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COVID Lab Leak: Over four later, EcoHealth Alliance funding is finally suspended

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8 minute read

From Heartland Daily News

Thursday, May 16, 2024

Federal Funding Stripped From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy

Today, the Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This morning, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds.

ā€œThe immediate suspension of [EcoHealth Alliance] is necessary to protect the public interest and due to a cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects EHAā€™s present responsibility,ā€Ā wroteĀ HHS Deputy Secretary for Acquisitions Henrietta Brisbon in a memorandum signed this morning.

For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.

In a memo justifying its funding suspension, HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells.

Congressional Republicans leading an investigation into EcoHealthā€™s research in Wuhan, and the role it may have played in starting the pandemic via a lab leak, cheered HHSā€™s decision.

ā€œEcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health [NIH] grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH,ā€Ā saidĀ Rep. Brad Wenstrup (Rā€“Ohio), chair of the Houseā€™s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a statement. ā€œThese actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.ā€

Beginning in 2014, EcoHealth received a grant from NIHā€™s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study bat coronavirus in China. Its initial scope of work involved collecting and cataloging viruses in the wild and studying them in the lab to spot which ones might be primed to ā€œspilloverā€ into humans and cause a pandemic.

Soon enough, EcoHealth used some of the viruses theyā€™d collected to create ā€œchimericā€ or hybrid viruses that might be better able to infect human lung cells in genetically engineered (humanized) mice.

This so-called ā€œgain-of-functionā€ research has long been controversial for its potential to create deadly pandemic pathogens. In 2014, the Obama administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that might turn SARS, MERS, or flu viruses into more transmissible respiratory diseases in mammals.

In 2016,Ā NIH flagged EcoHealthā€™sĀ work as likely violating the 2014 pause.

EcoHealth President Peter Daszak argued to NIH at the time that the viruses his outfit was creating had not been proven to infect human cells and were genetically different enough from past pandemic viruses that they didnā€™t fall under the Obama administration pause.

Wuhan Institute of Virology and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance

NIH accepted this argument under the condition that EcoHealth immediately stop its work and notify the agency if any of its hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in humanized mice.

But when these hybrid viruses did show increased viral growth in mice, EcoHealth did not immediately stop work or notify NIH. It instead waited until it submitted an annual progress report in 2018 to disclose the results of its experiments.

A second progress report that EcoHealth submitted in 2021, two years after its due date, also showed its hybrid viruses were demonstrating increased viral growth and enhanced lethality in humanized mice.

In testimony to the Houseā€™s coronavirus subcommittee earlier this month, Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIHā€™s reporting system.

The HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIHā€™s reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there and the labā€™s biosafety conditions.

These all amount to violations of EcoHealthā€™s grant agreement and NIH grant policy, thus warranting debarment from future federal funds, reads the HHS memo.

That EcoHealth would be stripped of its federal funding shouldnā€™t come as too great a shock to anyoneĀ who watched Daszakā€™sĀ congressional testimony from earlier this month. Even Democrats on the committee openly accused Daszak of being misleading about EcoHealthā€™s work and manipulating facts.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (Dā€“Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Houseā€™s coronavirus subcommittee, welcomed EcoHealthā€™s suspension, saying in a press release that the nonprofitĀ failedĀ its ā€œobligation to meet the utmost standards of transparency and accountability to the American public.ā€

An HHS Office of the Inspector GeneralĀ reportĀ from last year had already found that EcoHealth had failed to submit progress reports on time or effectively monitor its subgrantee, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

When grilling Daszak, Democrats on the Coronavirus Subcommittee went to great lengths to not criticize NIHā€™s oversight of EcoHealthā€™s work. The HHS debarment memo likewise focuses only on EcoHealthā€™s failures to abide by NIH policy and its grant conditions.

Nevertheless, it seems pretty obvious that NIH was failing to abide by the 2014 pause on gain-of-function funding when it allowed EcoHealth to go ahead with creating hybrid coronaviruses under the condition that they stop if the viruses did prove more virulent.

NIH compounded that oversight failure by not stopping EcoHealthā€™s funding when the nonprofit did, in fact, create more virulent viruses, and not following up on a never-submitted progress report detailing more gain-of-function research until two years later.

The House Subcommitteeā€™s investigation into NIHā€™s role in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab is ongoing. Tomorrow it will interview NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawerence Tabak. In June, it willĀ interviewĀ former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.

Originally published byĀ Reason Foundation. Republished with permission.

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney refuses to clarify 2022 remarks accusing the Freedom Convoy of ā€˜seditionā€™

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Mark Carney described the Freedom Convoy as an act of ‘sedition’ and advocated for the government to use its power to crush the non-violent protest movement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney refused to elaborate on comments he made in 2022 referring to the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protest as an act of ā€œseditionā€ and advocating for the government to put an end to the movement.

ā€œWell, look, I havenā€™t been a politician,ā€ Carney said when a reporter in Windsor, Ontario, where a Freedom Convoy-linkedĀ border blockade took place in 2022, asked, ā€œWhat do you say to Canadians who lost trust in the Liberal government back then and do not have trust in you now?ā€

ā€œI became a politician a little more than two months ago, two and a half months ago,ā€ he said. ā€œI came in because I thought this country needed big change. We needed big change in the economy.ā€

Carneyā€™s lack of an answer seems to be in stark contrast to the strong opinion he voiced in a February 7, 2022,Ā columnĀ published in theĀ Globe & MailĀ at the time of the convoy titled, ā€œItā€™s Time To End The Sedition In Ottawa.ā€

In that piece, Carney wrote that the Freedom Convoy was a movement of ā€œsedition,ā€ adding, ā€œThatā€™s a word I never thought Iā€™d use in Canada. It means incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.ā€

Carney went on to claim in the piece that if ā€œleft uncheckedā€ by government authorities, the Freedom Convoy would ā€œachieveā€ its ā€œgoal of undermining our democracy.ā€

Carney even targeted ā€œ[a]nyone sending money to the Convoy,ā€ accusing them of ā€œfunding sedition.ā€

Internal emails from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) eventuallyĀ showedĀ that his definition of sedition were not in conformity with the definition under Canadaā€™s Criminal Code, which explicitly lists the ā€œuse of forceā€ as a necessary aspect of sedition.

ā€œThe key bit is ā€˜use of force,’ā€ one RCMP officer noted in the emails. ā€œIā€™m all about a resolution to this and a forceful one with us victorious but, from the facts on the ground, I donā€™t know weā€™re there except in a small number of cases.ā€

The reality is that the Freedom Convoy was a peaceful event of public protest against COVID mandates, and not one protestor was charged with sedition. However, the Liberal government, then under Justin Trudeau, did take an approach similar to the one advocated for by Carney, invoking the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters. Since then, a federal judge has ruled that such action was ā€œnot justified.ā€

Despite this, the two most prominent leaders of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, still face aā€Æpossibleā€Æ10-year prison sentence for their role in the non-violent assembly. LifeSiteNews has reportedā€Æextensivelyā€Æon their trial.

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COVID-19

17-year-old died after taking COVID shot, but Ontario judge denies his familyā€™s liability claim

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

An Ontario judge dismissed a liability claim from a family of a high schooler who died weeks after taking the COVID shot.

According to aĀ publishedĀ report on March 26 byĀ Blacklockā€™s Reporter, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no ā€œduty of careā€ to a Canadian teenager who died after receiving a COVID vaccine.

ā€œThe plaintiffā€™s tragedy is real, but there is no private law duty of care made out,ā€ Antoniani said.

ā€œThere is no private law duty of care to individual members of the public injured by government core policy decisions in the handling of health emergencies which impact the general population,ā€ she continued.

In September 2021, 17-year-old Sean Hartman of Beeton, Ontario, passed away just three weeks after receiving a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID shot.

After his death, his family questioned if health officials had warned Canadians ā€œthat a possible side effect of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine was death.ā€ The family took this petition to court but has been denied a hearing.

Antoniani alleged that ā€œthe defendantsā€™ actions were aimed at mitigating the health impact of a global pandemic on the Canadian public. The defendants deemed that urgent action was necessary.ā€

ā€œImposition of a private duty of care would have a negative impact on the ability of the defendants to prioritize the interests of the entire public, with the distraction of fear over the possibility of harm to individual members of the public, and the risk of litigation and unlimited liability,ā€ she ruled.

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Dan Hartman, Seanā€™s father,Ā filedĀ a $35.6 million lawsuit against Pfizer after his sonā€™s death.

However, only 103 claims of 1,859 have been approved to date, ā€œwhere it has been determined by the Medical Review Board that there is a probable link between the injury and the vaccine, and that the injury is serious and permanent.ā€

Thus far, VISP hasĀ paidĀ over $6 million to those injured by COVID injections, with some 2,000 claims remaining to be settled.

According to studies, post-vaccination heart conditions such as myocarditis are well documented in those,Ā especially young malesĀ who have received the Pfizer jab.

Additionally, aĀ recent studyĀ done by researchers with Canada-basedĀ Correlation Research in the Public InterestĀ showed that 17 countries have found a ā€œdefinite causal linkā€ between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.

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