Peter Daszak
Dr. Peter Daszak, PhD is President of EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organization that conducts research and outreach programs on global health, conservation and international development.
Early Life
Peter grew up in Dukinfield, England, where he had 18 cages of reptiles.
Eugenics Family History
Peter Daszak is the son of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Bohdan Daszak
Peter Cottonton Daszak (pronounced “Daysh-ak,”) is a war criminal like his Nazi father, Bohdan, who was a member of the Youth Section of the Ukrainian Nazi party. As one would expect Bohdan volunteered to be an executioner at the Janowska German Nazi death camp combining elements of labor, transit, and extermination camps.
It was established in September 1941 on the outskirts of Lwów in Eastern Poland / Western Ukraine. Inmates: Jews Liberated by: The Red Army Operated by: SS. Bohdan was captured by the British and sent to the UK where he was released into the UK population because if was deported to the Ukraine he would be hung, as well he should have been. Bohdan married Ruth Alice Mary Walton. Ian Walton and David Walton of Dukinfield Sons of Ian Walton, also of Dukinfield. AF Police for one, if not both - I think Ian was a dog handler.
Grandfather was John Walton. Grandmother Ruth Alice Mary Walton (both of of Dewsnap lane) Aunt was Ruth Daszak Wikitree Bohdan died on February 1996 in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England, where he had worked in Hill's Biscuit Factory. Ruth, a Brit, gave birth to Peter in 1966? There is no DOB listed in his Wiki profile.
England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005 Peter Daszak Spouse Janet D Cottingham (Married Feb 1997) Daszak is a Ukranian Brit expat with a Phd in Zoology specializing in parasites that attack reptiles. Daszak is not a microbiologist. Nor an M.D. What was he doing financing and personally conducting of experiments with bat viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with Fauci's funding? Daszak is slick con man and wormed his way in to Fauci and USG A.I.D. circles despite lack of real credentials. He is Malthusian Eco-Fascist spook determined decrease human population in favor of Flora and Fauna.1)2)
Formal Education
Zoology at Bangor University
Ph.D. in Infectious Diseases at the University of East London with a thesis on electron microscopy of a parasite that caused an intestinal disease in chickens
Career
Early Career
In 1996, scientists including Peter Daszak and Andrew Wakefield noted cases of Crohn's disease in several babies after in-utero measles virus exposure. Each of the children were positive for measles antigen. The disease was “preceded by recurrent antibiotic-resistent pneumonia”.3)
Coronavirus Research
Daszak has been at the forefront of coronavirus research.
2005
In the wake of the 2002-2003 SARS-CoV outbreak, Daszak and collegues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology found that bats are a natural reservoir of SARS-like CoVs.4)
Later Career and EcoHealth Alliance
By 2017, when he helped solve the SARS origins puzzle, he already had tens of millions of dollars in U.S. government grants under his belt, much of it from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. He sat on the editorial boards of scientific journals and was advising science organizations around the world, including the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Disease. He was also a member of the WHO’s Blueprint Pathogen Prioritization Committee.
A British parasitologist who had begun his career studying frogs, Daszak went to work for a conservation group called the Wildlife Trust in 2001. The organization then focused mostly on endangered species. But Daszak, who became its director in 2010 and helped rebrand the group as EcoHealth Alliance, shifted the organization’s emphasis toward an idea known as “one health.” The concept, which has gained ground in public health circles in recent years, recognizes that the health of humans, animals, and plants is inextricably linked.5)
- postdoctoral at Kingston University
- First person to document a case where a parasite lead to the extinction of a species, in this case a tiny tropical snail Partula turgida.6)
- Published a study which identified that a fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, was widespread and significantly contributed to the mortality of frogs.7)
- research scientist at the University of Georgia
- In 2001, Peter became head of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, a nonprofit that sought to show how biodiversity loss, logging, wetland destruction, and other activities could drive the spread of disease in animals and humans.
- Studied Nipah virus
- Studied Hendra virus
- Joined EcoHealth Alliance in 2010 when the Consortium for Conservation Medicine merged with the Wildlife Trust and rebranded as EcoHealth Alliance.
Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM)
Daszak became the Executive Director of EcoHealth Alliance's Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM) - a collaborative think-tank of institutions including Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health, The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, The University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine Center for Conservation Medicine, and the USGS National Wildlife Health Center. The CCM is the first formal inter-institutional partnership to link conservation and disease ecology. Dr. Daszak's research has been instrumental in revealing and predicting the impacts of emerging diseases on wildlife, livestock, and human populations.
Daszak has also consulted for other non-profit organizations and governmental agencies such as the OIE ad hoc working group on amphibian diseases, the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Department of the Interior, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, National Institutes of Health, Australian Biosecurity CRC, DIVERSITAS, Society for Conservation Biology, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
He is a recipient of the 2000 CSIRO medal for collaborative research, and his work has been the focus of extensive media coverage, including articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, US News & World Report and broadcast appearances on 60 Minutes II, CNN, ABC, NPR's Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross 8)
Awards and Honors
Daszak received a meritorious service award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999.9)
Federal Grants
Peter Daszak has managed over $15 million USD in grants from 2002 to 2021.10)
COVID-19 Pandemic
Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl of The Intercept conducted an in-depth interview with Peter Daszak on March 1, 2022, in which he vigorously defends the behaviour of himself and EcoHealth Alliance, and addresses some of the accusations that have surfaced over the last two years. 11)
Potentially Related Behavior Prior to the Pandemic
2004
In May 2004, on 60 Minutes, Daszak warned that a coronavirus would start a pandemic.12)
2016
“Until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis… we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs such as a pan-influenza or pancoronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process.”13)
2018
Daszak is listed as the Principle Investigator (PI) on the EcoHealth Alliance proposal sent to DARPA seeking a grant for the PREEMPT Program (Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats, HR001118S0017). The proposal, titled Project Defuse: Defusing the Threat of Bat-Bore Coronaviruses sought $14,209,245. The proposal, dated March 24, 2018, was rejected by DARPA.14)
- “We will sequence their spike proteins, reverse engineer them to conduct binding assays, and insert them into bat SARSr-CoV (WI1, SHC014) backbones…to infect humanized mice and assess capacity to cause SARS-like disease.”
- “Our modeling team will use these data to build machine-learning genotype-phenotype models of viral evolution and spillover risk.”
- “…three caves in Yunnan Province, China, and a series of unique global datasets on bat host-viral relationships.”
- The first listed subcontractor is Professor Ralph Baric, referencing his “two-decade track record of reverse-engineer CoV and other virus spike proteins.”
Suspected CIA Partnership
On January 12, 2022, Dr. Andrew Huff issued a public statement (on Twitter) in which he claimed, Peter Daszak, the President of EcoHealth Alliance, told him that he was working for the CIA.
- Dr. Huff’s full statement - For the Record: In 2015, Dr. Peter Daszak stopped me as we were leaving work late at night, and asked me if he should work with the CIA. I was shocked given my experience in security. Over the next 2 months he gave me updates on 3 separate occasions about his work with the CIA. 15)
- Full thread screenshot 16)
Substack - KanekoaTheGreat -January 18, 2022
Was Peter Daszak Working For The Central Intelligence Agency? An EcoHealth Alliance whistleblower steps forward.
Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance financed by USAID, DOD, and other U.S. Government agencies—partnered with Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina and Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses.
Baric successfully created a “chimeric” coronavirus in 2015. There is a well-documented scientific paper trail that details how Dr. Baric and Dr. Zhengli continued to collaborate on gain-of-function research together to create what went on to be a potential precursor to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Peter Daszak, who were proponents of this type of international collaboration on gain-of-function research were heavily incentivized to cover up the possibility of a lab origin because they previously had funneled U.S. taxpayer money to the Chinese lab. 17)
[[:DARPA]] Contract PREEMPT
Broad Agency Announcement - PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats PREEMPT BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE - HR001118S0017 January 19, 2018 18)
Daszak Pandemic Timeline
- Dec 31, 2019 - Peter tweeted about Covid-19 that “important and disturbing information coming out of China right now re. severe pneumonia with similarities to SARS”.19)
- Feb 19, 2020 - Daszak appears as a coauthor on a statement of support of scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals in China, published in The Lancet.20)
- “We sign this statement in solidarity…”
- “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
- Somehow, the statement seems to be weaving support of the Natural Origins hypothesis through the lens of a friendly-looking virtue signal.
- organized by employees of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit group that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The emails obtained via public records requests show that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak drafted the Lancet statement, and that he intended it to “not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person” but rather to be seen as “simply a letter from leading scientists”. Daszak wrote that he wanted “to avoid the appearance of a political statement”.
*The scientists’ letter appeared in The Lancet on February 18, just one week after the World Health Organization announced that the disease caused by the novel coronavirus would be named COVID-19* 21) 22)
US Right To Know - Pandemic FOIA Archive
January 10, 2022 by Sainath Suryanarayanan
EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak opposed the public release of Covid-19-related virus sequence data gathered from China as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) PREDICT program, according to emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
The conversation in late April 2020 involved employees of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses, including with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology; and Metabiota, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company backed by Google that works with PREDICT, a “virus hunting” program that tracks unknown viruses.
Tammie O’Rourke of Metabiota emailed Hongying Li, who coordinates EcoHealth programs in China and Southeast Asia, an attachment with virus sequences detected in China that had been submitted to the public genetic sequence database GenBank. They then discussed whether the genetic sequences should be uploaded into the public database.
Hongying Li wanted to hold off on uploading the virus sequence data for several reasons, including that, “due to the COVID-19, any relevant data publication needs to be reviewed and approved by the institution in China…”
Daszak then wrote, “It’s extremely important we don’t have these sequences as part of our PREDICT release to Genbank at this point. As you may have heard, these were part of a grant just terminated by NIH.” He referred to an article in Politico, “Trump cuts U.S. research on bat-human virus transmission over China ties,” and urged holding off on public sharing of Chinese viral genomic data, even though the generation of the data was funded by U.S. taxpayers. “Having them as part of PREDICT will being [sic] very unwelcome attention to UC Davis, PREDICT and GenBank. In response to a query, Daszak emailed an August 2020 Nature Communications article co-authored by EcoHealth and Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists, and wrote; “All sequences of SARS-related coronaviruses discovered by EcoHealth Alliance in China were sequenced using NIH funding and have been made public in peer-reviewed scientific papers and via the publicly available Genbank database. The Genbank accession numbers for over 600 sequences can be found in the attached paper. Two further sequences were identified and submitted separately to NIH on 11/18/21 (Genbank Accession # OK663614 & OK663615).”23)
All four batches of documents USRTK obtained by public records requests to UC Davis – including the most recent one, which as reported on in this article – are available here - FOI documents on origins of Covid-19, gain-of-function research and biolabs documents on origins of Covid-19, gain-of-function research and biolabs 24)
Media
Fact Checker
Daszak served as Facebook fact checker during the early weeks of the pandemic when the origins debate was hot and counterpoints to the zoonotic origins story were being suppressed.25)
Vanity Fair
The Lab-Leak Theory; Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits. Those who dared to push for transparency say toxic politics and hidden agendas kept us in the dark. By Katherine Eban June 3, 2021
On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.”
The statement struck Demaneuf as “totally nonscientific.” To him, it seemed to contain no evidence or information. And so he decided to begin his own inquiry in a “proper” way, with no idea of what he would find. With disreputable wing nuts on one side of them and scornful experts on the other, the DRASTIC researchers often felt as if they were on their own in the wilderness, working on the world’s most urgent mystery. They weren’t alone.
In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.”
In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”
Then came the revelation that the Lancet statement was not only signed but organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, who has repackaged U.S. government grants and allocated them to facilities conducting gain-of-function research—among them the WIV itself. David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, ran the State Department’s day-to-day COVID-19 origins inquiry. He said it soon became clear that “there is a huge gain-of-function bureaucracy” inside the federal government.
As officials at the meeting discussed what they could share with the public, they were advised by Christopher Park, the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research, according to documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair.
As they combed open sources as well as classified information, the team’s members soon stumbled on a 2015 research paper by Shi Zhengli and the University of North Carolina epidemiologist Ralph Baric proving that the spike protein of a novel coronavirus could infect human cells. Using mice as subjects, they inserted the protein from a Chinese rufous horseshoe bat into the molecular structure of the SARS virus from 2002, creating a new, infectious pathogen.
This gain-of-function experiment was so fraught that the authors flagged the danger themselves, writing, “scientific review panels may deem similar studies…too risky to pursue.” In fact, the study was intended to raise an alarm and warn the world of “a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.” The paper’s acknowledgments cited funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and from a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which had parceled out grant money from the U.S. Agency for International Development USAID. EcoHealth Alliance is run by Peter Daszak, the zoologist who helped organize the Lancet statement.
As they posted their findings, the DRASTIC26) researchers attracted new allies. Among the most prominent was Jamie Metzl, who launched a blog on April 16 that became a go-to site for government researchers and journalists examining the lab-leak hypothesis. 27)
Newsweek
Peter Daszak, Who Sought U.S. Funds for Wuhan Lab and Aided Cover-up, Faces Calls to Quit By Ed Browne October 6, 2021
EHA recently came under heavy scrutiny after a group of online researchers and correspondents known as the Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19 DRASTIC published a 2018 proposal to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA for research that would have involved enhancing viruses to study them. The documents could not be verified by Newsweek.
A Freedom of Information Request has shown that Daszak organized a letter to squash rumors that COVID leaked from a lab, in a way that did not link back to collaborations between WIV and EHA. Before his organizing role was revealed, Daszak called the lab leak theory terms such as “preposterous,” “baseless,” and “pure baloney,” and claimed the WIV wasn't culturing viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2.
On September 30, ten researchers from around the world, including four members of DRASTIC, signed a letter calling on the Board of EHA to remove Daszak from his position as president. As well as EHA officials, the letter was also addressed to individuals including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci and Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Among the letter's signatories are Jamie Metzl, who was formerly on the World Health Organization's Expert Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing; Rolan Wiesendanger, a nanoscience researcher at the University of Hamburg; and Milton Leitenberg, an arms control and bioweapons researcher at the University of Maryland. 28)
New York Post
Who is Peter Daszak, the nonprofit exec who sent taxpayer money to Wuhan lab? By Bruce Golding June 4, 2021
Peter Daszak, president of the New York City-based EcoHealth Alliance, secretly organized a statement issued by the influential British medical journal The Lancet in February 2020, according to Vanity Fair.29)
A total of 27 scientists — including Daszak, 55, who trained as a zoologist — signed the statement, which expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China.”
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” the statement affirmed
“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”
During Daszak’s efforts to arrange the Lancet statement, he reportedly emailed two scientists, including Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, who’d worked with the lead coronavirus researcher at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, located at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
Daszak told the scientists that they “should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way,” Vanity Fair said, citing emails obtained by the group USRTK US Right to Know.
“We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice,” Daszak reportedly added.
Baric didn’t sign the Lancet statement, but last month was among 18 international scientists who signed a statement in Science Magazine calling for a “transparent, objective” investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
And while the Lancet statement included a claim that its signatories had “no competing interests,” at least six others had either worked at or been funded by EcoHealth Alliance, according to Vanity Fair. 30)
Lancet
Addendum competing interests and the origins of SARS-CoV-2 Editors of The Lancet Published;June 21, 2021
In February, 2020, 27 public health experts co-authored a Correspondence in The Lancet (“Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19”),1 supporting health professionals and physicians in China during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this letter, the authors declared no competing interests. Some readers have questioned the validity of this disclosure, particularly as it relates to one of the authors, Peter Daszak. In line with guidance from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, medical journals ask authors to report financial and non-financial relationships that may be relevant to interpreting the content of their manuscript.
There may be differences in opinion as to what constitutes a competing interest. Transparent reporting allows readers to make judgments about these interests. Readers, in turn, have their own interests that could influence their evaluation of the work in question. With these facts in mind, The Lancet invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests. Peter Daszak has expanded on his disclosure statements for three pieces relating to COVID-19 that he co-authored or contributed to in The Lancet—the February, 2020, Correspondence, as well as a Commission Statement and a Comment for the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. The updated disclosure statement from Peter Daszak is;
“PD's remuneration is paid solely in the form of a salary from EcoHealth Alliance, a 501©(3) non-profit organisation. EcoHealth Alliance's mission is to develop science-based solutions to prevent pandemics and promote conservation. Funding for this work comes from a range of US Government funding agencies and non-governmental sources.
All past and current funders are listed publicly, and full financial accounts are filed annually and published. EcoHealth Alliance's work in China was previously funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the United States Agency for International Development USAID.
Neither PD nor EcoHealth Alliance have received funding from the People's Republic of China. PD joined the WHO–China joint global study on the animal origins of SARS-CoV-2 towards the end of 2020 and is currently a member. As per WHO rules, this work is undertaken as an independent expert in a private capacity, not as an EcoHealth Alliance staff member.
The work conducted by this study was published in March, 2021. EcoHealth Alliance's work in China includes collaboration with a range of universities and governmental health and environmental science organisations, all of which are listed in prior publications, three of which received funding from US federal agencies as part of EcoHealth Alliance grants or cooperative agreements, as publicly reported by NIH. EcoHealth Alliance's work in China is currently unfunded.
All federally funded subcontractees are assessed and approved by the respective US federal agencies in advance and all funding sources are acknowledged in scientific publications as appropriate. EcoHealth Alliance's work in China involves assessing the risk of viral spillover across the wildlife–livestock–human interface, and includes behavioural and serological surveys of people, and ecological and virological analyses of animals.
This work includes the identification of viral sequences in bat samples, and has resulted in the isolation of three bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are now used as reagents to test therapeutics and vaccines. It also includes the production of a small number of recombinant bat coronaviruses to analyse cell entry and other characteristics of bat coronaviruses for which only the genetic sequences are available. NIH reviewed the planned recombinant virus work and deemed it does not meet the criteria that would warrant further specific review by its Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO) committee. All of EcoHealth Alliance's work is reviewed and approved by appropriate research ethics committees, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, Institutional Review Boards for biomedical research involving human subjects, P3CO oversight administrators, and biosafety committees, as listed on all relevant publications.” 31) THIS LINK IS NOW DEAD
Daszak the Victim Propaganda
‘It’s absurd’- Coronavirus researcher shut down by US funding agency vents frustrations Peter Daszak, president of small research organization EcoHealth Alliance, says he has been caught in political crosshairs over his partnership with a virology lab in China. Nature - 21 August 2020 by Nidhi Subbaraman
To carry out its research, EcoHealth Alliance partners with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, which has been at the centre of unfounded rumours that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a coronavirus released from its lab. The NIH cancelled EcoHealth Alliance’s grant in April, days after US President Donald Trump told a reporter that the United States would stop funding work at WIV.
EcoHealth Alliance and Dazsak have been working with Shi Zhengli, a virologist at WIV, for more than 15 years. Since 2014, an NIH grant funded EcoHealth’s research in China, which involves collecting faeces and other samples from bats, and blood samples from people at risk of infection from bat-origin viruses. Scientific studies widely suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus most likely originated in bats, and research on the topic could be crucial to identifying other viruses that might cause future pandemics. WIV is a subrecipient on the grant.
The NIH makes seven demands of EcoHealth, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal this week, and viewed by Nature. The agency asks EcoHealth to obtain a vial of the SARS-CoV-2 sample used by WIV to determine the virus's genetic sequence. Another request is to arrange an inspection of WIV by US federal officials.
Daszak calls the demands from NIH “heinous”, and worries that the funding freeze delays critical work to identify and prevent the next pandemic. The NIH declined to comment, saying the agency did not disclose internal deliberations on a specific grant.
In an e-mail to Nature, Shi calls the NIH’s demands “outrageous” and echoes Daszak’s assertions that the agency’s demands are unrelated to WIV’s collaboration with EcoHealth.
Nature spoke with Daszak about being caught in the political crosshairs. Daszak- “Conspiracy-theory outlets and politically motivated organizations have made Freedom of Information Act requests on our grants and all of our letters and e-mails that go to NIH. We don't believe that it's fair that we should have to reveal everything we do. When you submit a grant, you put in all your best ideas. We don't want to just hand that over to conspiracy theorists to publish and ruin and make a mockery of.” 32)
DARPA’s Man in Wuhan
Unlimited Hangout by Whitney Webb - July 31, 2021 33)
In 1988, Michael Callahan started his first company called Rescue Medicine.34) A National Institutes of Health NIH bio
Robert Danzig, Clinton’s Secretary of the Navy, credited Callahan with being “extremely good at connecting the military environment with mainstream public health“. Touted as one of Callahan’s “first high-level links to the military”, Danzig would only be one of many “high level” people the doctor would add to his rolodex over the next two decades.
His time with USAID would overlap with the start of his faculty appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital – appointments he maintains to this day – and his participation in biological terrorism working groups at the National Academies of Sciences, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.
A year later, in 2002, Callahan would be tapped by the State Department’s director for the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation to serve as “clinical director for Cooperative Threat Reduction [CTR] programs” at six former Soviet Union Biological Weapons facilities as part of the Bioindustry Initiative BII program, where he was officially tasked with carrying out the stated goals of the mission, which entailed the “reconfiguration of former biological weapons production facilities” in the former Soviet Union and the acceleration of “drug and vaccine production”.
More specifically, however, Callahan would be put in charge of gain-of-function programs for viral agents at these facilities.
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded a $6.5 million contract to a company called EcoHealth Alliance, Inc to carry out research on “the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in Western Asia”. Journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva uncovered the Pentagon project, which focused on “genetic studies on coronaviruses in 5,000 bats collected in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Jordan”.
Gaytandzhieva also detailed the multiple covert activities being carried out by the USG, such as American diplomats trafficking in blood and pathogens for a secret military program, as well as an instance in which a breakout of hemorrhagic fever in the area immediately surrounding the Center was traced back to experiments being carried out by Pentagon scientists on “tropical mosquitos and ticks“.
Not coincidentally, EcoHealth Alliance had previously received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2014 to study coronaviruses in bats in Asia. This particular study was carried out in partnership with scientists at none other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dennis Carroll, a former USAID director of emerging threats division who had led the U.S.’ response to Avian influenza (H5N1) in 2005, would go on to create PREDICT, which partnered with a non-profit called EcoHealth Alliance to carry out its 9-year effort to catalog hundreds of thousands of biological samples, “including over 10,000 bats“. The aforementioned PREDICT-funded 2015 study on “diversity of coronavirus in bats” by Wacharapluesadee and Callahan also included Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, among its participants.
Daszak, a regular advisor to WHO on pathogen prioritization for R&D, Carroll and Joana Mazet – former global director for USAID’s PREDICT – all joined together in 2016 to form the Global Virome Project; a “10-year collaborative scientific initiative to discover unknown zoonotic viral threats and stop future pandemics”.
Mazet was also co-director of UC Davis’ One Health program, which recruited Dr.Wacharapluesadee and her team in Thailand to conduct a multi-year research project on bats. They are joined by Edward Rubin of Metabiota Inc, a recipient of Callahan’s PROPHECY funds at DARPA and, notably, an $18.4 million DTRA contract award for scientific research and consulting work in Ukraine and the Lugar Center in the Republic of Georgia. Metabiota was accused by the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium in 2014 of violating their contract and engaging in dangerous blood culturing work at a lab in Africa, as well as misdiagnosing patients.
EcoHealth’s Executive Vice President, William Karesh, links directly back to the very top of the U.S. biodefense establishment, as a member of ASPR Robert Kadlec’s original Blue Ribbon Panel on Biodefense along with Hudson Institute senior fellows Tevi Troy, Jonah Alexander and Scooter Libby, whose pivotal roles has been detailed in the Engineering Contagion series. EcoHealth Alliance is listed as a partner of the Wuhan Institute of Virology on archived pages of its website and was mentioned as a one of the institute’s “strategic partners” by the WIV’s Deputy Director General, Prof Yanyi Wang, in remarks during the visit of an official U.S. delegation to the institute in 2018.35)36)
Congressional Investigation
House Foreign Affairs Committee Report
Lead Republican Michael T. McCaul - August 2021 One Hundred Seventeenth Congress
The Origins of COVID-19 - An Investigation of Wuhan Institute of Virology 37))
- The City of Wuhan: Epicenter of a Pandemic…………………………………………13
- II. Evidence of a Lab Leak…………………………………………………………………………14
- III. Evidence of Genetic Modification………………………………………………………….29
- IV. Evidence of a Lab Leak Cover-Up ………………………………………………………..41
- V. Hypothesis: A Lab Leak That Caused a Pandemic………………………………….58
- VI. Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………………60
- VII. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………62
- VIII. Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………..63
- Timeline of the WIV Lab Leak and the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic……………………………………63
- China Center for Disease and Control Memo on Supplementary Regulations……………………………….67
- JPCM Confidential Notice on the Standardization of the Management of Publication of Novel
- Coronavirus Pneumonia Scientific Research…………………………………………………………………………….72
- February 6, 2020, Email at 12:43am from Peter Daszak to Ralph Baric, Linfa Wang, and Others
- Inviting Them to Sign the Statement……………………………………………………………………………………….78
- February 6, 2020, Email at 3:16pm from Peter Daszak to Ralph Baric Relaying Wang’s Request Not
- to Sign the Statement…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….82
- February 8, 2020, Email at 8:52pm from Peter Daszak to Rita Colwell Alleging WIV Researchers
- Requested the Statement………………………………………………………………………………………………………..83
==== Timeline of the WIV Lab Leak and the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic p63 ==== 38)
- April 2012: Six miners working in a copper mine located in a cave in Yunnan province of
- the PRC fall ill. Between the ages of 30 and 63, the workers presented to a hospital in
- Kunming with persistent coughs, fevers, head and chest pains, and breathing difficulties.”
- Three of the six died.
- Late 2012 – 2015: Researchers from the WIV collect samples from bats in the cave.
- on the isolation of novel coronaviruses. They conduct gain-on-function research, testing
- novel and genetically manipulated coronaviruses against mice and other animals expressing
- human immune systems. At times they collaborate with Ralph Baric.
- 2018 – 2019: Shi, Hu, and other researchers at the WIV infect transgenic mice and civets
- expressing human immune systems with unpublished novel and genetically modified
- coronaviruses.
- July 4, 2019: The PRC’s Ministry of Science and Technology orders a review of several
- grants, including grant no. 2013FY113500. This is the grant which funded the collection of
- hundreds of coronaviruses and bat samples from the cave in Yunnan province.
- July 16, 2019: The WIV publishes a tender requesting bids to conduct renovation on the
- hazardous waste treatment system at the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab (WNBL). The
- closing date was July 31st.
- Late August/Early September 2019: One or more researchers become accidently infected
- with SARS-CoV-2, which was either collected in the Yunnan cave, or the result of gain-of-
- function research at the WIV. They travel by metro in central Wuhan, spreading the virus.
- September 12, 2019: At 12:00am local time, the Wuhan University issues a statement
- announcing lab inspections. Between 2:00am and 3:00am, the WIV’s viral sequence and
- sample database is taken offline. At 7:09pm, the WIV publishes a tender requesting bids to
- provide security services at the WNBL.
- September – October 2019: Car traffic at hospitals surrounding the WIV Headquarters, as
- well as the shuttle stop for the WNBL, show a stead increase before hitting its highest
- levels in 2.5 years. Baidu search terms for COVID-19 related symptoms increase in a
- corresponding manner.
- Late October – Early November 2019: The international athletes return home, carrying
- SARS-CoV-2 around the world.
- omitted detail 39)
- November 21, 2019: A 4-year-old boy from Milan, Italy develops a cough. His samples
- will later test positive for COVID-19.
- November 27, 2019: Samples of wastewater are collected in Brazil that will later test
- positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA.
- December 1, 2019: The CCP’s first “official” case of COVID-19 become infected.
- Late 2019: Major General Chen Wei arrives in Wuhan, taking over the WNBL BSL-4 lab.
- Dec. 27, 2019: A Chinese genomic company reportedly sequenced most of the virus in
- Wuhan and results showed a similarity to SARS. Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei
- Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, tells PRC health
- authorities that a novel disease affecting some 180 patients was caused by a new
- coronavirus.
- Dec. 29, 2019: Wuhan Municipal CDC organized an expert team to investigate after the
- Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine and other hospitals
- find additional cases.
- Dec. 30, 2019: Doctors in Wuhan report positive tests for “SARS Coronavirus” to local
- health officials. Under the 2005 International Health Regulations, the PRC is required to
- report these results to the WHO within 24 hours. They do not.
- APPENDIX
- Dec. 31, 2019: WHO officials in Geneva become aware of media reports regarding an
- outbreak in Wuhan and direct the WHO China Country Office to investigate.
- Jan. 2020: Linfa Wang meets with collaborators at the WIV, likely including Shi and Hu.
- Jan. 1, 2020: Hubei Provincial Health Commission official orders gene sequencing
- companies and labs who had already determined the novel virus was similar to SARS to
- stop testing and to destroy existing samples. Dr. Li Wenliang is detained for “rumor
- mongering.”
- Jan. 2, 2020: The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) completes gene sequencing of the
- virus, but the CCP does not share the sequence or inform the WHO. PRC aggressively
- highlights the detentions of the Wuhan doctors.
- Jan. 3, 2020: China’s National Health Commission ordered institutions not to publish any
- information related to the “unknown disease” and ordered labs to transfer samples to CCP
- controlled national institutions or destroy them.
- Jan. 11-12, 2020: After a researcher in Shanghai leaks the gene sequence online, the CCP
- transmits the WIV’s gene sequencing information to the WHO that was completed 10 days
- earlier. The Shanghai lab where the researcher works is ordered to close.
- Jan. 14, 2020: Xi Jinping is warned by a top Chinese health official that a pandemic is
- occurring.
- Jan. 18, 2020: Linfa Wang departs Wuhan.
- Jan. 20, 2020: WIV researchers submitted an article claiming that SARS-CoV-2 is natural
- in origin. The article renames ID4991 as RaTG13 and contained false information about
- when the genomic sequence for the virus was obtained.
- Jan. 23, 2020: The CCP institutes a city-wide lockdown of Wuhan. However, before the
- lockdown goes into effect, an estimated 5 million people leave the city.
- Last Week of January 2020: Daszak and other outside experts edit a letter to be sent by
- the Presidents of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to the
- White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Daszak pushes for language to
- address “conspiracy theories.”
- Jan. 30, 2020: One week after declining to do so, Tedros declares a Public Health
- Emergency of International Concern.
- APPENDIX
- Late Jan. – Early Feb. 2020: PRC researchers, likely those at the WIV, request Peter
- Daszak’s assistance in responding to suggestions of a lab leak or genetic manipulation of
- SARS-CoV-2. Daszak helps edit the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
- Medicine’s response to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on the
- origins of COVID-19.
- Feb. 3, 2020: The WIV researchers’ paper submitted on January 20th is published by
- Nature online.
- Feb. 6, 2020 at 12:43:40 am: Daszak sends the draft Lancet statement, which cites the
- Feb. 3 WIV paper, to Wang, Baric, and others asking them to join as cosigners. Within
- hours, Wang calls him, informs Daszak that he will not sign, and requests that neither
- Daszak or Baric sign.
- Feb. 6, 2020 (Afternoon): At 3:16pm, Daszak send a High Important email to Baric,
- forwarding Wang’s request, and informing Baric the statement will be “put out in a way
- that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration.” At 4:01:22 pm, Baric agrees to not sign the
- statement.
- Feb. 7, 2020: Dr. Li, who first shared the positive SARS test results with his classmates via
- WeChat, dies from COVID-19.
- Feb. 9, 2020: The death toll for COVID-19 surpasses that of SARS.
- Feb. 15, 2020: First death from COVID-19 outside of Asia occurs, in France.
- Feb. 16, 2020: WHO and PRC officials begin a nine-day “[WHO-China Joint Mission on * Coronavirus Disease 2019” and travel to the PRC to examine the outbreak and origin of
- COVID-19. Many team members, including at least one American, were not allowed to
- visit Wuhan.
- Feb. 18, 2020: Daszak statement is published by the Lancet online, which references the
- letter from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine he helped
- write and the WIV’s February 3rd paper on the origins of COVID-19. Despite drafting the
- letter, Daszak is not listed as the corresponding author.
- Feb. 25, 2020: For the first time, more new cases are reported outside of PRC than within.
- Feb. 26, 2020: The WHO-China Joint Mission issues its findings, praising the PRC for its
- handling of the outbreak.
- Feb. 29, 2020: The first reported COVID-19 death in the United States occurs.
- March 11, 2020: The WHO officially declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic after
- 114 countries had already reported 118,000 cases including more than 1,000 in the United
- States.
- Nov. 17, 2020: As a result of public pressure, Shi, Hu, and other WIV researchers publish
- an addendum to their February 3rd paper, confirming that RaTG13 was ID4991 collected
- from the cave in Yunnan, and revealing they collected 293 coronaviruses from the cave
- between 2012 and 2015.
- June 15, 2021: The Presidents of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, * and Medicine release a statement saying, “let scientific evidence determine origin of
- SARS-CoV-2.”
- June 21, 2021: After public pressure, Daszak updates his public disclosure form for the
- Lancet statement. He does not mention the WIV or that the statement was drafted at the
- request of PRC researchers.
- July 5, 2021: Daszak and 23 of the original 27 authors release an update to their February
- 2021 statement, walking back their labeling of public debate around the source of the virus
- as “conspiracy theories.” end p66 40)
Pandemic Cash Cow
Wuhan Collaborator Peter Daszak Demands Nearly $1 TRILLION To Fund ‘Pandemic Prevention’ Efforts. by Natalie Winters April 15, 2022
EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak – who used research grants administered by Anthony Fauci to collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – has demanded that President Joe Biden invest nearly $1 trillion into “pandemic prevention,” at cost to the American taxpayer.
Daszak, born and educated in the United Kingdom, is infamous for his work with Chinese Communist Party collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the subsequent cover-up of COVID-19’s origins.
Now, the disgraced scientist is demanding the U.S. taxpayer shoulder the burden of protecting against his work manipulating “killer” pathogens by funding new “protections” to the tune of nearly one trillion dollars over the coming years.
The sizable ask is made in a new opinion editorial published by Fortune magazine, and comes amidst ongoing scrutiny over Daszak’s research in conjunction with the Chinese lab suspected by many as being responsible for the COVID-19 outbreak.
Despite this, Daszak is doubling down with his calls for earmarking massive amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund his research purportedly aimed at “pandemic prevention.”41)
Peter Daszik Shake Down
Here’s how much the Biden administration should be investing in infrastructure to prevent another pandemic By Kevin Berr, David Finnoff, Richard Horan, and Peter Daszak
April 11, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, but it cannot blind policymakers: COVID-19 is only one of hundreds of thousands of undiscovered microbes that exist in nature and can infect people.
Even more alarmingly, the rate at which these diseases are spilling over into our population is increasing each year.
COVID-19, the first truly global high-impact pandemic of the 21st century, is a warning siren to the risks that continue to grow because of environmental change, globalized travel and trade, and the lack of effective prevention policies. It could finally motivate wise investments and effective risk management measures to avoid future catastrophes.
We’ve looked closely at this issue and explored what these investments should look like, as well as the economic gains they could generate for the U.S. The Biden administration clearly needs to invest much more money to prevent and prepare for another pandemic.
A National Research Council report after the 2014 Ebola outbreak emphasized the lack of preparedness and the need for investments in preparation. In the wake of COVID-19, multiple reviews suggest that preparedness deficiencies were a significant factor in the economic and health impacts experienced in developed countries.
Under reasonable assumptions, our analysis predicts maximum gains arise from an initial investment of $511 billion, followed by a steady increase of up to $829 billion and supported by annual investments to maintain capacity. The returns to these investments would range between $9-$15 in benefits per dollar invested. Altogether, our proposed investments in capacity could generate up to $10.4 trillion in expected avoided damages to society, as well as avoiding immeasurable human suffering.42)
Additional Documentation
- Grant 12891702 application43)