![WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 1: EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak speaks during a House Select Subcommittee hearing on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill on May 1, 2024 in Washington, DC. The hearing is part of an investigation into Daszak, who's organization is a non-profit whose goal is to prevent pandemics and was involved in investigations into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)](https://www.oann.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GettyImages-2150450606-800x534.jpg)
OAN’s Chloe Hauxwell
4:15 PM – Thursday, May 2, 2024
House Republicans are calling for an investigation into EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak.
The House subcommittee investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic grilled Daszak during a hearing on Wednesday.
The panel released a 59-page report and interview transcripts with half a dozen NIH officials and scientists linked to EcoHealth’s research.
Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), found that EcoHealth has received millions in federal grants to conduct research around the globe, including $4 million for a NIH project titled “Understanding The Risk Of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
Democrats and Republicans were united in denouncing Daszak’s conflicting testimony.
“We have found that EcoHealth was nearly two 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,” Wenstrup said in his opening statement.
“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,” he added.
“And let me be clear, I support global health research,” Wenstrup continued. “I support work that will make the world safer. That’s why we are investigating. Our concern is that this research and research similar does the opposite — puts the world at risk of a pandemic.”
In addition to calling for Daszak’s debarment and an investigation, the committee offered eight improvements to the federal grants process.
The lawmakers believe this would “increase biosafety and biosecurity of high-risk research.”
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