by Debra Heine
Dr. Peter Daszak, the director of the New York-based non-profit that funneled hundreds of thousands of American tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reportedly orchestrated “a behind-the-scenes bullying campaign” to make sure the Covid-19 outbreak was not linked to the Wuhan lab.
Daszak got more than two dozen other scientists to sign off on the letter he wrote to the highly respected British medical journal, The Lancet, the Daily Mail reported. The idea, according to the emails, was to put forward a statement from “a community supporting our colleagues.”
Emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Daszak considered not signing the letter himself, although in the end he did.
After its publication in March of 2020, the corporate media used the letter (below) as a “fact check” to debunk any suggestion that the virus could have been manufactured, and escaped from the Wuhan lab.
Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19:
We are public health scientists who have closely followed the emergence of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and are deeply concerned about its impact on global health and wellbeing. We have watched as the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China, in particular, have worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak, put in place significant measures to reduce its impact, and share their results transparently with the global health community. This effort has been remarkable.We sign this statement in solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak. We are all in this together, with our Chinese counterparts in the forefront, against this new viral threat.
The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens. This is further supported by a letter from the presidents of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and by the scientific communities they represent. Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the
Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture.We want you, the science and health professionals of China, to know that we stand with you in your fight against this virus.We invite others to join us in supporting the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of Wuhan and across China. Stand with our colleagues on
the frontline!
Of the letter’s 27 signatories, five of them—including Daszak—worked directly for or with his non-profit EcoHealth Alliance: Rita Cowell, Peter Daszak, Hume Field, John B. Hughes, and William Karesh.
Several other signatories had a conflicts of interest that they didn’t disclose, according to Red State.
Jeremy Farrar, Josie Golding, and Mike Turner all work for The Wellcome Trust, which works closely with the EcoHealth Alliance. Dennis Carroll partners with EcoHealth Alliance at Texas A&M. Ronald Corley’s University of Maryland also released all of the emails concerning Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, which reveals that Daszak solicited support from Corley. Corley interestingly enough was the source on a New Yorker article that slammed Trump for pulling the funding from EcoHealth Alliance.
Christian Drosten and Stanley Pearlman edited Daszak and Shi’s paper on gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And the list keeps going.
Daszak’s letter worked like a charm, virtually ending all debate about the origin of the virus for more than a year.
“The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation,” former Clinton administration staffer Jamie Metzl told DailyMail.com. Metzl now sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing.
“By labeling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method,” Metzl added.
A former director of the Centers for Disease Control told Vanity Fair that he received death threats after suggesting that the virus could have been man-made. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Robert Redfield said. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”
Despite his close connections to the lab, Daszak was chosen by the World Health organization (WHO) to be part of its team that was tasked with investigating the cause of the outbreak.
Metzl told the Daily Mail that that “was a massive and outrageous conflict of interest.”
He added; “As a funder of research at the WIV, Peter should have had absolutely no role as a member of the independent expert committee.”
Metzl said the WHO report, which concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, was “fatally flawed.”
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and bio-security expert at Rutgers University, agreed, saying Daszak’s conflicts “unequivocally disqualify him from being part of an investigation of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Ebright called the WHO investigation a charade. “Its members were willing — and in at least one case enthusiastic — participants in disinformation,” he said.
“The pre-negotiated terms of reference for the WHO study did not even acknowledge the possibility of a laboratory origin of the virus,” Ebright added.
Team Trump reportedly never even considered Daszak for the WHO team. The Trump administration recommended three scientists for the mission, all of whom were rejected.
Metzl appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson Thursday night to discuss how the self-interested cabal of “medical experts” manufactured a “fake consensus” on the issue.
“I’m coming from a very different political space—I’m a progressive Democrat—but early last year, I was looking at the evidence and there was this fake consensus, I felt, saying that ‘we know something,’ that I felt nobody in fact knew—that it was a natural origin. And I was looking at all of the data that was suggesting to me that a lab incident origin was really possible, and I started asking those questions, and I think everybody should have been asking those questions, Metzl told Carlson.
“There was a forced consensus that was certainly pushed by the Chinese, and a small number of scientists who had significant conflicts of interests,” he said.
Two of those scientists are finally feeling some heat now that the truth is coming out.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recently released emails show that leading virus experts warned him early on that Covid-19 could be man-made, but he went on to publicly downplay the possibility anyway.
After Fauci poo-pooed lab-leak theory at a press conference in April of 2020, Daszak shot him an email to thank him.
“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Daszak wrote.
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Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Dr. Peter Daszak” by Peter Daszak.
