Dr. David Morens, a former top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, appears during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing on Capitol Hill.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption At the start of a hearing on COVID’s origins last month, Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup said that the committee was not out to attack science. “Let me be clear, I support global health research; I support work that will make the world safer,” Wenstrup said. “Our concern is that this research, and research similar, does the opposite — it puts the world at the risk of a pandemic.
” In the three-hour exchange that followed, Wenstrup and his Republican colleagues excoriated Dr. Peter Daszak, a scientist at the center of the debate around COVID’s origins. Daszak is the president of EcoHealth Alliance , a group that, prior to the onset of the pandemic, conducted research on bat coronaviruses.
Some of that work was done in conjunction with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese-government laboratory that many Republicans believe may have started the pandemic. Daszak was taken to task by both Republicans and Democrats for failing to comply with the terms of grants issued to EcoHealth. As a result of the ongoing hearings, EcoHealth Alliance recently had its access to federal grant funding suspended — with an eye toward debarring them from receiving future funding.
Both Daszak and EcoHealth say they will appeal the decision. On Monday, the committe.
