Bad Actor: The Fate of Peter Daszak

 The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has suspended Dr. Peter Daszak from federal procurement programs for five years due to his previous role as CEO of EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. This suspension, announced on January 17, 2025, follows a notice issued on May 15, 2024. EcoHealth Alliance has also been debarred from federal programs. The decision results from evidence discovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which stated that taxpayer funds were misused for risky research in China.

As outlined in a report by the Subcommittee, EcoHealth Alliance violated several terms of its National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. The violations included not reporting dangerous experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and submitting a research report two years late. The HHS based its decision partly on evidence suggesting that a lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research likely contributed to the COVID-19 outbreak. Consequently, both EcoHealth and Daszak should not receive any U. S. taxpayer funds again.

The Subcommittee's report provided numerous findings about Daszak and EcoHealth. It stated that they failed to report a potentially dangerous experiment, falsely claimed technical issues for the late report submission, and misused taxpayer money for gain-of-function research in WIV, contrary to previous public statements. The SSCP highlighted that proper interventions were made by former President Donald Trump and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to alert the NIH to these issues.

In early 2022, Dr. Andrew Huff, a former executive at EcoHealth Alliance, described unethical behaviors within the organization and suggested Daszak might be working with the Chinese government. He claimed that Daszak showed little concern for the risks of gain-of-function research in China and provided a pitch deck indicating a possible connection to the CIA. Huff criticized EcoHealth for deviating from its conservation mission and suggested it was simply collecting intelligence that primarily benefited China.

Huff warned that gain-of-function research is risky and should be treated as dual-use research of concern because it can make viruses more dangerous and harder to control. He expressed deep concerns about the safety of such research in both China and the U. S. Despite a focus on funding gain-of-function research to develop vaccines, he noted that this approach has not been effective. The subcommittee's report leaves lingering questions about why Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance allegedly tried to hide details about their risky research practices. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/bad_actor_the_fate_of_peter_daszak.html