VICTORY: No More Tax $ to EcoHealth Alliance Following White Coat Waste Investigations and Campaigns

Posted by Amanda Nieves
18 January 2025 | Blog

 

  • Following years of White Coat Waste Project (WCW) investigations and lobbying, Wuhan lab funder EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) and its president Peter Daszak have been officially debarred from receiving taxpayer funding for five years.
  • The Biden Administration relied, in part, on documents first obtained by WCW in its decision to blacklist EHA.
  • NIH has confirmed that the funding suspension covers cash EcoHealth planned to spend on a new U.S. bat lab exposed by WCW
  • In early 2020, WCW was the first group to uncover how EHA shipped taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan animal lab for gain-of-function experiments that likely infected Patient Zero and caused COVID.
  • WCW documented how EHA has raked in nearly $60 million in new taxpayer funding since the pandemic—that it probably started—began for virus-hunting and animal tests around the world.
  • Since 2020, WCW been leading efforts with Congress to defund EHA.

UPDATE: January 18, 2025

Following its May 2024 suspension, the federal government has now debarred Ecohealth Alliance and its president Peter Daszak from receiving any federal funding for the next five years because, as WCW helped document and expose, “EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight and willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.”

Original post May 16, 2024

Following years of White Coat Waste Project investigations, grassroots campaigns, and lobbying Congress, the Biden Administration has suspended all taxpayer funding for Wuhan lab funder EcoHealth Alliance and its president Peter Daszak and proposed that they be blacklisted from future funding.

This is a major victory for animals and taxpayers!


Here’s how we did it:

In early 2020, a blockbuster WCW investigation first exposed and ended EcoHealth Alliance’s batty boondoggle with the Wuhan animal lab and uncovered damning documents detailing how EcoHealth’s reckless gain-of-function experiments on humanized mice probably infected Patient Zero and prompted the pandemic.

EcoHealth Alliance SuspendedExperts—including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Energy Department, and former director of the Centers for Disease Control—and 7 in 10 Americans now believe EHA’s animal experiments in Wuhan caused COVID.

Photo of a bat being used for cruel and wasteful experiments by EcoHealth Alliance white coats.

Since 2020, we’ve documented how EHA has repeatedly violated federal spending transparency law, and it’s been busted for breaking NIH grant rules in Wuhan and misusing taxpayer dollars.

Yet, our ongoing investigations and lawsuits have uncovered how just since the pandemic (that EHA probably started) began in March 2020, EHA has raked in nearly $60 million in new taxpayer funds for more dangerous and unnecessary virus-hunting around the world and risky and cruel animal experiments in foreign labs.

EcoHealth Alliance Suspended

WCW exposed how some of this money is being wasted by EHA to build a new bat lab and breeding colony at Colorado State University and import hundreds of bats from Asia for “experimental infection studies” with deadly and incurable viruses.

EcoHealth Alliance SuspendedStarting in early 2020, our work with Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and others on Capitol Hill has made important progress to cut taxpayer funding for EHA.

In 2021, we first urged President Biden to defund EHA. We successfully blacklisted the Wuhan animal lab and blocked EHA’s reckless virus experiments in China.

EcoHealth Alliance Suspended

We didn’t stop there. To this day, we’ve continued to lead the charge to fully defund EHA through standalone legislation and federal spending bills (dating back to 2021). We passed some through the House and Senate, but because of political disagreements, they didn’t make it to the president’s desk.

Now, the Biden Administration has finally done the right thing. EHA is currently suspended from receiving new taxpayer funding, its active projects are on hold, and it will likely receive a years-long prohibition on receiving any of taxpayers’ money.

The NIH and Colorado State University have confirmed that the suspension covers cash EHA intended to waste funding the importation of bats from Asia to a dangerous new CSU virus lab and breeding colony.

The Administration’s decision to blacklist EHA cited several key documents first obtained by WCW via our Freedom of Information Act investigations, including the infamous “This is terrific!” emails from 2016 where EHA president Peter Daszak and Fauci’s staff successfully conspired to skirt the federal gain-of-function ban and fund dangerous animal experiments in Wuhan.

 

EcoHealth Alliance Suspended

We’re thrilled that EHA is finally being held accountable for lying, wasting taxpayers’ money, breaking the law, abusing animals, and threatening public health.

We’re proud that our investigations, advocacy, and lobbying helped ensure that taxpayers aren’t forced to fund EHA’s wasteful and dangerous virus hunting and cruel animal experimentation.

The solution to preventing animal abuse and lab-caused pandemics is simple: 

 

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