Ranking Member Ruiz’s Opening Statement at Select Subcommittee Hearing with the President of EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak

Washington, D.C. (May 1, 2024)—Below is Ranking Member Raul Ruiz, M.D.’s opening statement, as prepared for delivery, at today’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing to examine EcoHealth Alliance’s (EHA) relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Opening Statement
Ranking Member Raul Ruiz, M.D.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
“A Hearing with the President of EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak”
May 1, 2024

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When I was named Ranking Member of the Select Subcommittee last February, I made a commitment to follow the facts in objectively analyzing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I made a promise to keep an open mind about how the pandemic started because understanding whether the novel coronavirus emerged from a lab or from nature is essential to better preventing and preparing for future public health threats and to better protecting the American people.

And as the origins of the novel coronavirus remain inconclusive, I stand by these commitments to this day. 

But as we approach the year-and-a-half mark of the House Republican Majority, it’s important that we take stock of what the Select Subcommittee has accomplished so far—and the extent to which we have fulfilled our obligations to the American people.

For more than fourteen months, under the guise of investigating COVID’s origins, this Select Subcommittee has relentlessly probed the relationship between the federal government and our nation’s scientific community.

We have pored over more than 425,000 pages of documents provided to us by HHS, the State Department, DOE, the Government Accountability Office, universities, and private citizens.  We have conducted more than one hundred hours of closed-door interviews with more than a dozen current and former federal officials and scientists.  And we have held multiple hearings—all in what has appeared to be an effort to weaponize concerns about a lab-related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation’s scientists and public health officials for partisan gain.

And while the Select Subcommittee’s probe has uncovered questionable conduct about Dr. Daszak’s commitment to transparency and professional integrity, I want to be clear that it has not substantiated allegations that EcoHealth Alliance used taxpayer dollars to fund research that created the COVID-19 pandemic.

No evidence provided to the Select Subcommittee has indicated that the work performed under EcoHealth Alliance’s grant, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.

These viruses are too genetically distant from SARS-CoV-2 to be its progenitor virus, and the Majority has uncovered no tangible proof of other viruses included in work pursuant to the EcoHealth Alliance grant leading to the creation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This distinction is critically important.

Today, we will hear from both sides that there are serious concerns regarding EcoHealth Alliance’s failure to comply with reporting requirements for federal grantees—concerns that draw into question whether you, Dr. Daszak, sought to deliberately mislead regulators at NIH and NIAID.

And while the Majority’s probe has not meaningfully advanced our understanding of the pandemic’s origins, internal documents and testimony do suggest that Dr. Daszak potentially misled the federal government on multiple occasions in both their transparency obligations and reporting requirements as recipients of federal grant funding.

Transparent and forthcoming communication with federal government agencies is expected at all times, and this potential misconduct raises serious questions about EcoHealth Alliance’s commitment to the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

We will also examine whether Dr. Daszak, beyond his obligations as an employee of a federally funded grantee, acted with integrity in his engagement with the possibility that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related incident.

But at the end of the day, this is not the same as uncovering COVID-19’s origins, nor is it evidence that our scientific community caused and has sought to cover up the origins of the pandemic.  And to cast it as such would be misleading to the American public, damaging to already declining confidence in science and public health, and ultimately harmful to our nation’s pandemic preparedness. 

As we look to the future of fortifying our nation for future public health crises, it is my hope that we can broaden our focus to the forward-looking policies that will better protect our constituents.

Strengthening oversight of potentially risky research domestically and abroad is an essential part of this conversation, but so is closing pathways for zoonotic transfers of viruses in nature and investing in our public health infrastructure to ensure that when future viruses hit our shores, we are ready.

When Democrats were in the Majority, we made important strides in these objectives by passing the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023—which:

• Strengthened protections against undue influence in our biomedical research,
• Improved training and transparency for the handling of select agents,
• Paved the way for the interagency collaboration to fortify zoonotic disease prevention,
• Invested in our infectious disease workforce, and
• Enhanced our supply chain preparedness and ability to rapidly develop and deploy medical countermeasures.

It is my hope that in the remaining months of the Select Subcommittee, we can work together to build on this legacy—and make objectively examining the origins of the novel coronavirus a part of this forward-looking work.

I stand by the commitments I mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman—to take a serious, balanced look at all possibilities for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And I stand ready to work with you on this critically important mission so that we can save future lives.

Thank you, and I yield back.