The chairman of the Lancet medical journal’s COVID-19 Commission – one of the foremost scientific groups supporting the “natural origins” theory – admitted that the National Institute of Health and its grant recipients, including Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, “acted badly” with a “lack of transparency.”
The admission from Chairman Jeffrey Sachs follows extensive National Pulse reporting into the conflicts of interest – through research funding and personnel – held by individuals placed on the Lancet’s “Origins, Early Spread of the Pandemic, and One Health Solutions to Future Pandemic Threats” committee.
Amongst the high-profile individuals on the committee was Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, which received millions in taxpayer funds from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, which ultimately supported research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Daszak’s described the research he conducted alongside his “Chinese colleagues,” including “bat lady” Shi Zhengli, as manipulating bat coronaviruses into “killer viruses.”
Daszak, who has led conferences sponsored by Chinese Communist Party-run scientific organizations, has also co-authored studies funded by the Chinese government and participated in conferences conducted by state-run media outlets. As evidence of his longstanding relationship with Chinese Communist Party scientists influencing his outlook on the origins of COVID-19, Daszak has also claimed that people “misunderstand the Chinese government” while defending the regime’s handling of COVID-19.
While speaking to Vanity Fair about the committee, which was widely viewed as responsible for pressuring scientists and mainstream media outlets to silence debate about the validity of the “lab leak theory,” Sachs admitted:
“[Daszak] and NIH have acted badly.”
“There has been a lack of transparency…and there is a lot more to know and that can be known,” he added.
Vanity Fair continued:
“He said that the NIH should support an “independent scientific investigation” to examine the “possible role” in the pandemic of the NIH, EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and a partner laboratory at the University of North Carolina. “Both hypotheses are still very much with us,” he said, and “need to be investigated seriously and scientifically.”
Daszak was ultimately recused from the committee, which became defunct by late 2021 due to allegations of inadequate transparency.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Sachs explained his decision, attributing the move to EcoHealth Alliance’s aforementioned conflicts of interest.
“I just didn’t want a task force that was so clearly involved with one of the main issues of this whole search for the origins, which was EcoHealth Alliance,” he claimed.
Sachs himself has a long history of collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party, including working with several Chinese Communist Party influence groups including those with ties to Hunter Biden and has voiced his opposition to “confronting China” while contributing to Chinese state-run media outlets.
The National Pulse was one of the first outlets to pursue the NIH, EcoHealth, and Daszak, leading to his recusal from the origins committee. The Vanity Fair reporting relies on much of what The National Pulse first reported two years ago. To support our work, please click here.
