Scott has asked for details about the NIH’s grant-funding tracking procedures.
Florida On Friday, Senator Rick Scott pressed the Biden administration for an explanation of whether it is blocking future funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which some belief is the source of the COVID-19 pandemic and was the recipient of a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Scott wrote to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to bring attention to an OIG investigation that revealed the NIH had not adequately monitored its grant allocations, particularly the one to the Wuhan lab. According to the OIG report, the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance was not given enough oversight of the laboratory funds it received from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Scott stated that the National Institutes of Health had failed to exercise “appropriate monitoring” by allowing EcoHealth Alliance to sub-award the funding to the Communist China government. “It is imperative that the United States government constantly takes measures to prevent the misuse of taxpayer funds. The NIH must monitor the disbursement of this funding.”
Scott inquired as to NIH’s plan for addressing the report’s suggestion to prevent future funding for the Wuhan laboratory.
In his letter, he stated that the Office of Inspector General had recommended that the Wuhan Institute of Virology be permanently banned from receiving any more federal funding. When asked, “What is NIH doing about this?”
According to Scott, EcoHealth Alliance did not report on how the money was being spent due to a lack of effective oversight of the grant financing to the Wuhan lab. He said that the U.S. government is still debating where COVID-19 came from and that missing information on a grant to Wuhan might provide clues. The Wuhan laboratory is seen by certain government authorities as the most likely origin of COVID.
“[Wuhan lab] data was among the missing information,” Scott noted. The loss of this data “may have been significant in explaining the background of COVID-19.” He continued, saying that “being honest and sharing information with NIH” has not been a priority for either the lab or the Chinese government.
Scott said that before any monies are given to universities that potentially conduct gain-of-function research, they must be reviewed following government guidelines. Yet, he said that the federal supervision mechanism did not properly investigate the donation to the Wuhan laboratory.
Scott said that the NIH’s “primary goal should be to preserve public monies and guarantee that all payments are properly accounted for” (emphasis added). The National Institutes of Health’s inability to do so is intolerable.
Scott asked Becerra more than a dozen other questions, such as how the NIH tracks and decides which organizations receive financing and whether or not EcoHealth will be eligible for future grants.
Grants made to foreign countries were singled out for “a heightened degree of scrutiny,” as he put it.
“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) should be more cautious when allowing recipients to make sub-awards to foreign governments. While the NIH was aware that the [Wuhan lab] was getting funding from it, they took no action, opting instead to ignore the monitoring process and provide the Communist Chinese government with even more money to do research “Writing by Scott.