Friday, 15 November 2024

American Taxpayer Dollars Funding Bird Flu Gain-Of-Function Research Collaboration With Chinese Lab?

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According to Daily Mail, U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers about a $1 million collaboration between the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the CCP-run Chinese Academy of Sciences to make bird flu viruses more dangerous to people.

American taxpayers are footing the bill for the project, the outlet reports.

“This research, funded by American taxpayers, could potentially generate dangerous new lab-created virus strains that threaten our national security and public health,” a bipartisan group of Congress members wrote in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.

“Earlier this year it was revealed the United States government was funneling $1 million to China to see if scientists could make 'highly pathogenic avian influenza' more contagious to mammals using gain-of-function research. The research involves infecting ducks and geese with different strains of viruses to make them more infectious, and studying the viruses' potential to 'jump into mammalian hosts,” Shadow of Ezra writes.

“It is being funded through the US Department of Agriculture and the main collaborators on the project are USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute – a Wuhan lab partner. Joe Biden's administration announced it will work with 50 countries to identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing a pandemic that the US' own research could actually spark.”

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Daily Mail reports:

The research comes as fears about bird flu rise. A farm worker in Texas caught the H5N1 strain that is racing through cattle across the US earlier this month, becoming only the second ever American to be diagnosed – and experts are bracing for more cases.

In February, it was revealed the United States government was funneling $1million to China to see if scientists could make 'highly pathogenic avian influenza' more contagious to mammals using gain-of-function research.

Government records showed the collaboration began in April 2021 and is scheduled to be funded through March 2026. The USDA previously told this website the project was applied for in 2019 and approved in 2020.

The research involves infecting ducks and geese with different strains of viruses to make them more infectious, and studying the viruses' potential to 'jump into mammalian hosts,' according to research documents obtained by the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project and shared exclusively with this website.

It is being funded through the USDA and the main collaborators on the project are USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute – a Wuhan lab partner.

And it has been ongoing despite similar research being restricted in 2022 and growing concerns that dubious Chinese studies may have started the Covid pandemic.

“The health and safety of Americans are too important to just wing it, and Biden’s USDA should have had more apprehension before sending any taxpayer dollars to collaborate with the CCP on risky avian flu research,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told the New York Post in February.

“They should know by now to suspect ‘fowl’ play when it comes to researchers who have ties to the dangerous Wuhan Lab, and simply switching from bats to birds causes concern that they are creating more pathogens of pandemic potential,” she added.

From the New York Post:

Such viral experiments have “already caused outbreaks and killed humans,” Ernst also wrote to Vilsack, noting that “China’s labs have notoriously lax safety standards.”

Other bird flu testing will take place at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Athens, Ga., while the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute will complete statistical modeling for the experiments.

Federal grant data portals show the award date was Jan. 26, 2021, and $632,813.50 has been doled out so far.

Performance dates for the 60-month project stretch from April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2026.

USDA spokesperson Allan Rodriguez accused Ernst of spreading “misinformation” by not reaching out to the department directly about the research and said the “project was applied for in 2019 and was approved in 2020.”

“USDA’s funding is only being committed to the specific components carried out by our own team located in Athens, Georgia, and is not [in] any way contributing to research taking place in the UK or China,” Rodriguez said.

“Because animal diseases present a global threat, it is common for international researchers to conduct independent research that’s connected to the same end goal — but what Senator Ernst lays out in her letter is far off base from what’s actually transpiring, and on top of that is based on approval decisions that predate this Administration.”

Diane Cutler, a former grant fraud investigator for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, told The Post it was “disingenuous for USDA to insinuate that its research is separate and is not contributing to the research in China when clearly an official collaboration to conduct this research has been established within USDA’s system of records.”


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