Republican members of Congress have failed to persuade the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM) to expel one of its members, conservation biologist Peter Daszak. In an email to its members, NAM concluded there “was no evidence” that Daszak had violated its code of conduct, as the representatives had alleged in a complaint to NAM.
The complaint suggests Daszak is somehow linked to the mysterious origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Daszak runs a research nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, that has collaborated with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The Chinese institute has received intense scrutiny because the first cases of the pandemic surfaced where it is located. Although no direct evidence ties WIV to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, some believe the virus leaked from the lab or may even have been engineered by scientists there.
NAM typically keeps its conduct probes confidential, but Science obtained an email—from someone who had no connection to the investigation—that explained the decision to members. And NAM’s code of conduct webpage was recently updated to note the decision. The email, sent from NAM’s leadership on 26 October, said the group convened a Conduct Review Committee to look into allegations against Daszak, and that the officials accepted the recommendation to exonerate him.
Daszak declined to comment on the details of the allegations or NAM’s probe and decision. "Because the NAM has conducted this review under strict confidentiality, I’m not in a position to share either the complaint or the NAM letter informing me of their decision," Daszak told Science.
But the complaint that kicked off the inquiry is a public document. On 30 November 2021, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce—Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R–WA), the Republican chair, Brett Guthrie (KY) and Morgan Griffith (R—VA)—sent a 16-page letter to NAM that focuses on a grant EcoHealth received from the National Institutes of Health, which included a subaward to WIV. The representatives asked NAM to investigate whether Daszak should be expelled from the prestigious institution, which elected him as a member in 2018.
The representatives offer a long list of allegations in their letter. Daszak, they contend, “repeatedly and willfully” refused to share data related to the grant, “acted in ways that are antithetical to responsible conduct of scientific research,” refused to cooperate with congressional requests, and “made political arguments rather than measured scientific analysis.” They took him to task for promoting the hypothesis that the pandemic began because of a natural transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from animals to humans and aggressively dismissing the potential role of WIV and a possible laboratory-related incident. His actions, they assert, “effectively shut down all scientific discussion about the pandemic origins very early into the outbreak.”
Some of the issues raised in the letter are also heavily scrutinized in an interim “minority oversight staff” report issued this week by Senator Richard Burr (RNC), the lead Republican on a bipartisan committee that’s probing the origin of the pandemic. That report concludes that the pandemic most likely began when the virus somehow escaped from WIV—a position many scientists dismiss.
A NAM member who confirmed the validity of the exoneration email but asked not to be named says it was clear that the request for the probe was “frivolous and political” from the outset. This member also was outraged that Republicans who filed the complaint later revealed that NAM agreed to launch an investigation, violating the confidentiality of the process. “The rest of us were champing at the bit to speak out and maintained a silence about this,” this NAM member says.
Another NAM member who also asked not to be named said the complaint reflected a desire by some Republicans to blame China for the pandemic. “I think it’s really bad for pandemic preparedness,” this member said. “We need international collaboration to confront pandemics effectively.”
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