‘Absolutely Reckless’: NIH Allows EcoHealth Alliance to Resume Coronavirus Research

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week reinstated a controversial federal grant to EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of bat coronavirus spillover.

EcoHealth is a New York-based nonprofit whose stated mission is to develop “science-based solutions to prevent pandemics and promote conservation.”

In 2014, EcoHealth received $3.7 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study the risk of bat coronavirus emergence and the potential for outbreaks in human populations — research that included genetically manipulating coronaviruses to make them more infectious to humans.

At the time, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director of the NIAID, which operates under the NIH.

Nearly $600,000 of the $3.7 million went to EcoHealth’s collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.