Virus collaborators let off with light slap on the wrist

 Jerry Dunleavy:

The U.S. taxpayer-funded nonprofit group that collaborated with a Chinese laboratory on risky bat virus research just before the initial COVID-19 outbreak has earned another slap on the wrist from authorities.

EcoHealth Alliance, which the government has already said broke rules with bat coronavirus experiments that critics call gain-of-function research, has been hit with more violations by the National Institutes of Health. In a letter to EcoHealth sent last week and just made public, NIH Deputy Director Michael Lauer blasted the organization's poor record of complying with agency standards and accused it of charging "inappropriate" rates related to a Wuhan lab grant.

The NIH paused its funding of EcoHealth's Wuhan lab research in 2020 but has continued sending money to EcoHealth for other viral research.

“[EcoHealth has] demonstrated a history of failure to comply with several elements of the terms and conditions of grant awards not only for these active awards, but also for the suspended award,” Lauer wrote of EcoHealth, which has reaped millions of dollars in grants from the NIH.

Lauer accused EcoHealth of flouting the rules on several ongoing, U.S.-funded projects, including one $3 million study of “spillover risk of high zoonotic potential viruses from wildlife” conducted in collaboration with international scientists. But the NIH also said EcoHealth overcharged on its "facilities and administrative" costs filed for work done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab where a growing number of experts believe COVID-19 originated.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, who made the NIH letter public, said it “confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan.”

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 Those responsible for reckless research should be held accountable.  They should also be held accountable for their lack of candor in disclosing their participation in an effort that appears to have killed millions.

See, also:

Scientists Believed Coronavirus Leaked From Wuhan Lab, But Top U.S. Official Warned Against Debate: Report

 Top U.S. and British scientists reportedly thought that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, likely escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but some were hesitant to let the debate play out in the media because they were concerned about “international harmony.”

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