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Why Is China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology Still Eligible to Receive U.S. Taxpayer Dollars for Batty Experiments?
It’s totally batty!
Three years after a mysterious new disease emerged in the vicinity of China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) – where U.S. taxpayer dollars were funding dangerous experiments on coronaviruses – the lab is still eligible to receive your tax dollars to conduct experiments on bats!
Despite the biolab’s documented serious safety concerns and known connections to the Chinese military, the risky research was funded by you.
The total amount of American money that made its way into China’s Wuhan lab remains murky. But what we do know is that at least two U.S. agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), gave a total of $1.7 million.
The primary recipient of these U.S. government grants is a shady organization known as the EcoHealth Alliance. This group tried to fly the funding under the radar by not disclosing where the money was going or how it was being spent, despite being required to do so by numerous federal laws. And regardless of repeated requests, China’s Wuhan Institute refuses to turn over lab notes and other files related to the experiments.
To get some answers, I asked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate and the findings are alarming.
- Enhanced coronaviruses had been genetically engineered in the WIV and NIH was not immediately notified, as required.
- EcoHealth did not disclose how or where taxpayer dollars were being spent, as mandated by federal law.
- NIH acknowledges that WIV may never provide the information about the lab experiments paid for with taxpayer dollars.
NIH continues to deny that there is any connection between the coronaviruses that were being experimented with at WIV and the virus that caused the pandemic. But if NIH does not even have this key information, how can the agency even say with any certainty what was really going on in the lab? Short answer: It can’t. Only WIV and maybe EcoHealth can and they aren’t cooperating.
The OIG recommends that HHS consider debarment of WIV, which would prevent any additional grants or contracts from being paid to the lab, and NIH concurs. The Senate has also approved an amendment I offered to prohibit additional funding to WIV (the provision ultimately did not become law because the bill it was attached to never made it to the president’s desk).
Despite all of this, China’s Wuhan lab remains on HHS’s list of foreign institutions APPROVED to conduct experiments on animals, like bats!
That is why I am giving my February 2023 Squeal Award to Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services.
I am urging HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to immediately and permanently debar WIV from receiving U.S. funding.
I am also introducing legislation to prohibit every department from funding WIV. These mad scientists should never be permitted to get their hands on bats or U.S. taxpayer dollars ever again.
Squeal Award:
Biden's Department of Health and Human Services
Do you have an example of government waste or inefficiencies that I should take a look at? Send me an email by clicking here.
Thank you!
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