Will the EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. organization that collaborated with virologists in China who some suspect of creating the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, survive? That’s the looming question after Peter Daszak, the scientist who heads the New York City–based nonprofit, faced 3 hours of grilling and intense criticism today from a House of Representatives panel investigating the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the panel took EcoHealth to task for everything from the late filing of a progress report for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to the safety conditions of its collaborators’ virology work in China. In a report issued hours before the hearing, the Republican majority also called for Daszak to be criminally investigated and for EcoHealth to be banned, or debarred, from receiving NIH funding. EcoHealth mismanaged its NIH funding and Daszak had taken other problematic actions, the report alleges.
Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), who chairs the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said Daszak “comes across [as] disingenuous” about the risks of the work and is “not a responsible steward of the American people’s tax dollars.”
Daszak in turn challenged the conduct of the panel, saying EcoHealth had been promised access to the Republicans’ report in time to prepare an informed response. In a statement to Science after the hearing, he said: “It appeared that the Committee had decided to declare EcoHealth Alliance guilty until proven innocent. … It’s shocking and disappointing that they are now threatening to debar our organization, throw our staff out of work, and undermine 20 years of world leading pandemic research.”
Democrats on the panel have roundly criticized Wenstrup’s past hearings as failing to substantiate the hypothesis that the pandemic virus leaked from a laboratory in China. And in its own report released today, the Democratic minority accused Republicans of stoking mistrust of NIH and the scientific community.
At the same time, the minority report expressed strong concerns about how EcoHealth and Daszak managed NIH funding. The panel’s 14-month investigation suggests “that Dr. Daszak and EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] engaged in conduct that raises reasonable questions about their professional integrity and their continued working relationship with the federal government as recipients of taxpayer funds,” the report says.
During the hearing, the panel’s ranking Democrat, Representative Raul Ruiz (CA), said EcoHealth scientists “potentially misled the federal government on multiple occasions.” But neither Ruiz nor the minority report endorsed the Republican call to debar EcoHealth from further U.S. funding.
EcoHealth came under scrutiny early in the pandemic because it had a grant from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) that included a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), its longtime collaborator, to collect and characterize bat coronaviruses collected in the wild. After suggestions arose that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from WIV, NIAID controversially axed, then suspended the grant in 2020.
Some scientists and lawmakers have since argued that a portion of the work that involved making hybrid “chimeric” viruses constituted “gain-of-function” (GOF) research, studies that could make human pathogens more dangerous and could have created SARS-CoV-2. NIH, however, has denied those studies met its GOF definition or could have generated the pandemic virus. Last year, after WIV failed to share lab books or meet other compliance requirements, NIH reinstated EcoHealth’s grant without WIV as a partner. NIH also debarred WIV.
Many of the questions lawmakers asked Daszak today centered on an EcoHealth-led grant proposal known as DEFUSE that was submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense but never received funding. It proposed experiments in which a North Carolina lab would engineer coronaviruses in ways that some think could have created SARS-CoV-2. The proposal also included work at WIV, and some worry such engineering later happened in China.
In particular, lawmakers questioned written comments that Daszak made on a draft DEFUSE proposal, in which he suggested downplaying the role of Chinese scientists in the efforts. Some lawmakers have suggested the comments are evidence of a coverup. Daszak, however, said those comments were being misinterpreted and that the final DEFUSE proposal was clear on who was doing what. “I simply wanted to stress the U.S. side of the proposal,” Daszak testified, saying that was nothing unusual.
The panel today also revisited many previously aired issues, such as whether EcoHealth and WIV properly reported certain experimental results to NIH. And some members questioned EcoHealth’s claim that it failed to submit a 2019 progress report in time because it was locked out of NIH’s report submission system. A forensic investigation by NIH found no evidence of this, lawmakers said; Daszak denied any wrongdoing and offered to submit more documentation backing EcoHealth’s explanation.
Members also questioned Daszak about why he initially failed to publicly disclose his ties to Chinese virologists in organizing and signing a 2020 letter published in The Lancet that dismissed lab-leak ideas as “conspiracy theories.” Daszak has previously defended his actions by saying his ties to WIV were widely known, and he reminded the panel he filed an amended disclosure that was longer than the original letter.
Daszak also faced questions about his communications with a collaborator, virologist Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In Baric emails and in testimony he gave to the panel described today in Vanity Fair, Baric, who had proposed engineering bat coronaviruses, says he felt that any work with such viruses should take place in biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory, not the lower security BSL-2 lab that WIV scientists apparently used for such work.
According to the majority report, Baric told Daszak in one email: “Bsl2 with negative pressure, give me a break. … Yes china has the right to set their own policy. You believe this was appropriate containment if you want but don’t expect me to believe it. Moreover, don’t insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS.”
Daszak responded by noting that the U.S. biosafety manual recommends that cell culture work with bat coronaviruses be done in a BSL-2 setting. The standards are the same in both countries, he said, adding that in the final DEFUSE proposal work conducted with live animals would have been done in a BSL-3 laboratory, as recommended.
Another new allegation highlighted in the Republican report is that EcoHealth is, under its reinstated NIAID grant, violating the debarment of WIV by continuing to work with virus samples and sequences held by the Chinese institute. WIV could, in theory, still influence the outcome of the new EcoHealth work, the report argues. Daszak called this a misunderstanding, arguing that the work involves only genome sequences—not virus samples—and the sequences were already in EcoHealth’s possession when the grant resumed.
Daszak also maintained that the most plausible theory for how SARS-CoV-2 emerged was a natural jump from an infected animal host to a person somewhere in China. There is “zero evidence” the virus came from WIV or another lab, he said. But he conceded that the case isn’t closed. “So, is it possible they [WIV] have hidden some viruses from us? That we don’t know about. Of course.”
EcoHealth has four active NIH grants and many millions of dollars in funding from other federal agencies. At least some of that funding would be in jeopardy if NIH and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, find grounds for debarment.
Wenstrup concluded that “we’ve identified serious issues” and that “the investigation [of EcoHealth] is not over.” He added, “This is dangerous, risky research” and “we cannot just blindly trust the scientists.”
Next month, his panel plans to hold a hearing with former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci that could be as fiery as today’s.
