Molecular biologist Dr. Richard Elbright insisted that World Health Organization COVID-19 investigators – especially Peter Daszak – were “participants in disinformation” on their recent mission to China to uncover the origin of the virus.

Dr. Elbright, the current Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of American Society for Biochemistry Microbiology, has over 160 publications and more than 40 issued and pending patents under his name. He has received a wide array of awards, including honors from the National Institutes of Health. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

When asked if he felt if “the final report of this WHO/China joint team is going to shut down COVID origin controversy,” Dr. Elbright responded: “no.”

His interview with Independent Science News continued, as he outlined the missing components from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent mission emphasizing “a credible investigation also would have had conflict-of-interest-free investigators, not persons who were subjects of the research and/or closely associated with subjects of the investigation”:

A credible investigation would have had Terms of Reference that: 1) Acknowledged the possibility of laboratory origin, 2) Ensured access of investigators to records, samples, personnel, and facilities at the Wuhan laboratories that handle bat SARS-related coronaviruses, 3) Enabled collection of evidence, not mere meet-and-greet photo-ops, 4) Authorized an investigation of months, not mere days. And 5) A credible investigation also would have had conflict-of-interest-free investigators, not persons who were subjects of the research and/or closely associated with subjects of the investigation.

“Yes, its members were willing –and, in at least one case, enthusiastic– participants in disinformation,” he added before explaining that “the pre-negotiated “Terms of Reference” for the WHO study did not even acknowledge the possibility of a laboratory origin of the virus and did not even mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (CDC) or the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.”

Dr. Elbright singles out Peter Daszak – who has seen his financial and research ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposed by The National Pulse – for his conflicts of interest with the Wuhan Insitute of Virology:

Yes. Daszak was the contractor who funded the laboratory at WIV that potentially was the source of the virus (with subcontracts from $200 million from the US Department of State and $7 million from the US National Institutes of Health), and he was a collaborator and co-author on research projects at the laboratory.