Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) on Friday requested Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch to scrutinize all U.S. taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research in China, as well as any undisclosed or unpublished collections of pathogens and biospecimens that might be key in determining the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plea serves to broaden an existing investigation into over $50 million in Pentagon grants received by Chinese institutions for pandemic pathogens research from 2014 to 2023.
Marshall’s office had also detected a large array of lab samples that the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases procured from Chinese entities between October 2014 and March 2020. These samples, which include potentially fatal pathogens like Ebola and Marburg virus, were initially obtained through an agreement with the University of California, Davis, and EcoHealth Alliance.
These institutions used millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to support China’s pandemic pathogen collection and research at locations like the now-debarred Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan University, and the Chinese Academies of Science Institute of Microbiology. Information about the purchased biospecimens could contain “forensic clues” to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to Marshall.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and the now-former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) had initially asked the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General in January 2022 to conduct an extensive audit of Chinese pandemic pathogen research grants.
National Institutes of Health’s principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted on Thursday that U.S. taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth Alliance’s president Dr. Peter Daszak claimed that he was unaware of the number and variety of viral sequences stored at the Wuhan lab despite approving more than $500,000 in US funding for bats’ novel coronaviruses experiments there.
