million in government funding since the start of the pandemic.
Several subcommittee members tried to focus on the future. “It’s critical we understand what went wrong at NIAID and EcoHealth’s relationship with Wuhan,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.). “My hope is that when we’re finished we have a package of legislative proposals and other recommendations on biosafety and biosecurity. I increasingly think that means taking final approval authority for these experiments away from NIAID … in favor of an independent entity.”
“In my opinion [NIAID and EcoHealth] were grossly negligent,” Griffith said, adding that NIAID continues to fund EcoHealth’s research “to this very day. Even after COVID-19, at NIAID, it’s business as usual. It’s absurd and it’s got to change.”
Dingell had a different take. She urged her colleagues to focus on how to protect Americans from future pandemics. “Sowing distrust in the scientific community is not the best way to accomplish this goal,” Dingell said. “While I agree that the EcoHealth Alliance proved to be careless and imprecise with federal funding … this does not mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. NIH and NIAID serve important functions in medical and scientific research … They’ve done good work in the past and we want that good work to continue in the future.”
“Throughout this investigation, my Republican colleagues have been trying to cast blame for the COVID-19 pandemic on [former NIH director Francis] Collins and [former NIAID director Anthony] Fauci … contrary to the evidence,” she added. “We should be holding today’s witness accountable … but this should not distract us from our ultimate goal: future pandemic preparedness.”
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