Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said 15 federal agencies were aware of a proposed task in 2018 that would have allowed virus studies organization EcoHealth Alliance to genetically engineer a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2, raising concerns about the scale of that threat. The Trump administration has been aware of the dangers of studying harmful viruses before the COVID pandemic began.
In the end, the task received no funding, but studies funded through EcoHealth Alliance in Wuhan, China, have been amid speculation by congressional researchers about the origins of the coronavirus.
“At least 15 federal agencies knew from the start of the pandemic that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were a federal investment in 2018 to create a virus that is genetically very similar, if not identical, to COVID-19,” Paul said. Tuesday. ” It is troubling that none of those 15 agencies have spoken out to warn us that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has initiated this investigation. “
The documents released through the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which Paul is the most level-headed Republican member, imply that several agencies, in addition to the National Institutes of Health, the U. S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Homeland Security, were aware of EcoHealth’s hope of creating in China what Paul calls “a new chimeric virus” with pandemic potential.
EcoHealth, a nonprofit research organization whose purpose is to save pandemics, has played a pivotal role in Congressional research into the origins of COVID thanks to grants the organization receives from the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies.
Since 2021, Paul has drawn attention to a 2018 grant proposal from EcoHealth to the Department of Defense under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The proposed studies, called Project DEFUSE, purportedly conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and North Carolina’s University of Chapel Hill.
House Republicans recently exposed data indicating that EcoHealth President Peter Daszak may have misled DARPA about how many of the studies were conducted in the U. S. It was used in the U. S. , not China, to make sure the Department of Defense was “comfortable with [the] equipment. “
Had the task been funded through DARPA, the studies would have focused on manipulating the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-related viruses, which would then have been injected into “humanized mice to assess the ability [of modified viruses] to cause SARS. “-like a disease.
Paul said the DEFUSE task would have notably inserted a furin cleavage into a coronavirus, a key feature of SARS-CoV-2 that makes it easily transmissible between humans.
Paul first announced in an op-ed on Tuesday that he had obtained documents from the Biden administration that key public health and national security agencies had been briefed on Project DEFUSE at an event hosted through DARPA before the outbreak of the pandemic.
Because the DEFUSE task submitted to DARPA as part of the PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats, or PREEMPT, program, EcoHealth and WIV were invited to participate in the PREEMPT Nominator’s Day.
“Under pressure, management released documents that appeared to have submitted the DEFUSE task to at least 15 agencies in January 2018,” Paul said.
According to Paul, these agencies “were aware of their mission from the beginning of the pandemic,” added the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under then-Director Anthony Fauci.
“Did NIAID warn us? Anthony Fauci warned us?All lips remained sealed,” Paul wrote in his editorial.
Daszak participated in a closed-door interview consultation with the House Oversight and Energy and Commerce Committees in November.
Discrepancies between Daszak’s testimony and documents about the DEFUSE task exposed Freedom of Information Act requests prompted the commissions to schedule a public hearing to question Daszak about the task.
Daszak is scheduled to appear before the public on May 1.
When asked about Paul’s revelation, House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup told the Washington Examiner that he would ask Daszak how much federal wisdom there is on the DEFUSE task outside of DARPA.
“Dr. Peter Daszak will have a lot of questions to answer when he appears before the special subcommittee in May,” Wenstrup said. “The rest of Americans deserve a fully transparent investigation into the appointments between EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, adding that any investment from federal companies reviewed and granted prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “
EcoHealth did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on the PREEMPT Proponents Day meeting, however, a spokesperson for the organization has repeatedly told the Washington Examiner that EcoHealth’s studies do not address the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
“The fact is that studies on the coronavirus in bats conducted through EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology may simply not have triggered the COVID-19 pandemic,” the organization’s spokesperson said in reaction to another Paul op-ed published in February related to studies on harmful pathogens.
The spokesperson also said that if the DEFUSE task had been through DARPA, it would have been heavily monitored through the DOD.
It’s unclear whether EcoHealth has asked other agencies to fund the DEFUSE task following the DOD rejection.