OPINION:
It is well-known that U.S. tax dollars helped fund bat virology in China which likely unleashed the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Shockingly, it is now apparent that American money for the risky research could flow again. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” it is said. Even fools, though, should have sense enough to stop in their tracks when death beckons.
China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is still eligible for U.S. funds to pay for animal research through January 2024, a fact confirmed by the National Institutes of Health. It is unclear whether the Biden administration will allow taxpayer money to resume supporting the laboratory’s risky research into the transmissibility of bat coronaviruses to humans, but Americans would be outraged if it were.
The virology research was funded by a $600,000 grant from EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit organization, which reportedly has received $3.7 million in federal money since 2014. The Trump administration last year plugged the funneling of funds to the high-security lab believed to have released the virus that has killed nearly a half-million Americans and 2.5 million worldwide since January 2020.
As a face-saving measure, China has obscured any tracks that might lead back to its Wuhan facility. It was a year following the pandemic outbreak before a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) was allowed access to the lab specializing in viral transmission to humans. And it was less than reassuring for Americans to learn that among the investigators was Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, the very organization that helped fund the lab’s activities. Conflict of interest, anyone? Unsurprisingly, he announced it very unlikely the virus escaped from the lab.
As Bill Gertz has written in these pages, it’s very likely that the pathogen did, in fact, originate in the Wuhan lab. There is ample evidence to bolster the theory that the virus was not a natural occurrence.
Whether the coronavirus’ source was natural or an experiment gone wrong, its deadly effects have resulted in a drop in U.S. life expectancy during 2020 from 78.8 years to 77.8, the largest decrease since World War II. The tragedy is only worsened by the prospect that U.S. tax dollars may have funded the loss of life.
Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan quipped, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” That a U.S. program might have paid for research that is killing Americans is batty, and the possibility that the funding could resume is more disturbing still. President Biden must make certain that doesn’t happen.
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