DOD rejects EcoHealth bid due to concerns over gain-of-function research, report says
WASHINGTON (TND) — Project Veritas has reportedly verified a rejection letter, not previously made public, from a government agency refusing to offer funding to EcoHealth Alliance for failing to assess the potential risks of gain-of-function research in the studies they sought to perform at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
EcoHealth was the recipient of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grant money from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to perform research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology studying how coronaviruses move from bats to humans.
Critics argued the grant-facilitated research included controversial gain-of-function experiments, but government officials like National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci have insisted that gain-of-function research was not occurring on the government’s dime.
"Can you imagine if a SARS virus that's been juiced up and had viral proteins added to it — to the spike protein — if that were released accidentally,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Fauci during a May Senate hearing.
The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund gain of function research in the Wuhan institute,” Fauci returned during the hearing.
Project Veritas reported having obtained and verified a letter from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejecting funds to EcoHealth Alliance. The rejection letter said the agency was not going to provide funding to EcoHealth Alliance because its “proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research,” the DARPA rejection letter said, according to Project Veritas.
Project Veritas also reported having obtained a second report written to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, by U.S. Marine Maj. Joseph Murphy, who is also a former fellow at DARPA.
“Major Murphy’s report goes on to detail great concern over the COVID-19 gain of function program, the concealment of documents, the suppression of potential curatives, like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, and the mRNA vaccines,” Project Veritas wrote.
Project Veritas said it reached out to DARPA and spoke with the agency’s chief of communications, Jared Adams, who remarked, “It doesn’t sound normal to me,” when asked why the documents were not made public and potentially buried. “If something resides in a classified setting, then it should be appropriately marked,” Adams added. “I’m not at all familiar with unmarked documents that reside in a classified space, no.”
Founder of Project Veritas James O’Keefe asked in a video, if the DOD felt the research was too dangerous to proceed, why did the “NIH, NIAID and EcoHealth Alliance recklessly disregard the risks involved?”
The National Desk (TND) reached out to DARPA and EcoHealth Alliance to confirm the veracity of the letter Project Veritas said it obtained. EcoHealth Aliance did not immediately respond, but Adams told TND that DARPA, due to federal regulations, could not confirm the authenticity of the documents.
The Twitter account for Project Veritas is currently suspended at the time of this story’s publication.
