COVID-19
COVID Lab Leak: Over four later, EcoHealth Alliance funding is finally suspended

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.
āThe 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 EHAās present responsibility,āĀ 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 EcoHealthās research in Wuhan, and the role it may have played in starting the pandemic via a lab leak, cheered HHSās decision.
āEcoHealth 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,āĀ saidĀ Rep. Brad Wenstrup (RāOhio), chair of the Houseās Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a statement. āThese actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.ā
Beginning in 2014, EcoHealth received a grant from NIHās 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 āspilloverā into humans and cause a pandemic.
Soon enough, EcoHealth used some of the viruses theyād collected to create āchimericā or hybrid viruses that might be better able to infect human lung cells in genetically engineered (humanized) mice.
This so-called āgain-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 EcoHealthāsĀ 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 didnāt 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 Houseās 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 NIHās reporting system.
The HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIHās 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 labās biosafety conditions.
These all amount to violations of EcoHealthās 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 shouldnāt come as too great a shock to anyoneĀ who watched DaszakāsĀ congressional testimony from earlier this month. Even Democrats on the committee openly accused Daszak of being misleading about EcoHealthās work and manipulating facts.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (DāCalif.), the ranking Democrat on the Houseās coronavirus subcommittee, welcomed EcoHealthās suspension, saying in a press release that the nonprofitĀ failedĀ its āobligation 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 NIHās oversight of EcoHealthās work. The HHS debarment memo likewise focuses only on EcoHealthās 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 EcoHealthās 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 Subcommitteeās investigation into NIHās 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.
2025 Federal Election
Mark Carney refuses to clarify 2022 remarks accusing the Freedom Convoy of āseditionā

From LifeSiteNews
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 āseditionā and advocating for the government to put an end to the movement.
āWell, look, I havenāt been a politician,ā Carney said when a reporter in Windsor, Ontario, where a Freedom Convoy-linkedĀ border blockade took place in 2022, asked, āWhat do you say to Canadians who lost trust in the Liberal government back then and do not have trust in you now?ā
āI became a politician a little more than two months ago, two and a half months ago,ā he said. āI came in because I thought this country needed big change. We needed big change in the economy.ā
Carneyās 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, āItās Time To End The Sedition In Ottawa.ā
In that piece, Carney wrote that the Freedom Convoy was a movement of āsedition,ā adding, āThatās a word I never thought Iād 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 āleft uncheckedā by government authorities, the Freedom Convoy would āachieveā its āgoal of undermining our democracy.ā
Carney even targeted ā[a]nyone sending money to the Convoy,ā accusing them of āfunding 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 Canadaās Criminal Code, which explicitly lists the āuse of forceā as a necessary aspect of sedition.
āThe key bit is āuse of force,’ā one RCMP officer noted in the emails. āIām all about a resolution to this and a forceful one with us victorious but, from the facts on the ground, I donāt know weāre there except in a small number of cases.ā
Another officer replied with, āAgreed,ā adding that āIt would be a stretch to say the trucks barricading the streets and the air horns blaring at whatever decibels for however many days constitute the āuse of force.āā
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 ānot justified.ā
Despite this, the two most prominent leaders of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, still face aāÆpossibleāÆ10-year prison sentence for their role in the non-violent assembly. LifeSiteNews has reportedāÆextensivelyāÆon their trial.
COVID-19
17-year-old died after taking COVID shot, but Ontario judge denies his familyās liability claim

From LifeSiteNews
Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no ‘duty of care’ to individual members of the public in its pandemic response.
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 Blacklockās Reporter, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no āduty of careā to a Canadian teenager who died after receiving a COVID vaccine.
āThe plaintiffās tragedy is real, but there is no private law duty of care made out,ā Antoniani said.
āThere 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 āthat 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 āthe 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
āImposition 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, Seanās father,Ā filedĀ a $35.6 million lawsuit against Pfizer after his sonās death.
Hartmanās family is not alone in their pursuit of justice after being injured by the COVID shot. Canadaās Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP)Ā was launchedĀ in December 2020āÆafter the Canadian government gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding COVID-19 jab-related injuries.
However, only 103 claims of 1,859 have been approved to date, āwhere 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 ādefinite causal linkā between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.
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