Marion Koopmans, a member of the recent World Health Organization mission to discover the origins of COVID-19 in China, has served as an advisor to the Chinese Communist Party’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention and authored studies funded by Chinese government-backed grants, The National Pulse can reveal.
The World Health Organization (WHO) delegation concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” the virus came from a Chinese Communist Party lab despite reports showing China refused to share all relevant data to the early days of COVID-19.
But Koopman’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which resemble a similar relationship to fellow WHO researcher Peter Daszak, call into question the validity of the team’s findings.
A document entitled “Scientific Advisory Group members” from the World Health Organization (WHO) contains Koopman’s professional bio, which reveals she has served as a “member of the scientific advisory board of the Centres for Disease Control of Guangdong China“:
As member of the scientific advisory board of the Centres for Disease control of Guangdong China, she has advised on the building of the laboratory capacity for emerging infectious disease detection in this region, and has ongoing research collaborations trying to unravel emergence and spread of viruses through the animal production chain in this region.
Koopmans also lists the affiliation on her own LinkedIn.
What’s more, Koopmans has authored scientific research papers and journal articles backed by Chinese Communist Party grants.
A July 2020 study – Exploring utility of genomic epidemiology to trace origins of highly pathogenic influenza A/H7N9 in Guangdong – was “supported by grants from National Key Research and Development Program of China [and] the National Key Research and Development Program of China.”
“We thank the twenty-one collaborating laboratories in Guangdong province that participated in the longitudinal surveillance,” a summary adds.
Another 2017 study focusing on Zika virus was also funded and executed by the Guangdong provincial government, according to a summary:
We thank all of the related laboratory and administrative personnel at Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Jiangmen Center for Disease Control and Prevention for their contribution to the follow-up investigation. The present study was supported by grants from the Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology ProgrammA and the National Key Development Program.
And another Koopman-led 2014 study done alongside Guangdong Provincial CDC researchers on InfluenzaA(H7N9) was “supported by 12th five-year-major projects of China’s Ministry of Public Health.”Koopmans has also authored a host of studies financially backed by the state-run China Scholarship Council including reports on Norovirus, Rotavirus, Calcineurin, and migration.
The latest revelations are sure to force a further rowing back by the establishment media of the previously lauded investigative group.
