Column: How Trump’s anti-science meddling erased 3 years of crucial COVID research

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is indicated in yellow. It is undisputable that the Trump White House ordered the National Institutes of Health to terminate a $3.4-million grant to EcoHealth in April 2020, based on entirely unfounded right-wingers’ claims that EcoHealth was funding so-called gain-of-function virus research in China, something they say could have allowed SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to escape from a Chinese laboratory and infect the world. While it is “impossible to say what would have been accomplished if the hiatus in funding did not occur,” former NIH director Harold Varmus told me by email, restoring the grant “cannot restore the three years in which was deprived of support for such critical work at a critical time.” Trump’s action magnified what already had become a targeted attack on EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak. “There are not many groups doing the granular grunt work needed to understand how these viruses emerge and transfer to humans.” The reason for the lab leak cabal’s targeting of EcoHealth is obvious. In an open letter addressed to NIH Director Francis Collins and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, 77 Nobel laureates said the cancellation “sets a dangerous precedent by interfering in the conduct of science and jeopardizes public trust in the process of awarding federal funds for research.” The laureates wrote that the NIH’s explanation for the cancellation was “preposterous under the circumstances.” “It was unprecedented for NIH to act in response to political pressure and cancel a grant,” Richard Roberts, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1993 and who organized the open letter, told me.