Key South East Asia Grants — Part 2: Oddities in EHA R01 grant AI110964 (NIH)
This article is one of three in the series reviewing key South East Asia grants, with a particular focus over Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam:
1. PREDICT-2 (USAID) and the U.S. Sanctions over Myanmar and Laos
2. Oddities in EHA R01 grant AI110964 (NIH)
3. High stakes sampling in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam
Findings:
- In 2016, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance asked for a change of geographical focus of NIH grant R01 AI110964 (‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’, 2014–2019), for which he is Principal Investigator (P.I.). That requested change was for the last two years of the grant (June 2017 to end May 2019).
- The grant documentation was soon modified with the addition of ‘partnering entities’ in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and a few more countries bordering southern China. The addition of these new partners was repeated in the official R01 grant updates for 2017 and 2018, with unchanged wording.
- To be able to easily include such new countries and local partners within the existing grant budget, Peter Daszak proposed that no payment would be involved, with sampling to be done by local partners and/or Chinese teams, and the samples would be directly sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for testing (with no additional expense).
- As such, the scheme contemplated seems to display very little common sense: How would EcoHealth Alliance, and eventually the NIH, know what the Chinese teams were sampling in these countries and directly sending back to the WIV?
- That scheme is nevertheless entirely in line with the leading role that Daszak was advocating for China under the Global Virome Project, an ambitious $1.2bln successor to PREDICT that Daszak was pushing aggressively at the time, as a way to get that ambitious project off the ground.
- An NIH email of April 2020 confirms that the ‘partnering entities’ listed in the grant did send their samples to the WIV in China, except for Laos.
- However, the designated ‘partnering entities’ in Myanmar (San Pya clinic, non-governmental) and Cambodia (Institut Pasteur du Cambodge) are on record denying any involvement. For instance, the Cambodia partners listed in the grant is on record as stating that they don’t understand why they are showing up in that grant documentation.
- As a result, the documentation of the R01 AI110964 grant is possibly misleading from 2017 right up to 2020, when it gave repeated statement of activities (intended then effected) within the ‘partnering entities’ in Myanmar and Cambodia.
- The likely loss of control of the sampling activities, directly or indirectly partly funded by the NIH through EHA, and the testing of samples directly by the WIV, with at best a limited oversight by EHA, raises major issues and seem to have been motivated by very poor logic and badly aligned interests.
1. NIH R01 Grant AI110964 Timeline
1.1 The grant timeline:
The NIH/NAID R01 AI110964 grant (‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’) had two runs: the original run from 2014 to 2019 (1R01), and a renewal from 2019 to 2024 (2R01). That R01 grant was often called the ‘NIAID Bat CoV’ grant in internal emails.
a. 1R01 AI110964:
- Principal Investigator (P.I.): Peter Dazak of EcoHealth Alliance
- Program Officer: Erick J. Stemmy (NIAID, Viral Respiratory Diseases)
- Cognizant Agency: US Department of Defense [footnote 1]
- Start Date: 2014–06–01
- End Date: 2019–05–31
In 2018–19 the 1R01 grant had a refocus to sampling in South East Asia, with samples sent to WIV (except for Laos)
b. 2R01 AI110964:
- Extends the 1R01 with some changes
- Start Date: 2019–06–01
- End Date: 2024–05–31
- Interruption of grant post outbreak: 2020–04–24
This 2R01 extends the 1R01 grant with some marked differences.
- it concentrates on sampling work in China, including animal tests, and drops the sampling outside of China,
- it adds Baric, Ben Hu (of the WIV) and Linfa Wang to the team [footnote 2],
Most importantly , we must understand that the 2R01 would have necessarily included work with the WIV on these samples collected in the geographical extension countries in 2017–19 (Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, etc) and sent directly to the WIV. These samples would take time to be exploited, and the only way for this work to be done and papers written would have been under the 2R01.
Effectively, 2017–2019 of the 1R01 was used to supply samples and hopefully coronaviruses from the countries bordering Yunnan. The 2R01 (starting June 2019) then focussed on advanced work on these new viruses, while looking at high-risk populations in Southern China that may be involved in transborder trade and activities that could spread these viruses to China.
The following extract provides a summary of the 1R01 results and of the aims of the 2R01 [item 1]:
We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.
source: item 1, JW-v-HHS-Wuhan-August-31–2021–00696.pdf, p.26, Nov 2018
c. Timeline against other important grants, particularly Chinese
That R01 AI110964 grant was contemporaneous to other grants involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) [see footnote 3 for sources]:
- The PREDICT-2 project managed by USAID, for which Peter Daszak was P.I. on Subcontract (P.I. Jonna Mazet).
- A 3-year grant 31800142 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (国家自然科学基金委员会), focussed on lab work on two novel bat SARS-related CoVs, with testing on humanized mice (2019–01–01 to 2021–12–31) (P.I. Ben Hu)
- Another 3-year ‘Bat Virology’ grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, with exactly the same schedule as the 31800142 grant, but for which there is not much detail (P.I. Ben Hu).
- A 4-year grant 31770175 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, focusing on the evolution mechanisms of the adaptation of bat SARS-related coronaviruses to host receptor (P.I. Shi Zhengli).
- A 5-year grant XDB2901000 from the strategy priority research program of the Chinese Academy of sciences, focusing on the genetic evolution and transmission mechanism of important bat borne viruses (started in July 2018) (P.I. Shi Zhengli).
2. Request for Change of Geographical Focus
2.1 Request for change of geographical focus (2016)
In May 2016, in the second year of 1R01 AI110964, Peter Daszak asked his Program Officer (Erik Stemmy) whether he could refocus the work on sampling in Seven south East Asia country. He explained the requested change by the recent determination that the countries bordering Southern China (Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos), and further South Thailand and Cambodia, are zoonotic hotspots that require better viral surveillance, especially considering the increasing wildlife trade routes from these countries to China [item 2].
In the initial request, samples collection is supposed to be done over short trips by Chinese teams, or by in-country personal out of budgeted China field work [item 8]. The samples are supposed to be transferred to the WIV in China to be tested there at no extra cost [item 5].
2.2 List of Partners and details of Work (2017)
Sampling in these new countries is supposed to take place in years 4 and 5 (June 2017 to end May 2019) of the grant award [item 3].
The wording of the exact activities considered is rather confusing:
- One email dated January 2017 stipulated that only the extracted viral DNA would be sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [item 8], while in the grant documentation dated May 2016 [item 5] and in an accompanying email [item 2], it is instead stated that the samples themselves are supposed to be tested at the WIV.
- Another e-mail mentions ‘shipments of bats and other high-risk hosts’ to the WIV, we consider it likely that this actually means (i) shipment of bat samples (blood and faecal), plus (ii) two euthanised bats by batch of 30 per sampled species for tissue banking [item 9][footnote 4].
The intended testing at the WIV is further confirmed in various emails of 2017 [items 6, 7] and 2018 [item 9]:
All the listed partners for these South East Asia countries were vetted by State Department at the request of NIH in early 2017:
In early 2017, following a request by Eric Stemmy (program manager) a description of the intended sampling was provided by EcoHealth Alliance [item 4]. The animal to be tested are bats, rodents and small carnivores.
2.3 Repeat of the list of partners and details of work (2018)
In June 2018 Eco Health Alliance repeated the list of partners and the work to be done, while discussing year 5 of the grant with NIH per emails. Note the ‘As per last year’.
3. Constraints to the addition of these new countries
3.1 Main sanction programs:
In around 2016–2019, some of the countries considered, namely Myanmar and Laos, started getting into the focus of US international sanctions. China itself was not the object of sanctions.
3.1.a Myanmar: Burmese Sanctions Regulations
In 1998, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issues the Burmese Sanctions Regulations. These stayed in place, with some amendments along the way, until its termination by Presidential Order on 7 October 2016.
3.1.b Global: Trafficking Victims Protection Act
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 established an annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, in order to offer a status update on the state of global human trafficking. The TIP is published by the U.S. State Department’s TIP Office, and is the basis of possible sanctions under the TVPA.
The TIP report organizes countries into tiers based on trafficking records: Tier 1 for nations that meet minimum U.S. standards; Tier 2 for those making significant efforts to meet those standards; Tier 2 ‘Watch List’ for those that deserve special scrutiny; and Tier 3 for countries that are not making significant efforts.
3.1.c Consequences for the grant
2017:
As mentioned in the ‘Burma Assistance Activity InfoShare & Post / Mission Concurrence Request’ of March 2017 [item 16 and footnote 5], which is part of EHA reporting for the grant, the Burma Sanction Program was terminated in October 2016. Also in 2017, the Myanmar TIP rating improved from Tier 3 to Tier 2 ’Watch List’ [item 24].
Hence, two sanction programs affecting Myanmar were lifting temporarily in 2017. However, even at that time, the grant Infoshare was rather cautious in the possibility of falling under other sanction programs [footnote 5].
2018:
This cautiousness was warranted: in 2018, the Myanmar TIP rating reverted to Tier 3. Laos also went into Tier-3 that year.
As Myanmar and Laos were drawing particular attention from the White House in 2018, the situation raised pointed concerns within USAID, which feared that the debursing of FY 2018 grant money to government entities of Laos or Myanmar may soon become a major issue [footnote 6].
3.1.d Consequences on China
China had turned Tier-3 in 2017 and remained there, but — initially— without specific concern expressed under TVPA. This made China an ideal candidate to do the sampling in Laos and Myanmar, thus bypassing TVPA restrictions.
However, in April 2019 the implications for China were clearly spelt out in internal EHA documents (emphases added):
All contracted research institutes for PREDICT/China are government-affiliated, so government partnership and support are required for PREDICT/China activities. Therefore, the implications of restricting or halting currently budgeted funds for PREDICT China will cripple current surveillance collection and communication of results of analyses, as well as cause a critical lapse in maintenance of our new and integral partnerships and networks. The impacts of 1) halting funding contracts in China and 2) halting spending any money in-country would include the following:
• PREDICT will not be able to fund salaries for vital PREDICT China personnel including i) team coordinators, ii) field and laboratory staff, those who will continue producing high-quality publishable results, and who have been conducting training, education, and communication with communities and government for program outreach.
• PREDICT field and lab investigation, as well as current outreach activities to communities and policy-makers would be cancelled because no governmental approval would be obtained to communicate PREDICT findings and conduct activities in the field or in communities requiring governmental approval through our PREDICT/China local partners.
• PREDICT will not be able to complete approved workplans as well as to serve the global community, including completing planned laboratory assays for all 5 targeted viral families on previously collected human and wildlife samples, as well as extra planned serological testing with newly developed assays by PREDICT/China. All untested samples (~2,500) would remain untested, since no biological samples may be transported abroad from China according to current federal regulations. Exceptions to this regulation are few and require years of international negotiations.
• PREDICT/China will not be able to communicate findings of both local and international communities, including obtaining governmental approvals to release data for sharing or publishing, informing communities and policy-makers regarding PREDICT findings and potential infectious diseases risks. PREDICT risks ensuring the maintenance and continued analyses of the data and information complied from the past 4 years of PREDICT/China work for public communication.
• PREDICT will not be able to continue surveillance or emergence preparedness and response activities, via pathogen discovery, professional training, and community education, to protect human and animal from the emerging infectious diseases in China and other countries where pathogens will be spread through intensive trade and human movement.
3.2 Solution to funding constraints for NIH R01 AI110964
3.2.1 Eventual solution:
The eventual solution to the potential TVPA restriction is rather simple: no direct funding by EcoHealth Alliance under the grant.
As described right back in 2016 and reiterated in 2018 [items 5, 10], all the efforts expended in Myanmar, Lao, Cambodia, etc, are meant to come from collaborative partners which are not remunerated under the grant. These partners shall also directly ship the collected samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for testing.
In other words, there is no payment to justify for any activity (‘effort expended’) in these countries, hence no TVPA restriction (based on a narrow interpretation, that is). This also makes it possible to modify the grant mid-course without having to seek further funding [item 10].
While the principle seems simple, the documentation is somewhat confusing:
- Part of that confusion is due to the evolution of the solution over time, especially in 2017 and early 2017, before implementation.
- The remaining confusion is plain inadequate documentation, even once the eventual solution was reached. This likely reflects the inherent contradictions of having some work performed apparently for free.
3.2.2 Evolution of the solution
Let’s remember that the sampling in these new countries is supposed to take place in years 4 and 5, precisely from start June 2017 to end May 2019. This is important to distinguish between what relates to planning (pre-June 2017) and what relates to implementation (thereafter).
a. Testing Costs:
Item 5 (May 2016) explains that the cost of testing is avoided by sending the samples for testing at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This is further confirmed in all subsequent communications right to 2018, in the implementation stage [items 5, 10].
EcoHealth Alliance has other activities in these countries which would provide leverage to reduce costs of fieldwork, and samples would be tested in Wuhan , China.
[item 5, 13 May 2016]As per last year, we will not be subcontracting any funds to the institutions in these countries. All efforts expended in these countries will be from collaborating partners and not funded by our award.
[item 10, 13 June 2018]
Note that sending the samples to the US would not help: any lab in the US would need to be paid for that activity, so Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance seem to be happy having the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing these out of its own funding — without much consideration to any sample ownership or data sharing.
Once testing is taken out, the role left to the collaborative partners, in these South East Asian countries targeted by the geographical extension, is basically sample collection and coordination of shipping to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
b. Sampling Costs:
The evolution of the solution for the sampling is more complex than for the testing, with some slight change of plan in 2017 before converging back in 2018.
May 2016 — Planning (Item 5):
As to the cost of sampling activities, Item 5 further explains that EHA intend to get that cost down within the new countries for this grant, by “leveraging” other activities in these countries under some other EHA grants (from NIH, PREDICT or others).
This seems to mean that other EHA grants involving these in-country partners or collaborators could be used to offset the otherwise partial compensation of the work done under this specific grant. This could be described as a game of transfer, with potential over-charging in these other grants to come even overall.
February 2017 — Planning (item 8):
Another communication of February 2017 may provide further insights into the scheme being contemplated:
‘Samples will be collected by either our current China field team personnel working directly with our collaborators in these countries or by respective in-country personnel and require no more than 10% budget modification total (from already budgeted China fieldwork) for any non-China in-country work’.
[item 8, February 2017]
First, this clarifies that either:
- China field team personnel working with local teams (from collaborators in these country) would do the sampling, or
- In-country personnel (not collaborators) would do the sampling.
Then, item 8 adds that the remuneration would be through the Chinese fieldwork budget for non-China in-country work (basically sampling and sending the samples to the WIV), necessitating a less than 10% adjustment.
That may seem a bit incongruous in case (2) above, where in-country personnel is supposed to do the sampling. How compensation via China would reach them is not clear. The most likely explanation is that the maximum 10% adjustment would not cover (2).
The remuneration of in-country teams in case (2) may in fact be better understood by the ‘leveraging’ mentioned in item 5. There, ‘leveraging’ effectively means remuneration via other projects, under different grants, involving these in-country teams.
June 2018 — Implementation (item 10):
The max 10% modification from already budgeted China fieldwork for sampling in these neighbouring countries disappears from the subsequent emails.
On 13 June 2018, so in the implementation phase, while describing the just started year 5 of the grant and thus the second year of activities if these new countries, item 10 simply states that ‘As per last year [..], All efforts expended in these countries will be from collaborating partners and not funded by our award’.
3.2.3 Questions
The solution eventually retained and executed in years 4 and 5 of the grant raises some important questions:
- What is the supposed relation between the China field team and the local collaborators in these countries?
- Why would local collaborators agree for Chinese teams to do this sampling and for the WIV to receive the samples?
- Are there legal or regulatory difficulties to letting China do the sampling in these countries and letting them ship the samples exclusively to the WIV for testing?
- How would the residual work (possibly just supervision) of the local collaborators be remunerated? Or are the local sampling teams totally shunted?
- Is the sideway compensation of in-country teams via other projects acceptable given PREDICT, NIH and other applicable regulations?
3.2.4 Summary:
In the end, the planned solution is confusing, not really landing on one clear configuration and full of remaining issues.
What appears to be clear is that EHA hoped to remove some of the in-country cost of sampling by having the sampling preferably done by Chinese teams working with local teams. If not possible, the sampling would still be done by in-country partners or personal. In all cases, whatever work is done by in-country collaborators or personnel would be remunerated indirectly by ‘leveraging’ other EHA grants. In all case also, the samples would be tested at the WIV, at no cost to EHA.
The whole approach seems particularly reckless, in terms of its potential lack of respect of applicable regulations, but also in the essential role it gives to the Chinese teams, without any proper chance of control or access, especially as to the results of testing.
3.3 From ‘One-Road, One-Belt’ projects to the China Virome Project:
It is important to notice that around 2017, China has already earmarked funds for similar international sampling program that it would lead under its ‘One-Belt, One-Road’ ambitions. The integration of such programs as part of its ambitious and strategic out-reaching ‘One-Belt, One-Road’ program would have likely cut the US off some important sampling activities in the region.
Precisely in February 2017 when that item 8 was written, George Gao announced the launch of the China Virome Project, with Chinese funding via the 973 program and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. [items 11, 12, 13, 14a, 14b]. (See also this GVP thread for more documentary evidence.)
3.4 The mother of all grants for EcoHealth Alliance:
One way to understand that enthusiastic transfer of key responsibilities to China, is to remember that at the very same time, as its PREDICT grants were soon going mature (2019), EHA was hoping to get China to play a leading role in the Global Virome Project (a very ambitious and controversial program for $1.3bln of grants).
Zooming out further, the geographical refocusing of the NIH grant may be understood as a necessary bridge between the maturing PREDICT and the hoped-for GVP, for the purpose of sampling in these South East Asian countries. It was also very likely a way of getting Chinese teams to join the GVP by giving them major roles with little supervision.
Getting China to play a larger role in sampling and testing [items 11, 12, 13, 14] was thus very much a strategic development that EHA hopped to see materialize, on top of the tactical advantage offered by the fact that it reduced the need to ask for supplementary funds to do the additional work required under the geographical extension.
3.5 Serious doubts:
Some doubts nevertheless quickly emerged as to the ability of China to share its data and to work collaboratively [footnote 8].
4. Review of the work under the geographical extension
4.1 From planning to execution
As we have seen earlier, after some initial confusion, the grant documentation [items 6, 7, 9] clearly established that all the ‘partnering entities’ shall send their samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology .
In particular, he explicitly confirmed in a June 2018 email [item 8], that, ‘As per last year, we will not be subcontracting any funds to the institutions in these countries. All efforts expended in these countries will be from collaborating partners and not funded by our award’, thus making any TVPA sanction apparently irrelevant.
4.2 Post execution: the Official Record (April 2020)
One internal NIH/NIAID email of April 2020 [item 18], written nearly a year after the end of the in-countries activities under the geographical extension (31 May 2019), clearly states that all the ‘partnering entities’
- managed their sample collections,
- sent their samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
- which then analysed them,
- except for the dutifully recorded exception of Laos, where work is said not to have proceeded.
The sites below were part of the prior award, and all had the same role. Samples were collected from animals from each of these sites (urban centers, rural areas, and live animal markets), and were sent to VIV and analyzed to determine what coronaviruses are present and what receptors the viruses use to infect cells. The individual sites listed below managed sample collection within each country.
4. San Pya Clinic, BURMA
5. Institut Pasteur du Cambodge, CAMBODIA
6. Primate Research Center at Bogor Agricultural University, INDONESIA
7. Conservation Medicine, Ltd, MALAYSIA
8. King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, THAILAND
9. Hanoi Agricultural University, VIETNAM
10. National Animal Health Laboratory, LAOS — Per email from PI dated 9/27/2018, they were unable to begin work at this site due to difficulties with the local government.[item 18, April 2020, post in-country activities under extension]
That April 2020 email exchange was for the very purpose of the official review of the activities under these countries as per the annual grant reporting. The exception for Laos refers to a previous email from Peter Daszak (PI under the grant) from 27 Sep 2018, and strongly hints that the whole information is a fair representation of these past activities, obtained directly from EcoHealth alliance.
One of two things must have happened:
- Either no sampling took place in these countries and no sample were ever sent to the WIV.
If so, that email is a gross misrepresentation of the work done under the grant, most likely traceable to direct communications from EcoHealth Alliance (as both logic and the Laos exception hint). - Or the samples were indeed sent to the WIV.
If so, this raises serious issues of loss of control of the samples as discussed above, with essential implications on understanding which virus samples and then sequences were added to the WIV collections from June 2017 to end 2019.
Additionally, but of no consequence for the origin question, if sampling took place, there are additional compliance issues regarding the indirect remuneration of these in-country partners, with likely implications regarding TVPA and USAID/PREDICT regulations.
4.3 The Laos exception — some contradictions:
The reason given in item 18 for the Laos exception is some ‘difficulties with the local government’. That email was sent in April 2020, so after the outbreak started and when Peter Daszak has already positioned himself very clearly for a natural origin.
That April 2020 email refers to another email from September 2018, which (in theory at least) could still have left some time for sampling before the end of 1R01 AI110964 8 months later (31 May 2019), if these administrative problems were solved.
The exception of Laos was also confirmed by EcoHealth Alliance in some tweets [item 17]. However, these posts only add another level of confusion:
- A different reason for not sampling in Laos is offered: ‘higher priority to continue our focus on China’ [tweet, item 17] instead of ‘difficulties with the local government’ [NIH email, item 18]
- The tweets can also be interpreted as a denial of sampling in all the countries under that geographical extension, not just Laos, in line with the alleged ‘higher priority to continue our focus on China’.
- That ‘higher priority’ does not show up in any email in any case. On the contrary, all emails exchanged with the NIH confirm a desired focus on the additional countries.
- Item 18 confirms the sampling in the added countries (ex Laos). It even starts by highlighting that the renewed grant (2R01 — renewed grant, starting June 2019) with its filed-work focus on China, is not at all representative of the work done to May 2019 (1R01 — initial grant).
It is fair to say that EHA does not seem to be able to offer a coherent story as to the sampling in the countries, as the tweets are in total contradiction with its official communications with the NIH.
Last, for the sake of clarity, we have documented PREDICT sampling in Laos under other grants. Hence, the Laos exception under this specific grant does not mean that neither EHA nor China did not have access to Laos’ samples. The opposite is actually true.
4.4 Work done by the WIV on the samples:
4.4.1 Detail of the work
As noted previously, the sampling and in-country activities in these additional countries were conducted from June 2017 to May 2019
This is why item 18, which was written in April 2020 when the 2R01 focus had moved to China and Singapore, refers back to the picture as of early 2019 in order to give a realistic view of countries activities under the last two years of the 1R01.
The same FOI’d document contains a useful description of the work done by the WIV on the samples it received [item 19]:
Coronavirus screening and serology of non-human samples, viral pathogenesis, serological testing, host receptor binding, spike (S) protein sequencing, and in vitro and in vivo virus characterisation.
[item 19]
4.4.2 Comparison to other projects
The focus of the work done by the WIV on these samples was very much in line with what the WIV was either planning to do or already doing at that time, under other projects.
For instance, we can look at the similarity between that work done at the WIV on the samples in around 2018–19 [item 2019] and the ‘Host-Pathogen Prediction’ part of EcoHealth Alliance DEFUSE proposal to DARPA (unfunded), written in March 2018 [item 20]:
Sequence QS0, spike protein similarity to high-risk SARS-CoVs, model spike structure to assess ACE2 binding, then in vitro and ACE2 humanized mouse experiments.
We may also see that convergence in one of Ben Hu [footnote 7] grants: the grant 31800142, from 1 Jan 2019 to 31 Dec 2021, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China:
Pathogenicity studies of two novel bat SARS-CoVs on transgenic mice expressing human ACE2.
[item 20]
5. Collaborative Partners — The Puzzle
5.1 A simple check:
Various people, including from DRASTIC, have tried to contact the in-country partners for the geographical extension, or their institutions, listed in Item 8, to check their exact activities under the grant documentation and the grant internal updates.
Two have replied: André Spiegel (Director, Pasteur Institute of Cambodia) and Aung Than Toe (San Pya Clinic of Myanmar).
Veasna Duong (Institut Pasteur du Cambodge) is the in-country contact for Cambodia under the R01AI110964 grant geographical extension.
He is also PREDICT country coordinator for Cambodia, and works for the local branch of a top international viral research institution. Hence, his selection as in-country contact under this NIH grant is rather logical
Aung Than Toe (San Pya clinic) is the in-country contact for Myanmar under the grant geographical extension.
San Pya Clinic is a non-government organization, which effectively removes that applicability of US sanctions that could restrict payment to Myanmar government government-affiliated organisations. One may contrast this with PREDICT-2 which was in a contractual relation with a government entity, LBVD, leading to difficulties.
Aung Than Toe explained to DRASTIC that, while the San Pya clinic is technically a physiotherapy clinic founded by his father, his father got involved with testing bat samples for PREDICT because he was a very senior teaching doctor, who counted the minister of health and head of department of medical research as an ex student of his [item 21].
5.2 Not the expected answers:
Both Institut Pasteur du Cambodge and San Pya clinic stated that they were never involved in the grant and never sent any samples to the WIV under it [items 21, 22].
André Spiegel, the Director of the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge, adds that his institution was not even contacted by EcoHealth Alliance:
We were not involved in the project led by EcoHealth Alliance that was submitted to the NIH in 2017.
We were not contacted by EcoHealth Alliance to provide support or to join in the above mentioned project.
We confirm that we did not send any samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
[André Spiegel, Director of Pasteur Institute of Cambodia, Feb 2024]
It is extraordinary that these in-country personnel were vetted by the State Department in early 2017 at the demand of the NIH, listed in the NIH R01AI110964 grant documentation, confirmed as being involved in that grant communications with NIH/NAID [item 18], then confirmed as having done the work stated as recently as April 2020 [item 19], without them having done the actual work, or having even been consulted.
One must emphasize that the grant documentation for years 2016 to 2020 are essential documents, based on which funding decisions are being taken, the results of the grant evaluated, and possible renewal decided.
In that context, the documents for the grant updates of 2017–18 and the summary of activities dated April 2020, all sent to the NIH, are required to give a true picture of the activity planned or done under the grant.
5.3 Trying to make sense of it:
I suspect that EHA was thinking of actually letting Chinese teams do the work (as was mentioned if the early discussion about the grant extension), since they were trying to get them to take the lead in the GVP, Part of that GVP push was also to use existing grants to help Chinese teams sample.
EHA may have waited, as getting these other teams to do the sampling could have been counter-productive for that GVP effort (the grant was initially focussed on China, so it would look bad to start sampling in these neighbouring countries under that very grant while telling China that it should take a lead in the GVP and that EHA will help it do so).
In the end:
- Maybe the Chinese teams did not do the sampling, and EHA did not ask again for that geographical extension in the 2R01, just to keep preserving its chances of China taking that lead role in the GVP.
- Or the Chinese teams did some sampling there, and all that was then needed for EHA was to focus back on China for the lab work in the 2R01.
5.4 The bottom-line:
What is sure is that:
- This is linked to the GVP.
- Daszak is once again not telling the full story.
- Whatever the reason for it, the grant documentation and later the internal updates, which all refer to alleged activities with these in-country partners, are completely unacceptable.
- The buck stops with the P.I. (Daszak).
For context, the GVP had a national security implication; Daszak even tried to pitch it as a way to identify man-made viruses to the DoD, and hid that fact until it was released via FOIs. One can conclude that the State Dept and the NIH cut him a lot of slack, despite the obvious grant documentation abuses. One small part of a general pattern [footnote 10].
DRASTIC:
My question is were any bats or bat samples shipped or sent to Wuhan and if so, when and what samples or bats?
I was kind of surprised it said “shipment of bats” as I had assumed it would only be DNA samples.
Hope you don’t mind answering.Aung Toe:
Oh, this is not right. Let me look into it.
My father and I was only associated with Smithsonian for any kind of bat samples hence the “San Pya “ clinic name in there.
Technically it’s a physiotherapy clinic.
My dad was involved only because he is a very senior teaching doctor and the minister of health and head of dept of medical research was also an ex student.DRASTIC:
You sent samples to UCD [UC Davis], right? Under PREDICT.Aung Toe:
Under PREDICT. But it’s through the Smithsonian.
I was only involved as project coordinator for a year.
And then moved to UCD.
Under UCD, we didn’t collect ba[t] samples.
Eco health alliance wasn’t the one who was granted Myanmar during PREDICT as well.
It was the Smithsonian. Under Suzan Murray.[item 21: conversation between DRASTIC amd Aung Toe, Nov 10, 2021]
6. Conclusions
6.1 Many issues with R01 AI110964
EHA R01 grant AI110964 had already been the object of an investigation for late and confusing reporting of mice infectious experiments done in years 4 and 5, following FOIs released by the Intercept in 2021. Of particular concern was that EHA had not adhered to its very own criteria for stopping work done at the WIV that greatly increased pathogenicity of MERS coronaviruses. The investigation determined material non-compliance with the conditions of the grant, resulting in the suspension of the R02 in Aug 2022 [footnotes 9].
This article raises additional serious concerns about the documentation of programmed sampling work in South East Asian country bordering China precisely in years 4 and 5, with possible direct involvement of Chinese teams.
We have shown that:
- The early discussions about the geographical focus of sampling to these additional South East Asian countries considered having Chinese teams taking a leading role in the sampling and having these samples shipped directly to the WIV, while the final documentation lists in-country entities as responsible for that work.
- Multiple official communications with the NIH during the execution of the activities in the additional South East Asian countries, such as the grant updates for 2017–18, or the post 1R01 grant summary of 2020 [item 18], ascertain that in-country entities in South East Asia (except for Laos) did some local sampling and sent the samples to the WIV.
- Surprisingly, the in-country entities in Myanmar and Cambodia are on record as not having done any work for EHA under that grant, or having not even an idea or why their name is on the grant.
- Further communications by EHA on social media, seem to deny any activity done at all in these additional South Eastern Asia countries, while offering some incoherent reason for it [item 17].
The above contradictions in the work reported are clear and established. There are not based on interpretation, partial quoting or other artefacts.
6.2 A bigger issue
It is established that EHA, with some Support from the State Department, was hoping to see China take a lead in the GVP.
Guided by its own priorities, and backed by its own grants, China was also already earmarking funds for such work as part of its own Road-and-Belt initiatives, as embassy communications and Chinese grants show.
China did not particularly need the GVP to do so. However, at that time, it is fair to say that the GVP needed China, first if it wanted to have a seat in the work that China was already planning to do with its own funding programs, but all the more so towards 2019 as other GVP funding options did not materialize, and the US did not seem particularly interested in taking the lead.
For context, there is also a dominant picture emerging of a quantitative jump in the coronaviruses work done or planned by China, starting in 2017, from sampling activities to wet work in labs. The US was finding itself at the inflection point where, more often than not, it may have to play catch-up with its China, especially in a context of US regulatory and funding constraints.
One cannot fail to observe a pattern of inconsistencies in reporting and alleged activities for years 4 and 5 of the grant, and of obfuscation by EHA. In that context, it is worth noting that it is quite possible that EHA did not have good access to essential information as it gave some leeway to its Chinese partners over these two years, as an incentive for them to join the GVP, or even take a lead in it.
In any case — and that is key — EHA would certainly have found difficult to try to enforce constraining external controls without actually jeopardizing the very idea of a productive US-China scientific collaboration in the GVP that EHA was trying to push at that time, with some support from the State Department. Compared to the Chinese ways of doing things, that level of control from the US partner would have been rather off-putting and clearly not the best advertising for the GVP. EHA would have been very well aware of that dilema, and would have most likely acted so as to preserve the GVP chances [footnote 10].
footnotes:
[1]: The cognizant entity of the grant, as with most federal grants to EcoHealth Alliance, was the US Department of Defense (DoD), reflecting the fact that the DoD is the Federal agency with the largest dollar value of Federal awards to EcoHealth Alliance, most of it coming through the DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency).
See the Code of Federal Regulations: § 200.1 for the definition of the Cognizant Agency for Indirect Costs, and Appendix IV to part 200, paragraph C.2.a, for the rule governing the designation of that Cognizant Agency, applicable to EHA.
[2]: The extension for 2019–24 (the 2R01) regroups all the usual main actors in chimera creations and related pathogenicity studies in humanized mice.
See for instance the DEFUSE proposal that DARPA eventually refused to fund, and which was supposed to run exactly at the same time for that type of core research: it had precisely Daszak, Ben Hu, Baric, and Linfa Wang among its principal scientists.
From the DEFUSE proposal for PREEMPT of March 2018, we can see that a trimmed down version of DEFUSE focussing on PI-Task 3 and PI-Task 4 (in other words, on the core part very much in line with the work at the WIV at the time) would take about:
- 3 months to start in-vivo pathogenesis studies in humanized mice,
- 9 months to start testing synthetic modifications of spike proteins,
- 1 year to start testing the effects of low-abundance, high consequence micro-variations on jump potential, going on to about 1 year and 9 months.
We further note that sampling in Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam for potential pathogenic SARS-Like virus would indeed make a lot of sense in 2017–2019, is reflected in the work plan of DEFUSE Part 1, even if it was not funded. In fact, the best way to understand DEFUSE is as EHA attempt to stay in the loop, as China was moving ahead anyway with this kind of research, rather aggressively and fast, starting around 2016–17.
Chinese research-of-interest does not require US funding to be a reality, once China has the know-how. No more than US research of interest requires Chinese funding! And by 2017, China had received some key coronavirus chimera know-how from the US and was tooling up, especially in synthetic biology (which raised many red flags in some circles in the US). Thus DEFUSE tells us what China and especially the WIV were focussing on at the time, after some repackaging for a US grant.
[3]: As per Ben Hu and Shi Zhengli CVs in the documentation of 2R01 AI110964.
[4]: For the mention of two euthanised bats per species sampled in batches of 30, see:
[5]: The ‘Burma Assistance Activity InfoShare & Post/Mission Concurrence Request’ of March 2017 [items a, b, c] is worth dissecting further. We find:
- An introduction with ‘There are no restrictions on this work proposed in Myanmar’ while it is at the same time stated that ‘No funds will be sent directly to Myanmar’ and ‘No funds are presently planned to be sent to Myanmar’. This caution reflects the uncertainty of the 2017 Tier 2 ‘Watch List’ rating, which indeed did revert to Tier 3 in 2018.
- Somewhat confusingly, an acknowledgement of possible other limitations under USG sanctions and ‘other superseding actions’ beyond the Burma Sanctions Program (as of 2017). This does not square very well with the previous statement that ‘There are no restrictions on this work proposed in Myanmar’.
- An implicit acknowledgement of issues picked up by the Embassy committee and ‘others on the ground in Myanmar’.
- A statement that this is a ‘new project conducted in Myanmar [that] does not duplicate any known projects in this area’, which is in contradiction with (1) USAID PREDICT work in Myanmar at that time, (2) item 5 that states ’EcoHealth Alliance has other activities in these countries which would provide leverage to reduce costs of fieldwork.’
Burma InfoShare request (2017):|
On 16 March 2017, someone at EcoHealth Alliance filled in a request for work in Myanmar. That version had $3,000 per year earmarked for San Pya Clinic (Myanmar) [item a].
- The Word document had a comment that has been blanked in the FOI under the (b) (5) exemption. On the same day, Erik Stemmy, the program manager, also asked Alison Andre at EcoHealth Alliance (cc Peter Daszak) to ‘confirm the total amount of US$ to be sent to Myanmar for the work’ [item b].
- A few days later, on 24 Mar 2017, a new version was submitted with the statement that ‘No funds will be sent directly to Myanmar’. That is the only difference with the version submitted the 16 Mar 2016 [item c].
For the administrative context, the form submitted was ‘lnfoShare & Post / Mission Concurrence Request’.
A ‘Mission Concurrence Request’ form is needed by USAID once some prospective country of performance has been identified, as in the case of the geographical extension.
[6]: For some understanding of the TVPA restrictions:
- Solidarity Center — Myanmar, Turkmenistan Failing U.S. Trafficking Standards
- Congressional Research Service: U.S. Restrictions on Relations with Burma, Updated March 18, 2020
[7]: Ben Hu is one of the most important scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, just behind Shi Zhengli. As such, he was also part of the WIV team in the DEFUSE proposal. See his interview for some good background: https://bit.ly/Ben_Hu_Interview_2017.
[8] A critical mind might have pointed at the time that the whole GVP collaboration idea was unlikely to appeal to China:
- If there were financial benefits to be had from that work, the Chinese would likely want them for themselves, especially since they were already planning to take the lead on biotechnologies. There are not in the habit of hugging their main competitor.
- If there were DURC applications, the Chinese would not want to hand them over to the US, especially given Xi bellicose agenda. What is the point of helping the US army develop drugs for a possible conflict in South East Asia?
However, this was 2017–19, and most experts (with some exceptions) were still deluding themselves about the behaviour and intentions of China.
[9] These reporting and documentary issues for years 4 and 5 have received a lot of attention from the NIH and the media. A recent FOI has also delivered an internal presentation by Michael Lauer, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, that gives a good summary.
[10] David Franz, advisor to EcoHealth Alliance, has very regularly made the point that the US regulatory approach would simply end up reducing US biodefense preparedness and scientific competitiveness, while other countries would anyway rush ahead, unburdened by such strict regulations.
He also pushed for international cooperation in this field along a regular (some would say dated) Track II DoD/DTRA approach, to try to take care of some of the biosafety risks, and to try to slowly build some trust and goodwill, as a way to understand what others are doing and to work towards common standards. Gigi Gronvall, who has worked a lot on these biosafety and competition questions alongside Franz, is today pushing the same message and is one of the most ardent defender of EHA.