In May, the NIH quietly removed the Wuhan Institute of Virology from its list of approved fundees. But they weren’t the only governmental department in the US funding the sketchy lab.
Among others, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was also shipping our tax dollars to the lab at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic where many believe the disease leaked from.
But, as of last week, the Biden Administration suspended the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s eligibility to receive federal funding for ten years after the lab refused to hand over requested documents about its safety and security measures. It isn’t hard to guess why they’d refuse such a request.
The lab has been operating outside of normal regulations on foreign labs for some time, which has been pointed out by numerous entities. The Chinese Communist Party has had the lab on lockdown for some time, refusing to hand over information it may have on the origins of COVID-19 as well as specifics on projects underway there. But even despite their efforts to block transparency, we know this lab has been falling apart for a long time.
According to this excellent deep dive into those issues by ProPublica and Vanity Fair, dispatches from the lab in the Fall of 2019 “referenced inhumane working conditions and ‘hidden safety dangers.’ On Nov. 12 of that year, a dispatch by party branch members at the BSL-4 laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach, according to the interim report.”
The White Coat Waste Project, where I am a fellow, has specifically been calling out these problems for many years now as they were already tracking the secretive money being sent to Wuhan to torture animals long before the pandemic broke out.
BREAKING: Following a 3 year WCW campaign, the Biden Admin has suspended the Wuhan animal lab from receiving tax money & moved to blacklist it.
In April ‘20, we were the 1st group to expose Fauci’s funding to Wuhan, tip off Congress & call for a defund👇 pic.twitter.com/YMx6ocEV9j
— White Coat Waste Project 🥼🗑️ (@WhiteCoatWaste) July 19, 2023
So while we can and will applaud this move to further defund the Wuhan lab, the question still remains as to why our government was funding such a lab in our biggest foreign adversary’s territory in the first place. That the US government was ever wasting our tax dollars in such a manner is inexcusable, and the chance that they were used to create the COVID-19 virus that then leaked from the lab remains highly probable.
It’s no surprise a communist country with no respect for basic human rights would be careless with such a lab, fail to ensure safety standards, and cover-up their actions after the fact. It is surprising that the US government would continue sending them money in the process.
Hannah is a Fellow at the White Coat Waste Project.
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