Peter Daszak | |
|---|---|
 Daszak speaking in 2017 | |
| Education | Bangor University (B.Sc.) University of East London (Ph.D.) |
| Occupation | Zoologist |
| Employer(s) | Kingston University University of Georgia Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Columbia University |
Peter Daszak is a Britishzoologist, consultant and public expert ondisease ecology, in particular onzoonosis. He is a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at theColumbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[1][2] Daszak was the president ofEcoHealth Alliance, anonprofitnon-governmental organization that supports various programs onglobal health and pandemic prevention, until January 2025.[3][4][5][1]
Daszak and other virologists long warned of the potential ofSARS-likecoronaviruses to cause epidemics like those seen in the2002–2004 SARS outbreak or the 2012MERS outbreak, and Daszak collaborated with theWuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to study coronaviruses in China. After the outbreak of theCOVID-19 pandemic, Daszak became a member of theWorld Health Organization team sent toinvestigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.[6] Daszak became a frequent victim of criticism, accusations, and threats, obscuring research into theOrigin of SARS-CoV-2.[6] The virus is thought by scientists to haveemerged naturally via zoonosis in late 2019.
In 2024, Daszak was questioned by members of U.S. congress, in what virologistAngela Rasmussen warned was "essentially an attack on science."[7] In 2025, theUnited States Department of Health and Human Services debarred Daszak for five years, alleging reporting irregularities and criticizing Daszak's research in China.[8]
Daszak earned aB.Sc. in zoology in 1987, atBangor University and a Ph.D. inparasitic infectious diseases in 1994 atUniversity of East London.[1]
Daszak worked at the School of Life Sciences,Kingston University, in Surrey, England in the 1990s. In the late 1990s Daszak moved to the United States and was affiliated with theInstitute of Ecology at theUniversity of Georgia and theNational Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, inAtlanta,Georgia. Around 2001 he became executive director at a collaborativethink-tank inNew York City, the Consortium for Conservation Medicine.[9] He has adjunct positions at two universities in the U.K. and three universities in the U.S., including theColumbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[1][10]
He was one of the early adopters ofconservation medicine.[11] TheSociety for Conservation Biology symposium in 2000, had focused on the "complex problem of emerging diseases".[11] He said in 2001 that there were "almost no examples of emerging wildlife diseases not driven by human environmental change...[a]nd few human emerging diseases don't include some domestic animal or wildlife component." His research has focused on investigating and predicting the impacts of new diseases on wildlife, livestock, and human populations, and he has been involved in research studies on epidemics such as theNipah virus infection, theAustralian Hendra outbreaks, the2002–2004 SARS outbreak,Avian influenza, and theWest Nile virus.[12]
Starting in 2014, Daszak wasPrincipal Investigator of a six-year NIH project which was awarded to theEcoHealth Alliance and which focused on the emergence of novel zoonotic coronaviruses with a bat origin.[13] Among the aims of the project was to characterize the diversity and distribution ofSevere acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV) in bats, viruses with a significant risk of spillover, in southern China, based on data from spike protein sequences, infectious clone technology, infection experiments (both in vitro and in vivo), as well as analysis of receptor binding.[14] The six 1-year projects received $3.75 million in funding from theNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the U.S.National Institutes of Health agency.[13]
Daszak has served on committees of theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature,World Health Organization (WHO),National Academy of Sciences, andUnited States Department of the Interior.[1] He is a member of theNational Academy of Medicine and Chair of theNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)'s Forum on Microbial Threats and sits on the supervisory board of theOne Health Commission Council of Advisors.[15]
During times of large virus outbreaks Daszak has been invited to speak as an expert on epidemics involving diseases moving across the species barrier from animals to humans.[15][16][17] At the time of theEbola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, Daszak said "Our research shows that new approaches to reducing emerging pandemic threats at the source would be more cost-effective than trying to mobilize a global response after a disease has emerged".[18]
In October 2019, when the U.S. federal government "quietly" ended the ten-year old program calledPREDICT,[19] operated byUnited States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s emerging threats division,[20] Daszak said that, compared to the $5 billion the U.S. spent fighting Ebola in West Africa, PREDICT—which cost $250 million—was much less expensive. Daszak further stated, "PREDICT was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge, and then mobilizing."[20]
Daszak's research focuses on global emergent diseases such asSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS),Nipah virus,Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS),Rift Valley fever,Ebola virus, andCOVID-19.[1][21][22] While Daszak led EcoHealth Alliance, the organization administered more than $100 million in U.S. federal grants to fund overseas laboratory experiments.[23][24]
After the outbreak of theCOVID-19 pandemic, Daszak noted inThe New York Times that he and other disease ecologists had warned the WHO in 2018 that the next pandemic "would be caused by an unknown, novel pathogen that hadn't yet entered the human population", probably in a region with significant human-animal interaction.[25] The group included this hypothetical "Disease X" pathogen on a list of eight diseases which they recommended should be given highest priority in regard to research and development efforts, such as finding better diagnostic methods and developingvaccines.[26] He said, "As the world stands today on the edge of the pandemic precipice, it's worth taking a moment to consider whether Covid-19 is the disease our group was warning about."[25]
Prior to the pandemic, Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance were the only U.S.-based organization researching coronavirus evolution and transmission in China,[27][better source needed] where they partnered with theWuhan Institute of Virology, among others.
On 1 April 2020, following the beginning of theCOVID-19 pandemic in the United States, theUSAID granted $2.26 million to the EcoHealth program for a six-month emergency extension of the program whose funding has expired in September 2019.[28][29] TheUniversity of California announced that the extension would support "detection ofSARS-CoV-2 cases in Africa, Asia and the Middle East to inform the public health response" as well as investigation of "the animal source or sources of SARS-CoV-2 using data and samples collected over the past 10 years in Asia and Southeast Asia."[29]
Anopen letter co-authored by Daszak, signed by 27 scientists and published inThe Lancet on 19 February 2020, stated: "We stand together to strongly condemnconspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin...and overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife." It further warned that blaming Chinese researchers for the virus' origin jeopardised the fight against the disease.[30] In June 2021,The Lancet published an addendum in which Daszak listed his cooperation with researchers in China,[31] and he also recused himself fromThe Lancet's inquiry commission focused on COVID-19 origins.[32]
EcoHealth Alliance's project funding was "abruptly terminated" on 24 April 2020, by theNational Institutes of Health. The move met with criticism,[21][33][34] including by a group of 77Nobel Prize laureates who wrote to NIH DirectorFrancis Collins that they "are gravely concerned"[35] by the decision and called the funding cut "counterintuitive, given the urgent need to better understand the virus that causes COVID-19 and identify drugs that will save lives."[36] An article on 8 May 2020 in the journalScience stated that the unusual 24 April decision to cut EcoHealth's funding had occurred shortly after "President Donald Trump alleged – without providing evidence – that the pandemic virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory supported by the NIH grant, and vowed to end the funding."[37]
In May 2020, Daszak "said there was 'zero evidence' that the virus" was created in theWuhan Institute of Virology during an appearance on "60 Minutes."[38]
In 2020 Daszak was named by theWorld Health Organization as the sole U.S.-based representative on a team sent toinvestigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,[39] a team that also includedMarion Koopmans, Hung Nguyen, and Fabian Leendertz.[39] Daszak had previously collaborated for many years withShi Zhengli, the director of theWuhan Institute of Virology,[40] on efforts to traceSARSr-CoV viruses to bats after the2002–2004 SARS outbreak.
Some critics, including journalistNicholas Wade[41] and biologistRichard H. Ebright,[42] alleged that Daszak had a conflict of interest investigating the virus' origins in China. In 2021, a complaint was issued by a few Republican representatives asking for Daszak to be expelled from the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) based on conduct allegations. In 2022 this request was denied by the NAM, citing "no evidence" of the alleged breach in conduct.[43] The conduct probe by NAM to exonerate Daszak drew wider circles as the Republican minority staff of a bipartisanSenate committee led bySenator Richard Burr stated "that the pandemic most likely began when the virus somehow escaped from WIV". Some NAM members called the probe into Daszak "frivolous and political", and wrote that such accusations against China are detrimental to pandemic preparedness, and hinder international collaboration to confront pandemics effectively.[44]
In May 2024, members of the United States congress questioned Daszak regarding his work in China.[7] Republican senators accused Daszak of conducting dangerous research, while Democrats criticized Daszak's lack of transparent and adherence to reporting requirements.[7] After the questioning, professor Lawrence Gostin warned the episode might imperil needed international collaborations, while virologistAngela Rasmussen called it "an attack on science" and "dangerous" to scientific inquiry.[7] Later in May, theUnited States Department of Health and Human Services suspended all federal funding for Daszak and the EHA, saying that he did not properly monitor research activities at the WIV and failed to report on their high-risk experiments. The department also began proceedings to permanentlydebar Daszak and the EHA from federal funding.[45] On January 17, 2025,HHS formally debarred both Daszak andEcoHealth Alliance for five years.[46][47]
Daszak,Linfa Wang, andShi Zhengli are three scientists featured in a 2025 documentary by Swiss filmmakerChristian Frei calledBlame. The film focuses on how misinformation and conspiracy theories spread about the COVID-19 pandemic.[48][49]
In 1999, Daszak received a meritorious service award from theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention.[50] In 2018, he was elected to theNational Academy of Medicine.[50][51] He is commemorated in the names of the centipedeCryptops daszaki,[52] as well as theapicomplexan parasiteIsospora daszaki.[53]
But as he emerged as a favored target—of criticisms, accusations, and threats—his scientific collaborations with Zhengli Shi, and the research activities of EcoHealth Alliance generally, as well as his role in the WHO mission, became targeted too. That commotion did more to distract from the question of SARS-CoV-2 origins than to illuminate it.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has cut off all funding and formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and its former president, Peter Daszak, for five years following scrutiny over its involvement in virus research in Wuhan, China, ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic
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