Dr. David Morens, former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Capitol Hill.
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Last month, at the start of a hearing on the origins of the coronavirus, Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup said the committee had no intention of attacking science.
“Let me be clear, I support global health research; I support work that makes the world a safer place,” Weinstrup said. “Our concern is that this study, and studies like it, are counterproductive – putting the world at risk of an epidemic.”
Over the next three hours of exchanges, Weinstrup and his Republican colleagues sharply rebuked Dr. Peter Daszak, the scientist at the center of the debate over the origins of the coronavirus. Daszak is president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group that conducted research on bat coronaviruses before the pandemic. Some of the work was done in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese government laboratory that many Republicans believe may have started the pandemic.
Daszak has been chastised by Republicans and Democrats for failing to abide by the terms of funding for ecological health. EcoHealth Alliance recently suspended their eligibility for federal grants due to ongoing hearings, with the goal of barring them from receiving future funding. Both Daszak and EcoHealth said they would appeal the decision.
On Monday, the committee will hear testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a public figure in the scientific community during the pandemic. Committee members are expected to grill Fauci on ecological health and other aspects of pandemic decision-making. They will also ask about email exchanges between Daszak and Dr. David Morens, one of Fauci’s top advisers. A recent subpoena issued by the committee revealed embarrassing exchanges between Morens and Daszak, who appeared to be trying to evade public records laws.
Some in the scientific community believe the hearings are the latest in an ongoing campaign of harassment to discredit scientists who are doing their best to support the country during the worst pandemic in more than a century.
“This ad hoc subcommittee could have tried to use its authority to try to understand the scientific evidence,” said Michael Worobey, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Instead, he said the subcommittee chose to ask scientists about funding and email situations.
“It does a disservice to the American people to have hearings on this topic and not hear from the scientists who know it best,” Worobey said.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said the hearing was “absolutely atrocious.” “Shaming prominent virologists by parading them in front of C-SPAN cameras will have long-term harmful effects on science, biological preparedness, and virology.”
But others, particularly those who believe lax laboratory safety measures in China could have triggered the pandemic, say the hearings and EcoHealth penalties are appropriate.
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who has called for closer investigation into the laboratory origins of the coronavirus, welcomed the review.
“Ecology Health Alliance should not receive any further federal funding until it turns over all communications with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and demonstrates that it can responsibly track research paid for with taxpayer dollars,” she said in an email. experiment.
Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies biotechnology and has investigated the virus’ possible laboratory origins, agreed.
“Neither Peter Daszak nor EcoHealth meet the standards for U.S. government grantees,” he said.
A debate as old as the pandemic
Daszak and EcoHealth have been at the center of the debate over the origins of the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic. As an expert on bat coronaviruses and lab work in Wuhan, he was frequently cited by the media in the early days of the pandemic. He also helped organize a letter in The Lancet calling the idea of COVID-19’s lab origins a “conspiracy theory.”
The committee explored the relationship between EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured).
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Hector Retamal/AFP, Getty Images/AFP
But Dazzak’s ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have drawn close attention, especially from the political right. Although he says his work has never involved “gain-of-function” research that makes coronaviruses more contagious in humans, reporters in 2018 discovered a grant proposal for gain-of-function work. People pointed to the application as evidence of a cover-up.
During a hearing with Daszak in early May, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed new evidence that EcoHealth was not properly maintaining existing grants with the NIH to fund the Wuhan institute’s work. Among other violations, the committee presented evidence that EcoHealth failed to properly upload updated information on grants to NIH servers and failed to obtain laboratory reports from Wuhan regarding work performed in Wuhan using NIH funds.
In response, the Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding for EcoHealth and proposed barring the organization and Daszak from receiving federal grants. Disqualification usually lasts for three years or less but can be extended depending on the circumstances.
Daszak said both he and EcoHealth will oppose the moratorium. Daszak told NPR that “those who are promoting that there was some kind of cover-up and backroom dealing have done a good job of showing every little snippet they can.” But, he said, the targeting of him The organization’s accusations are baseless:
“Did EcoHealth Alliance do anything illegal or unethical? No way,” he said.
‘We are under attack’
In addition to scrutinizing EcoHealth’s funding, the committee also investigated communications between EcoHealth’s Daszak and Fauci’s senior adviser Morens.
Through a subpoena, the committee obtained emails from Morens that appeared to show the two joking about taking a cut from EcoHealth funding and evading public records requests. “I learned from our FOIA lady how to make emails disappear after I complied with FOIA,” Morens wrote at one point.
During the May 22 hearing, Morens said the emails were a misunderstanding because his personal email and NIH email were on the same phone.
“I thought I was communicating privately … not as a government employee, but as a private citizen,” he told committee members.
Daszak said Morens never directly oversaw the EcoHealth grant, and the two had no official communication via Gmail.
“David Morens was not and is not involved in the administration of any NIH grants or awards from the EcoHealth Alliance,” he said. “He was accused of conducting NIH business with us through Gmail, which is completely untrue.”
Both Daszak and Morens maintain that the letters were written during a dark period for Daszak, who found himself at the center of many conspiracy theories.
“We’ve been attacked; people have broken into our offices, we’ve had threats – my children’s names have been put on 4Chan’s kill list,” Daszak said.
During the hearing, Morens said most of the letters were intended to help improve the mood of Dazzak, whom he considers a personal friend.
“I tried to cheer my friend up by using dark humor and stuff like that to help him,” he said.
‘We should still be asking the very hard questions’
Monday’s hearing with Fauci is likely to see the former NIAID director grilled about emails between Morens and Daszak and EcoHealth’s suspension of funding. Some Republicans may also investigate whether Fauci himself has profited in any way from the pandemic.
Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has promoted wild theories about the origins of the coronavirus, including the baseless idea that Anthony Fauci played a role in its creation.
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That skepticism fueled a conspiracy theory that EcoHealth was somehow carrying out Fauci’s orders to sow the pandemic. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly hinted at the hearing on May 22 that this was an unfounded claim: “I personally believe that Peter Daszak of EcoHealth has a lot to do with the raging COVID-19 pandemic. Big deal,” Green said. Greene has previously promoted conspiracy theories surrounding the coronavirus vaccine, calling the coronavirus a “man-made plague” and calling for Anthony Fauci to be fired.
Metzl said he doesn’t believe such far-fetched theories about the origins of the coronavirus. But he still believed the hearing was appropriate and presented evidence worthy of public attention.
“Tony Fauci [is] There is no direct responsibility for COVID-19,” he said. “We should still ask the very hard questions. We should still investigate everything.
But Worobey said the hearing was creating a political football around an important scientific issue – understanding where the coronavirus came from and how it spreads. He said there was “overwhelming” evidence that the coronavirus originated in nature and was then transmitted to humans at several live animal markets in Wuhan.
Now another animal-borne virus, H5N1 avian influenza, is spreading in the U.S., Worobey said, but “no one is discussing what we should be doing to prevent these time bombs?”
Hotez said he worries the hearings will only damage scientists’ reputations to score political points. He said the committee “said on their official Twitter site, ‘Get the popcorn ready'”. “They didn’t even pretend this was just political theater or a Fox News segment.”
