Over 100,000 Released Documents Expose COVID Origin Fraud
Dr Joseph Mercola
Story at-a-glance
An investigative report by Vanity Fair contributor Katherine Eban, based on more than 100,000 EcoHealth Alliance documents, shows a disturbing reality of “murky grant agreements, flimsy NIH oversight and pursuit of government grants by pitching increasingly risky global research”
In 2014, EcoHealth received a $3.7 million NIAID grant to study the risk of bat coronavirus emergence and the potential for outbreaks in human populations. Nearly $600,000 of that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was a key collaborator
The 2014 grant highlights the truth of what critics of gain-of-function (GOF) research have been saying for years, which is that this kind of research never achieves its aims. They say it needs to be done to prevent and/or get ahead of pandemics, but not a single pandemic has ever been averted and, instead, GOF research may actually be the cause of them
EcoHealth president Peter Daszak’s behavior has added fuel to suspicions of a lab leak — potentially of a virus that he himself helped create. In 2015, he warned a global pandemic might occur from a laboratory incident, especially the sort of virus manipulation research being done in Wuhan. Despite this history, in February 2020, Daszak wrote a “scientific consensus statement” published in The Lancet that condemned the lab leak theory as a wild conspiracy theory
It appears those who insist SARS-CoV-2 is of natural origin, despite all the evidence to the contrary, are doing so because they don’t want risky virological research to be blamed for the COVID pandemic
In a March 31, 2022, investigative report,1 Vanity Fair contributor Katherine Eban reviewed the contents of more than 100,000 EcoHealth Alliance documents, including meeting minutes and internal emails and reports, most of which predate the COVID-19 pandemic, showing a disturbing reality of “murky grant agreements, flimsy NIH oversight and pursuit of government grants by pitching increasingly risky global research.”2
April 4, 2022, Eban discussed her investigative report with “Rising” cohosts Ryan Grim and Robby Soave (video above). The various documents were released in accordance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by several parties, including BuzzFeed, The Intercept, U.S. Right to Know, White Coat Waste, GOP Oversight and others.3
EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak admits to “cultivating” government connections for years by attending fancy cocktail parties in Washington D.C., oftentimes giving presentations alongside Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and internal correspondence reveal his obsession with funding — to the point of pitching risky research proposals to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Missing Gene Sequence
Eban begins her story with the account of Jesse D. Bloom, Ph.D., a computational virologist and evolutionary biologist with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. June 18, 2021, Bloom sent the draft of a preprint article he’d written to Fauci and Fauci’s boss, Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health.
According to Eban, the paper “contained sensitive revelations” about the NIH, and Bloom wanted Fauci to see it before it went to print and became public knowledge.
“Under ordinary circumstances, the preprint might have sparked a respectful exchange of views. But this was no ordinary preprint, and no ordinary moment,” Eban writes.4
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 was highly contested at this point, with most officials still insisting it had evolved naturally and jumped species, while a growing group of independent investigators kept pointing to genetic discrepancies that made natural evolution highly unlikely.
“A growing contingent were asking if it could have originated inside a nearby laboratory that is known to have conducted risky coronavirus research funded in part by the United States,” Eban writes, referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 outbreak first occurred. Eban continues:5
“Bloom’s paper was the product of detective work he’d undertaken after noticing that a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences mentioned in a published paper from China had somehow vanished without a trace.
The sequences, which map the nucleotides that give a virus its unique genetic identity, are key to tracking when the virus emerged and how it might have evolved.
In Bloom’s view, their disappearance raised the possibility that the Chinese government might be trying to hide evidence about the pandemic’s early spread. Piecing together clues, Bloom established that the NIH itself had deleted the sequences from its own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan.
Now, he was hoping Fauci and his boss, NIH director Francis Collins, could help him identify other deleted sequences that might shed light on the mystery.”
On a brief side note, The Epoch Times addressed the alleged deletion of genetic sequences from its database at the request of a Chinese researcher in an April 2, 2022, article.6 NIH media branch chief Amanda Fine told The Epoch Times that the sequences were not actually erased; the data were merely removed from public access, so the data is now only available to those who have its accession number.
Contentious Disagreements
Collins responded by scheduling a Zoom meeting for June 20, 2021, to which he invited Fauci, Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist, and Robert Garry, Ph.D., a virologist. Bloom invited evolutionary biologist Sergei Pond, Ph.D., and Rasmus Nielsen, Ph.D., a genetic biologist with expertise in statistical and computational aspects of evolutionary theory and genetics.
The meeting was a contentious one, and it so troubled Bloom that, six months later, he wrote a detailed account of it. After Bloom had described his findings and the questions it raised, Andersen jumped in, saying he found Bloom’s analysis “deeply troubling.” Eban writes:7
“If the Chinese scientists wanted to delete their sequences from the database, which NIH policy entitled them to do, it was unethical for Bloom to analyze them further, he claimed. And there was nothing unusual about the early genomic sequences in Wuhan.
Instantly, Nielsen and Andersen were ‘yelling at each other,’ Bloom wrote, with Nielsen insisting that the early Wuhan sequences were ‘extremely puzzling and unusual.’
Andersen ... leveled a third objection. Andersen, Bloom wrote, ‘needed security outside his house, and my pre-print would fuel conspiratorial notions that China was hiding data and thereby lead to more criticism of scientists such as himself.’
Fauci then weighed in, objecting to the preprint’s description of Chinese scientists ‘surreptitiously’ deleting the sequences. The word was loaded, said Fauci, and the reason they’d asked for the deletions was unknown.
That’s when Andersen made a suggestion that surprised Bloom. He said he was a screener at the preprint server, which gave him access to papers that weren’t yet public.
He then offered to either entirely delete the preprint or revise it ‘in a way that would leave no record that this had been done.’ Bloom refused, saying that he doubted either option was appropriate, ‘given the contentious nature of the meeting.’
At that point, both Fauci and Collins distanced themselves from Andersen’s offer, with Fauci saying, as Bloom recalled it, ‘Just for the record, I want to be clear that I never suggested you delete or revise the pre-print.’ They seemed to know that Andersen had gone too far.”
EcoHealth, a Government-Funded Sponsor of Risky Research
The June 20 Zoom call reflected “a siege mentality at the NIH,” Eban writes, “whose cause was much larger than Bloom and the missing sequences.” The NIH had a publicity problem, because it was becoming known that the NIH/NIAID had funded potentially risky gain-of-function (GOF) research at the WIV through the EcoHealth Alliance. Bloom’s questions only ratcheted up an already delicate situation.
In 2014, EcoHealth received a $3.7 million NIAID grant to study the risk of bat coronavirus emergence and the potential for outbreaks in human populations. Nearly $600,000 of that went to the WIV, which was a key collaborator.
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Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/04/11/ecohealth-risky-research