3 U.S. agencies funded Chinese virology research; Wuhan lab tied to bioterror agent

FPI / October 12, 2022

Geostrategy-Direct

Between 2015 and 2021, the Pentagon, CDC, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) supplied $28.9 million to Chinese universities and research centers, Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) auditors found.

The CDC gave about $15 million and NIH provided $13.6 million, while the Pentagon supplied $400,000 in research funds. The money was used for applied and basic research.

In this Feb. 23, 2017 file photo, Shi Zhengli works with other researchers in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China’s Hubei province. / Chinatopix via AP

The NIH’s Anthony Fauci-led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) last month gave a $653,000 grant to EcoHealth Alliance for bat coronavirus research in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. The funding was first reported by The Intercept.

EcoHealth Alliance is led by Peter Daszak, who worked closely on bat research with China’s Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shi is known as “the bat woman of Wuhan” for her work. She has denied that the coronavirus behind Covid-19 leaked from the Wuhan lab, but Congress is investigating EcoHealth Alliance over its work in Wuhan.

The NIH stated in a letter to Congress in October 2021 that EcoHealth Alliance worked with the Wuhan institute in “testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.”

The letter, however, insisted that the virus work by EcoHealth did not become the virus behind Covid.

The research was done under an NIH grant and contradicted repeated claims by Fauci, who plans to step down in December as chief medical adviser to Team Biden, that no federal funding was used on virus work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Additional U.S. funds were sent to Chinese research centers through “subawards” to U.S. and other firms that then supplied the money to China, the GAO said.

CDC-funded research in China included work on “pathogenicity of emerging, re-emerging, and novel viruses and vaccination coverage and effectiveness.” The GAO said it could not determine how much of the subawards went to China because of rules that allow awardees to keep data secret.

While the GAO said direct funds were not supplied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where many believe the Covid virus originated, the Wuhan lab carried out gain-of-function research on a virus that is much deadlier than Covid-19, according to recent testimony before the U.S. Senate.

Steven Quay, a medical doctor, told the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on emerging threats that the Wuhan lab, where the coronavirus is believed by many to have originated, carried out synthetic biology research on the Nipah virus genome in December 2019, around the time the first Covid cases surfaced in Wuhan, Geostrategy-Direct.com reported on Aug. 9.

“The Nipah virus was in an infectious clone format,” Quay testified. “Nipah is a BSL-4 level pathogen, and a CDC-designated bioterrorism agent. This is the most dangerous gain-of-function research I have ever encountered. We should assume this research continues to this day at the WIV.”

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