The National Institutes of Health failed to provide adequate oversight of an American organization that funded controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to a new government report.
The National Institutes of Health failed to provide adequate oversight of an American organization that funded controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according tothat is sure to raise new questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But it does note that the American organization in question, the EcoHealth Alliance, should have been more rigorously scrutinized by federal officials regarding assurances that its partner lab in Wuhan was not using U.S. funds to conduct gain-of-function research, which boosts viruses to study how they might evolve in nature.
But it is the NIH that is bound to face the most intense scrutiny. In a Twitter message, House Republicans promised that “oversight & accountability” are coming to the federal biomedical establishment, which has been celebrated by some but demonized by others.Politics aside, Wednesday’s report raises important questions about how federal funds are monitored when they flow to foreign governments and organizations.
“Deficiencies in complying with those procedures limited NIH and EcoHealth’s ability to effectively monitor Federal grant awards and subawards to understand the nature of the research conducted, identify potential problem areas, and take corrective action,” Grimm concluded. Since the first months of the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance has been at the center of both legitimate and conspiratorial inquiries into how, and where, the coronavirus originated. Although it was originally thought that the virus originated at a wildlife market, no explanation has been sufficiently convincing to allow for anything approaching scientific consensus.
Wednesday’s report could invigorate investigators who continue to believe that China is hiding crucial evidence, including about a potential accident.When the pandemic began, EcoHealth president Peter Daszak argued that criticizing the zoonotic spillover hypothesis — that is, the notion that the coronavirus came from an animal, possibly one sold at a wildlife market — would only stoke xenophobia.
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