Why Was the US Department of Defense Funding Bioweapons Research at Wuhan?
By Shipwreckedcrew | Jun 06, 2021 12:00 AM ET
Late Friday the British publication DailyMail reported that the United States Department of Defense provided $39 million in grant funding to “EcoHealth Alliance” as part of the aggregated grant funding received by EcoHealth Alliance to conduct various types of “gain of function” virus research – a type of research in which scientists engineer viruses to make them more transmissible or lethal and which can be used to create bioweapons.
EcoHealth Alliance used a large amount of its funding to support research projects on the subject at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by Chinese “bat virus” expert Dr. Shi Zenglhi — the “Bat Lady.”
While the Daily Mail report is fairly exhaustive, I think it is important to note that RedState, led by my colleague Scott Hounsell, was asking questions about US government funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab back in February.
Further, back on May 11 — three weeks ago — Scott reported on the testy responses by Dr. Fauci to questions posed to him by Sen. Rand Paul about whether or not the US government, through the National Institute of Health (NIH), had provided funding to the Wuhan lab that had been used to conduct “gain of function” research involving viral mutations such as that which is thought to possibly have created the SARS-CoV-2 virus that led to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Fauci adamantly denied that NIH had funded any such research.
NIH is not DOD, so you might wonder why these references are important.
The charity, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), has come under intense scrutiny after it emerged that it had been using federal grants to fund research into coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
But NIH is only one government agency that provides grant funding. The bigger story is found when looking at the totality of grant funding that was sent out through USAID — including funding which came from the Department of Defense — through its“PREDICT” program.As the DailyMail story notes, the total of ALL grant funding toEcoHealth Alliance is $123 million, with $39 million coming from thePentagon.
The “PREDICT” program is the key to understanding the funding of EcoHealth Alliance and its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. PREDICT is a research funding program launched in 2009 as an “early warning” pandemic system. Between 2009 and 2019, PREDICT funded the collection of more than 140,000 biological samples that contained as many as 1200 coronaviruses with the potential to cause human disease and pandemics. In that time period PREDICT awarded $200 million in grants before the grant funding ran out and President Trump ended the program. Of that $200 million, $63 million — nearly one-third of all PREDICT grant funds — went to EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth Alliance, as Scott reported in great detail in this May 26 story, is run byDr. Peter Daszak. For nearly a decade Dr. Daszak conducted coronavirus research with the Wuhan Lab and Dr. Zhengli. Research papers published by the two on coronaviruses identify the grant funding as having come from USAID and PREDICT. But that limited attribution didn’t reveal that the funding distributed through PREDICT had, in part, come from the Defense Department — specifically the DOD “Defense Threat Reduction Agency.”
The Global Director of PREDICT was Dr. Jonna Mazit of the University of California at Davis.
Bottom line: The Pentagon was, through USAID, funding research of bioweapons as part of its responsibility to develop defenses to bioweapon attacks — anti-viral treatments and vaccines. To develop treatments and vaccines for bioweapons, you need to first develop such weapons.
https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2021/06/06/why-was-the-us-department-of-defense-funding-bioweapons-research-at-wuhan-n391796