World Still in the Dark on COVID-19’s Origins, says AHF
May 16 2024 - 4:42PM
Business Wire
Validating concerns AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) first
raised in early 2021 about the work of EcoHealth Alliance and its
president Dr. Peter Daszak on dangerous virus research in China,
AHF fully supports the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
decision to suspend and debar the organization from receiving
federal funding for failure to fully comply with transparency
requirements.
AHF issued a press release on Feb. 9, 2021, raising concerns
about conflicts of interest among a World Health Organization (WHO)
team of scientists dispatched to Wuhan, China, to study the origins
of COVID-19.
In part, the release stated: “The alleged conflict of interest
stems from the connection one of the investigators, a British
zoologist and EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak, has
with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). According to The Wall
Street Journal, Dr. Daszak has worked closely with a leading
virologist at WIV, Dr. Shi Zhengli, on the study of bat viruses,
which from 2014, was in part funded by U.S. government grants. The
institute is located just a few miles away from the wet market
where Chinese authorities say SARS-CoV-2 first emerged.”
Dr. Daszak has repeatedly and unequivocally dismissed the
hypothesis that COVID-19 may have spread as a result of a lab
accident in Wuhan. In 2020, he co-authored a Lancet article that
characterized hypotheses that diverged from the idea that COVID-19
originated in wildlife as misinformation and conspiracy theories.
This dismissive position has been since repudiated by a number of
scientists, and in 2022, the WHO released a report advocating for
more research into the lab leak theory.
In March 2023, AHF issued a press release under the headline “No
NIH Money to EcoHealth Alliance, says AHF” in response to the
announcement that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was
planning to resume funding Dr. Daszak’s work. The grant was
suspended in 2022 because, according to the NIH, “EcoHealth
Alliance had not been able to hand over lab notebooks and other
records from its Wuhan partner that relate to controversial
experiments involving modified bat viruses, despite multiple
requests.”
“We have consistently called attention to the lack of
transparency and attempts to dismiss outright the hypothesis that
COVID-19 originated as a result of research at the Wuhan lab,” said
AHF President Michael Weinstein. “The question has been politicized
beyond measure on all sides, but our position and intention for
raising it has always been and remains that we need to find out the
truth for the sake of global public health. To do that, all
evidence must be examined fully, transparently, and with an open
mind. Whatever the origin of COVID-19, China and EcoHealth have not
made answering this important question any easier. Until we know,
we are flying blind.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS
organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to
over 2 million clients in 46 countries worldwide in the US, Africa,
Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Europe. To
learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org,
find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on
Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare
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U.S. MEDIA CONTACT: Ged Kenslea, Senior Director,
Communications, AHF +1 323 308 1833 work +1.323.791.5526 mobile
gedk@aidshealth.org
Denys Nazarov, Director of Global Policy &
Communications, AHF +1.323.308.1829 denys.nazarov@ahf.org