by Debra Heine
An influential member of the World Health Organization who claimed to have no conflicts of interest regarding China, has accepted research grants from the Chinese Communist Party and runs a U.S.-based research organization that been working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for 18 years, the National Pulse reported.
Peter Daszak recently traveled to Wuhan with other WHO researchers to uncover the origins of COVID-19. The investigative team concluded that it is “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 came from a Chinese Communist Party lab.
In February of 2020, however, scientists from the South China University of Technology came to the opposite conclusion. These scientists released a research paper on the origins of COVID-19 that concluded that the deadly virus was likely created in a Wuhan city lab.
Their study confirmed that the virus came from a type of bat that doesn’t live within 900 kilometers of Wuhan and found no evidence that it was being sold at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
“These scientists interviewed almost 60 people—59 of them—who frequented the Wuhan wet market. They confirm there were no horseshoe bats for sale there—period,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported last April.
The scientists said they discovered two labs in the immediate vicinity of the outbreak that were conducting research on bat coronavirus, one of which was the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which caused the 2002-3 pandemic
The principle investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, and reported the potential for human emergence. A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the laboratory.
The paper, by researchers Botao Xial and Lei Xiao and titled “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,” was quickly retracted.
Now WHO, echoing Chicom propaganda, has concluded that COVID-19 most likely didn’t come from a Wuhan lab.
If Daszak seems curiously amenable to Chinese Communist Party narratives, there could be a reason for that.
He has been partnering with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for 18 years, and was Project Leader on a $3.7 million grant supporting bat coronavirus research at the facility, according to the National Pulse.
Despite this, Daszak told the Washington Post in April of 2020 that he had “no conflicts of interest.”
Peter Daszak – who donated to Hillary Clinton 13 times in 2016 – serves as the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a research organization that has partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) – the very same lab many count as the source of COVID-19.
The type of research conducted by the group in tandem with the WIV prompted concern among National Institutes of Health officials for its role in COVID-related research, as outlined in a letter by NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research Dr. Michael Lauer.
Dr. Lauer announced the suspension of NIH grants to the group, which saw its studies engineer the “highly specific doorway into the human body” as COVID-19, as a response:
“It is our understanding that one of the sub-recipients of the grant funds is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (‘WIV’). It is our understanding that WIV studies the interaction between corona viruses and bats. The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from WIV of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of WIV from participation in Federal programs.”
Daszak meanwhile “implored the world to not ‘rely’ on U.S. intelligence for it is ‘wrong on many aspects’ and ‘politically charged.’”
The researcher has not exactly been shy about collaborating with Chinese Communist Party and accepting their cash.
While speaking at a conference in September of 2018 sponsored by state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN), he said he “has been working in China in collaboration with Chinese scientists and the government of China for over 15 years supported by federal funding from the U.S. and federal funding from China.”
Daszak has praised and attended the Beijing-based World Conference on Science Literacy, which is sponsored by the scientific group China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) that “serves as a bridge that links the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government to the country’s science and technology community.”
He has also appeared on panels at a CGTN-sponsored conference in cooperation with the Chinese Society for Science and Technology Journalism, a subsidiary of CAST.
This is the official serious side of the World Conference on Science Literacy sponsored by the China Association for Science and Technology, but the fun part is up next…. https://t.co/9grqpq1JeT
— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) September 18, 2018
Daszak obtained his Ph.D. in parasitic infectious diseases from the low-ranked University of East London.
According to the National Pulse, he has repeatedly appeared on CGTN, and praised the network as “fantastic” and “great.” The researcher defends his collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party as “important.”
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Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Peter Daszak” by Peter Daszak.
