By Joni Ernst
Guys, we’re at 1000 RBI!
First, we stopped funding to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Next, we clipped the wings of the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), a shady organization that was using American tax dollars to fund dangerous research into bat viruses.
Now the mad scientist at the center of the COVID creation and cover-up has been barred from receiving any more funding for his mad research. This is the man who organized the campaign to label anyone who suggested a link between his Wuhan research and the COVID-19 pandemic as a “coronavirus.” Conspiracy theorist.
But the reason we don’t see the connection is probably because, like bats, we’re blind.
EcoHealth and China have rejected requests for information from the Wuhan lab, while National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials have stuck to their guns and insisted the virus did not come from a lab, though they received early, informal warnings that the virus’ unusual characteristics made it appear artificially engineered.
Beginning in April 2020, I called for immediate defunding of the Wuhan lab and requested an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) which found that EcoHealth violated numerous reporting obligations, including failing to immediately alert NIH when it enhanced the virus in the Wuhan lab.
Rather than holding EcoHealth accountable, government agencies have continued to cut funding to continue the group’s dangerous research around the world, including helping to establish new bat labs like the one in Wuhan here in the U.S. In total, EcoHealth has collected $60 million in taxpayer money since March 2020.
When the Trump Administration cut funding to EcoHealth in 2020, the NIH helped the group secure new grant funding. Senior NIH officials used illegal “secret back channels” to communicate with and about EcoHealth in a low-profile manner. In a message to EcoHealth’s president, a senior NIH adviser appeared to joke that the group was “getting too many grants.” [expletive] “I want money,” they say, and then ask, “Will I get a kickback?”
Meanwhile, the media was gleefully duped by Dr. Fauci’s denial of the lab leak and helped crack down on dissenters. But we remained undeterred and focused on uncovering the truth. There really was no way to hide the facts: EcoHealth had funneled over $1 million of taxpayer money to a Wuhan lab in China to create a bat virus, and the agencies funding the project knew about it.
After years of denial by Dr. Fauci, the NIH finally approved funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
Now the federal government has finally pulled the plug on EcoHealth, with the Federal Ministry of Health warning that “the immediate suspension of EHA is necessary to safeguard the public interest and is due to serious or compelling causes that affect EHA’s current responsibilities,” specifically because of the group’s improper handling of dangerous research in Wuhan.
The head of EcoHealth defended the group’s actions, saying, “Remember, it was the NIH that gave the funding to China, not EcoHealth.”
Finally, HHS and EcoHealth are both telling the truth!
NIH did not follow science or the law. I will present the May 2024 Squeal Award to the NIH.
And because our government’s scientific agencies have demonstrated an inability to police themselves, I will be demanding that all funding for EcoHealth be stopped and proof that all documentation on dangerous pathogens that EHA has collected or produced has been collected.
What happened in Wuhan must never happen anywhere else, which is why EcoHealth Alliance must never again be allowed to touch bats or taxpayer money.
Red Oak native and combat veteran Joni Ernst represents Iowa as a U.S. senator.
