In an email responding to Ms. Leasure, UC Davis researcher Jonna Mazet wrote that the primary cause for the increase in EHA’s budget was personnel costs, adding that Peter Daszak’s “compensation increased by 24% from last year.”
Who to believe: these emails or your lying eyes?
Desptite emails showing UC Davis researchers paid EcoHealth Allliance with DARPA monies, the research agency has their story and they’re sticking to it. “Consistent with DARPA’s previous statement, the agency has never funded EcoHealth Alliance directly, nor indirectly as a subcontractor,” wrote a DARPA spokesperson to The DisInformation Chronicle.
These latest revelations add to a growing body of evidence that the Biden Administration is not interested in reviewing activities by the EcoHealth Alliance. In 2020, the NIH created a thunderstorm of disapproval when it shut down an EcoHealth Alliance grant; 77 Nobel Laureates criticized the Trump administration for pulling the coronavirus research. “We believe that this action sets a dangerous precedent by interfering in the conduct of science and jeopardizes public trust in the process of awarding federal funds for research,” they wrote.
This October, 18 months after the grant was terminated, the NIH notified Congress that EcoHealth Alliance had failed to comply with the timely submission of a research progress report for the grant. Since the NIH terminated that grant in 2020, the agency has awarded EcoHealth Alliance $4.2 million in funding for 4 different projects.