LA Times Business page opinion column laments
Democrats prove that they’re no better than Trump in allowing politics to interfere with science
It wasn’t just that the GOP majority used the occasion to promote the ignorant, imbecilic and 100% evidence-free notion that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID pandemic, originated in a Chinese laboratory, through work funded by the U.S. government, and overseen by EcoHealth
Italics mine.
Imagine: despite repeated leaks that show that covid came from a lab leak from the Wuhan lab, and that the guy who ran Ecohealth and his friends at the CDC helped him cover it up, they continue to gaslight you.
Notice this is in the business section of the paper?
I am old enough to remember when Democrats were the ones that defended the little guy from the toxic policies of big business, so I am happy some of them still remember they represent ordinary folk, not the interest of big business, or maybe the interest of the military industrial complex.(a conspiracy theory first promoted by that right wing idiot (/s) President Eisenhower)?
the LAT article continues:
On Wednesday, the bell tolled. EcoHealth received a notice from the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the NIH, that it was immediately suspending all funding to the organization and moving to “debar” it from federal funding going forward.
rejoice. Problem settled, and in a bipartisan manner!
Or maybe not.
Why do I say this?
Well, as I have posted before, about two years ago, a sharp eyed congressman noticed that Ecohealth was applying to start a lab here in the Philippines: Not to help us with animal viruses that are affecting our farmers, but to investigate viruses in the wild that might cause a problem if they moved to humans.
And the lab was stopped: Because it was not funded by the HHS, but the US Dept of Defense.
and that made the government suspicious.
So was the lab built? No news about it for awhile, but if you check the site, none of the money has been spent, so it looks as if the Philippine gov't stopped it.
so has any of the reports lamenting that Ecohealth is now defunded by the HHS noticed that Ecohealth was also funded by the US Dept of Defence?
This NYPost article from 2021 notes:
Pentagon gave millions to EcoHealth Alliance for weapons research program
federal spending data shows that EcoHealth has a long and profitable relationship with the Pentagon, receiving $41.91 million in awards since fiscal year 2008. That’s more than three times the next-largest amount awarded to it by any other agency over the same period ($13.17 million from the Department of Health and Human Services).
why was is the DoD funding research into germs, using a third party (not military labs) so they can hide what is being done?
the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which describes its mission as “to protect the United States and its allies by enabling the DoD and international partners to detect, deter, and defeat WMD and threat networks.”
italics mine.
Beginning in fiscal year 2014, the DTRA began awarding funding to EcoHealth for a work program labeled “Scientific Research – Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction”.
After three straight years in which awards were fewer than $1 million, the amounts sent to the program jumped considerably. In fiscal year 2017, $2.34 million of the $2.91 million EcoHealth received from DTRA went toward the weapons research. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, 100 percent of DTRA’s awards to EcoHealth went toward the program — $4.24 million, $2.99 million, and an eye-popping $21.33 million, respectively.
,,,,,
here is the justification:
in the National Guard, we had classes in how HIV would affect the readiness of the military, and our federal IHS clinic was given instructions after 911 on how to do ring vaccinations in case the terrorists released smallpox.
This work, which is essentially wargaming possible threats, is done to prepare for such disasters (not to plan the attacks, as real conspiracy theory crazies claim).
but it is a thin line between allowing research to protect you, and giving money to research that is dangerous, or to scientists who naively don't understand the danger of what they are doing.
Sigh.
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