 | |
| Abbreviation | EHA |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | April 2025 |
| Type | 501(c)(3) organization |
| 31-1726494 | |
| Focus | Pandemic prevention,Scientific research,One Health,Conservation |
| Location |
|
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Gerald Durrell (founder),Peter Daszak (former President), Noam Ross, Kevin Olival |
| Website | www |
Formerly called | Wildlife Trust |
EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) was a US-based[1]non-governmental organization with a stated mission of protecting people, animals, and the environment fromemerging infectious diseases.[2] Thenonprofit organization focused on research aimed atpreventing pandemics and promotingconservation in hotspot regions worldwide.
The EcoHealth Alliance focused on diseases caused bydeforestation and increasedinteraction between humans and wildlife. The organization researched the emergence of diseases such asSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS),Nipah virus,Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS),Rift Valley fever, theEbola virus, andCOVID-19.
The EcoHealth Alliance also advised theWorld Organization for Animal Health (OIE), theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United NationsFood and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and theWorld Health Organization (WHO) on globalwildlife trade, threats of disease, and the environmental damage posed by these.
Following the outbreak of theCOVID-19 pandemic, EcoHealth's ties with theWuhan Institute of Virology were put into question in relation toinvestigations into the origin of COVID-19.[3][4][5][6] Citing these concerns, theNational Institutes of Health (NIH) withdrew funding to the organization in April 2020.[7][8] Significant criticism followed this decision, including a joint letter signed by 77Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies. The NIH later reinstated funding to the organization as one of 11 institutions partnering in the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) initiative in August 2020,[9] but all activities funded by the grant remain suspended.[10]
In 2022, the NIH terminated the EcoHealth Alliance grant, stating that "EcoHealth Alliance had not been able to hand over lab notebooks and other records from itsWuhan partner that relate to controversial experiments involving modifiedbat viruses, despite multiple requests."[11] In 2023, an audit by theOffice of Inspector General of the United States Department of Health and Human Services found that "NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address" compliance problems with the EcoHealth Alliance.[12] In December 2023, the EcoHealth Alliance denied allegations that it double-billed the NIH andUnited States Agency for International Development for research in China.[13] In May 2024, theUnited States Department of Health and Human Services banned all federal funding for the EcoHealth Alliance.[14] As of April 2025, EcoHealth Alliance has ceased operations in favour of another non-profit initiative called "Nature.Health.Global", also led by Daszak.[15]
Founded under the name Wildlife Preservation Trust International in 1971 by Britishnaturalist,author, andtelevision personality,Gerald Durrell, it then became The Wildlife Trust in 1999.[16] In the fall of 2010, the organization changed its name to EcoHealth Alliance.[17] The rebrand reflected a change in the organization's focus, moving solely from aconservation nonprofit, which focused mainly on thecaptive breeding ofendangered species, to anenvironmental health organization with its foundation in conservation.[18]
The organization held an early professionalconservation medicine meeting in 1996.[19] In 2002, they published an edited volume on the field throughOxford University Press: Conservation Medicine: Ecological Health in Practice.[20]
In February 2008, they published a paper inNature entitled "Global trends in emerging infectious diseases" which featured an early rendition of a global disease hotspot map.[21] Usingepidemiological, social, and environmental data from the past 50 years, the map outlined regions of the globe most at risk for emergent disease threats.
EcoHealth Alliance's funding came mostly from U.S. federal agencies such as theDepartment of Defense,Department of Homeland Security, andU.S. Agency for International Development.[22][23] Between 2011 and 2020, its annual budget fluctuated between US$9 and US$15 million per year.[24]
Following the outbreak of theCOVID-19 pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance was the subject of controversy and increased scrutiny due to its ties to theWuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—which has been at the center of speculation since early 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 may have escaped in a lab incident.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Prior to the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance was the only U.S.-based organization researchingcoronavirus evolution and transmission in China, where they partnered with the WIV, among others.[33][better source needed] EcoHealth Alliance presidentPeter Daszak co-authoreda February 2020 letter inThe Lancet condemning "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin".[34] However, Daszak failed to disclose EcoHealth Alliance's ties to the WIV, which some observers noted as an apparentconflict of interest.[35][36] In June 2021,The Lancet published an addendum in which Daszak disclosed his cooperation with researchers in China.[37]
In April 2020, theNIH ordered EcoHealth Alliance to cease spending the remaining $369,819 from its current NIH grant at the request of theTrump administration,[38] pressuring them by stating "it must hand over information and materials from the Chinese research facility to resume funding for suspended grant" in reference to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The canceled grant was supposed to run through 2024.[39] Funding from NIH resumed in August 2020 after an uproar from "77 U.S. Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies".[9]
Work conducted at theWuhan Institute of Virology under an NIH grant to the EcoHealth Alliance has been at the center of political controversies during the pandemic. One such controversy centered on whether any experiments conducted under the grant could be accurately described as "gain-of-function" (GoF) research.[40] NIH officials (includingAnthony Fauci) unequivocally denied during 2020congressional hearings that the EcoHealth Alliance had conducted GoF research with NIH funding.[41]
In October 2021, the EcoHealth Alliance submitted a progress report detailing the results of a past experiment where somelaboratory mice lost more weight than expected after being infected with a modified bat coronavirus.[42] The NIH subsequently sent a letter to the congressionalHouse Committee on Energy and Commerce describing this experiment, but did not refer to it as "gain-of-function."[40] Whether such research qualifies as "gain-of-function" is a matter of considerable debate among relevant experts.[43]
In May 2024, theUnited States Department of Health and Human Services banned all federal funding for the EcoHealth Alliance, saying that the EcoHealth Alliance did not properly monitor research activities at the WIV and failed to report on their high-risk experiments.[14]
On January 17, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued formal, 5-year debarments for both Daszak and his group. EcoHealth Alliance had dismissed Daszak as president as of January 6, according to an HHS notice.[44]
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EcoHealth Alliance partner withUSAID on thePREDICT subset of USAID's EPT (EmergingPandemic Threats) program.[45] PREDICT seeks to identify which emerginginfectious diseases are of the greatest risk to human health. Many of EcoHealth Alliance's international collaborations with in-country organizations and institutions fall under the PREDICT umbrella.
IDEEAL (Infectious Disease Emergence and Economics of Altered Landscapes Program)[46] attempts to investigate the impact of deforestation and land-use change on the risk ofzoonoses inSabah, Malaysia. This project focuses on the localpalm oil industry in particular. The study also offers to the country's corporate leaders and policymakers long-term alternatives to large-scale deforestation. The program is headquartered at the Malaysian Development Health Research Unit (DHRU), which was developed in collaboration with theMalaysian University of Sabah.
A growing body of research indicates thatbats are an important factor in bothecosystem health and disease emergence. A number ofhypotheses have been proposed for the high number of zoonoses that have come from bat populations in recent decades. One group of researchers hypothesized "that flight, a factor common to all bats but to no other mammals, provides an intensive selective force for coexistence with viral parasites through a daily cycle that elevates metabolism and body temperature analogous to the fever response in other mammals. On an evolutionary scale, this host-virus interaction might have resulted in the large diversity of zoonotic viruses in bats, possibly through bat viruses adapting to be more tolerant of the fever response and less virulent to their natural hosts."[47]
According to theFAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), roughly 18 million acres of forest (roughly the size ofPanama) are lost every year due todeforestation.[48]
Project DEFUSE was a rejectedDARPA grant application, which proposed to sample bat coronaviruses from various locations in China and Southeast Asia.[49] To evaluate whether bat coronaviruses might spill over into the human population, the grantees proposed to createchimeric coronaviruses which were mutated in different locations, before evaluating their ability to infecthuman cells in the laboratory.[50] One proposed alteration was to modify bat coronaviruses to insert a cleavage site for theFurin protease at the S1/S2 junction of thespike (S) viral protein. Another part of the grant aimed to create noninfectious protein-based vaccines containing just the spike protein of dangerous coronaviruses. These vaccines would then be administered to bats in caves in southern China to help prevent future outbreaks.[49] Co-investigators on the rejected proposal includedRalph Baric fromUNC, Linfa Wang fromDuke–NUS Medical School in Singapore, andShi Zhengli from theWuhan Institute of Virology.[51]
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