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Peter Daszak is a British zoologist and an expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is currently president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention with headquarters in New York City. He is a researcher, consultant, and public expert in the cause and spread of zoonotic disease outbreaks like that of COVID-19 (contested ), Ebola, Nipah virus, and other zoonoses.

Education

Daszak earned a B.Sc. in Zoology in 1987 at University College of North Wales (UCNW), and a Ph.D. in parasitic infectious diseases in 1994 at University of East London.

Career

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 the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia and the National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Georgia. Later he became executive director at a collaborative think-tank in New York City, the Consortium for Conservation Medicine. He holds adjunct positions at several universities in the U.S. and the U.K., including the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

He was one of the early adopters of conservation medicine. The Society for Conservation Biology symposium in 2000, had focused on the "complex problem of emerging diseases". He said in 2001 that there were "almost no examples of emerging wildlife diseases not driven by human environmental change...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 the Nipah virus infection, the Hendra virus, SARS-1, Avian influenza, and the West Nile virus.

Starting in 2014, Daszak was project lead of the six NIH projects no. 2R01AI110964-01 to 2R01AI110964-06 which focused on the emergence of novel zoonotic coronaviruses (CoV) with bat-origin. Among the aims of the project was to characterize as well "the diversity and distribution of high spillover-risk SARSr-CoVs in bats in southern China" as the "SARSr-CoV spillover risk" by using "S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding ". Some of the project's work was performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and parts of this research are considered gain-of-function studies. The six projects received a total funding of $3,748,715 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Daszak has served on committees of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Health Organization (WHO), National Academy of Sciences, and United States Department of the Interior. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)'s Forum on Microbial Threats and sits on the supervisory board of the One Health Commission Council of Advisors.

Daszak is the president of the New York-headquartered NGO, EcoHealth Alliance, known for its research on global emergent diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Nipah virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Rift Valley fever, Ebola virus, and COVID-19.

In early 2021 the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) sent a group of 17 international experts to China to find out from where the SARS-Cov-2 virus originated. For this group, 3 experts were suggested by the Trump administration, who were all turned down by the W.H.O. and Peter Daszak was finally appointed. Daszak had categorically ruled out on social media that the virus may have been artificially created in laboratory and had worked for many years with chinese virologist Shi Zhengli, director at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but was chosen anyway to join the group. He told the Wall Street Journal, that he had disclosed potential conflicts of interest in his application to the W.H.O..

Publications

As of 2020 he has authored or contributed to over 300 scientific papers and been designated a Highly Cited Researcher by the Web of Science. In addition to citations in academic publications, his work has been covered in leading English-language newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, documentary films, and podcasts.

Media coverage

During times of large virus outbreaks he has been invited to speak as an expert on epidemics involving diseases moving from animals to humans. At the time of the Ebola 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".

In October 2019, when the federal government "quietly" ended the ten-year old program called PREDICT, operated by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s emerging threats division, experts like Daszak expressed concern that shutting PREDICT down, could "leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from unexpected places, such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns." 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. As well, Daszak said, "PREDICT was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge, and then mobilizing."

COVID-19 pandemic

On February 9, 2020, Newt Gingrich invited Daszak as a special guest along with Anthony Fauci on Newt's World to discuss the coronavirus.

In his February 27, 2020 New York Times article, titled "We Knew Disease X Was Coming", Daszak said R&D Blueprint group of experts to which he belonged, had in February 2018 warned the WHO of the "next pandemic, which would be caused by an unknown, novel pathogen that hadn't yet entered the human population." The Blueprint group coined this hypothetical pathogen "Disease X" and was included it 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 developing vaccines. 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."

On March 20, 2020 Daszak was featured in a PBS Newshour special podcast "Understanding the Coronavirus".

In April and May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Daszak was interviewed by National Public Radio (NPR), CNN, NBC News, CBS News, and other outlets.

Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance were the only U.S. organization researching coronavirus spread and transmission in China until the project's funding was "abruptly terminated" by the National Institutes of Health in a move that was widely reported to be politically motivated. A May 8, 2020 article in the journal Science, said that the unusual April 24 decision to cut EcoHealth's funding, 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."

The move has been roundly criticized, including by a group of 77 Nobel laureates who wrote NIH Director Francis Collins that they "are gravely concerned" 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."

Daszak was part a segment of the May 11, 2020 broadcast of 60 Minutes.

Daszak was interviewed for a June 2020 Scientific American article on "China's bat woman" Shi Zhengli, a principal investigator at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He praised her and defended her staunchly in the article, which notes that Shi and he are "long-term collaborators". Daszak said: "Shi leads a world-class lab of the highest standards... It’s crystal clear that bats, once again, are the natural reservoir."

Daszak was named by the World Health Organization as the sole U.S.-based representative on a team sent to investigate origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team that also includes Marion Koopmans, Hung Nguyen, and Fabian Leendertz. According to NPR, Daszak "says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Daszak was called out in an article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for significant conflict of interest in organizing and drafting an article by a group of virologists and others in the February 19, 2020 edition of the Lancet. That article stated “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin” but did not disclose Daszak's roles. Daszak’s organization, EcoHealth Alliance, funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Journalist Josh Rogin described Daszak as "the closest collaborator and the fiercest defender of the Wuhan lab" and noted that, as of May 6th, 2021, Daszak had not responded to a formal request for records and information made by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce two months prior.

Awards and honors

In October 2018, Daszak was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), which the New York Times has been called the "most esteemed and authoritative adviser on issues of health and medicine" whose "reports can transform medical thinking around the world."

References

1. Univ. Prof. Dr. Wiesendanger, Studie zum Ursprung der Coronavirus-Pandemie, Hamburg, 2021. ResearchGate. Retrieved May 05, 2021; et al.
2. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Retrieved May 05, 2021
3. "Peter Daszak Profile on ResearchGate". ResearchGate.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
4. ^ "Peter Daszak, PhD". Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
5. ^ Norris, Scott (January 1, 2001). "A New Voice in ConservationConservation medicine seeks to bring ecologists, veterinarians, and doctors together around a simple unifying concept: health". BioScience. 51 (1): 7–12. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0007:ANVIC]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0006-3568. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
6. "Peter Daszak". TEDMED. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
7. "Project no. 1R01AI110964-01: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence (2014-2015)". NIH RePORTER. Retrieved April 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
8. "Project no. 5R01AI110964-02: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence (2015-2016)". NIH RePORTER. Retrieved April 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
9. "Project no. 5R01AI110964-03: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence (2016-2017)". NIH RePORTER. Retrieved April 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
10. "NIH project no. 5R01AI110964-04: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence (2017-2018)". NIH RePORTER. Retrieved April 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
11. "NIH project no. 5R01AI110964-05: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence (2018-2019)". NIH RePORTER. Retrieved April 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
12. ^ "Project no. 2R01AI110964-06: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence (2019-2021)". NIH RePORTER. Retrieved April 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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17. Gyr, Marcel (April 14, 2021). "Oder war es vielleicht doch ein Laborunfall? Das Rätsel um den Ausbruch der Corona-Pandemie". Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
18. ^ Daszak, Peter (February 27, 2020). "We knew Disease X was Coming. It's here now. We need to stop what drives mass epidemics rather than just respond to individual diseases". The New York Times. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
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24. "Ebola, Dengue fever, Lyme disease: The growing economic cost of infectious diseases". National Science Foundation. December 16, 2014. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
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30. "Virus Researchers Cast Doubt On Theory Of Coronavirus Lab Accident". National Public Radio (NPR). April 23, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
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33. ^ Pelley, Scott (May 9, 2020). "Trump administration cuts funding for coronavirus researcher, jeopardizing possible COVID-19 cure". Retrieved May 11, 2020.
34. Latinne, Alice; Hu, Ben; Olival, Kevin J.; Zhu, Guangjian; Zhang, Libiao; Li, Hongying; Chmura, Aleksei A.; Field, Hume E.; Zambrana-Torrelio, Carlos; Epstein, Jonathan H.; Li, Bei (August 25, 2020). "Origin and cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses in China". Nature Communications. 11 (1): 4235. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17687-3. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 7447761. PMID 32843626.
35. "Coronavirus: US cuts funding to group studying bat viruses in China". May 9, 2020. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
36. Wadman, Meredith; Cohen, Jon (May 8, 2020). "NIH move to ax bat coronavirus grant draws fire". Science. 368 (6491): 561–562. doi:10.1126/science.368.6491.561. PMID 32381695. Retrieved August 21, 2020.
37. "Nobel laureates and science groups demand NIH review decision to kill coronavirus grant". Science.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
38. "Letter to Francis Collins Urging to Reconsider Decision to Cut Coronavirus Research Funding" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
39. Trump administration cuts funding for coronavirus researcher, jeopardizing possible COVID-19 cure CBS News 11 May 2020
40. Qiu, Jane (June 1, 2020). "How China's 'Bat Woman' Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus". Scientific American.
41. ^ Mallapaty, Smriti (December 2, 2020). "Meet the scientists investigating the origins of the COVID pandemic". Nature. 588 (7837): 208. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-03402-1. PMID 33262500.
42. "WHO Points To Wildlife Farms In Southern China As Likely Source Of Pandemic". NPR. March 15, 2021.
43. https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
44. Rogin, Josh. "Congress is finally investigating the lab accident covid-19 origin theory". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
45. "EcoHealth Alliance's Dr. Peter Daszak Elected to National Academy of Medicine". EcoHealth Alliance. October 15, 2018. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
46. Harris, Gardiner (August 25, 2011). "Vaccine Cleared Again as Autism Culprit". The New York Times.

External links

• EcoHealth Alliance
• Peter Daszak on Twitter
• "TWiV 623: Bats and coronaviruses with Peter Daszak". YouTube. Vincent Racaniello. June 3, 2020.

• Living people
• British academics
• 21st-century American zoologists
• 21st-century British zoologists
• COVID-19 misinformation