WHO Top Scientist Was ‘Primary Collaborator’ of Peter Daszak — the Researcher Under HHS Scrutiny for Coronavirus Experiments in Wuhan
The apparent connection between the WHO’s Jeremy Farrar and Peter Daszak — who faces possible debarment from U.S. tax dollars — could present a previously unknown conflict of interest on the pandemic origins question at the highest levels of the WHO.
Jeremy Farrar — chief scientific officer of the World Health Organization (WHO) and a central figure in efforts to suppress speculation about a possible lab origin of COVID-19 — collaborated on a viral discovery project in Southeast Asia involving Peter Daszak, a scientist at the center of that speculation, according to grant documents.
A 2010 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant proposal describes Farrar as the “primary collaborator” in Vietnam of a controversial organization that has come under scrutiny for its work on novel coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The organization was then called the Wildlife Trust, but would soon be renamed EcoHealth Alliance.
At the time of the 2010 grant proposal, Daszak was the president of the Wildlife Trust, while Farrar helmed the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he had worked as a clinician since 1996.
The Oxford team was slated to ship its samples to a lab at Columbia University, not to Wuhan.
Still, the apparent connection between Farrar and Daszak — who faces possible debarment from U.S. tax dollars — could present a previously unknown conflict of interest on the pandemic origins question at the highest levels of the WHO.
Both Daszak and EcoHealth are under debarment proceedings by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for inadequate oversight of high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan.
The revelation comes at a time of uncertainty about the future of the U.S. relationship with the WHO. The Financial Times reported that the incoming Trump administration could announce a withdrawal from the organization as early as day one. Farrar became the chief scientist at the WHO in May 2023.
A second WHO investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — launched after Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said publicly that the first investigation’s findings, including that a lab origin was “extremely unlikely,” had been inadequate — has been delayed for years.
Reached for comment, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic did not respond to questions about the apparent Farrar-Daszak partnership.
On the future of the U.S. relationship with the WHO, Jasarevic pointed to comments Tedros made in early December 2024 stating that “I think it would be good to give them some space for the transition and I hope, I believe they will do the right thing.”
On the second phase investigation, Jasarevic said that the group of global scientists charged with the report, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, “is currently working on an independent assessment of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 … We don’t know when it will be completed.”
Farrar and Daszak did not respond to emailed questions.
Other connections
U.S. Agency for International Development grant documents describing the PREDICT program, a collaboration to uncover novel viruses co-led by EcoHealth Alliance, also substantiate the connection between the organizations led by Farrar and Daszak.
They list “Welcome [sic] Trust Mahosot Hospital – Oxford University” as among the 29 partners in China and Southeast Asia.
Mahosot Hospital is in Laos. But the documents suggest they intended to work with Oxford clinics in Vietnam and Indonesia too. The documents are dated Sept. 29, 2009. Farrar led the Oxford Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam at that time.
In another grant document (page 286), PREDICT researchers report making strides in inking a memorandum of understanding with the Oxford Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam.
The documents show PREDICT researchers were involved in a collaboration on a virus hunting effort called VIZIONS, shorthand for the Vietnam Initiative on Zoonotic Infections.
The documents are not dated specifically but suggest the negotiations occurred during the third year of the PREDICT project — around 2013. The VIZIONS project was formally initiated in March 2012. Farrar’s departure from the Oxford Clinical Research Unit to become the director of the Wellcome Trust was publicly announced in April 2013.
While a formal agreement may not have been in place, in a separate exchange, Daszak described himself as a member of the scientific advisory board of VIZIONS beginning in 2010, when Farrar still led the Oxford Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam.
Published papers describing the Wellcome-supported VIZIONS project show viral sampling occurred in Southern and Central Vietnam with a focus on the Mekong Delta.
‘Proximal Origin’
Farrar has come under fire for his role in two publications that curbed discussion of a possible connection between the emerging COVID-19 pandemic and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Farrar helped organize high-impact papers in both Nature Medicine and The Lancet that helped to stigmatize discussion of the so-called “lab leak theory” as Sinophobic or the makings of a conspiracy theory in March 2020 and February 2020, respectively.
The U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic investigated how the Nature Medicine article, titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” came about in 2023 and 2024.
Democrats on the committee in particular cast Farrar as the mastermind of the episode, seeking to redirect the spotlight away from the involvement of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci and NIH director Francis Collins.
“My Republican colleagues have alleged that Drs. Fauci and Collins orchestrated the ‘Proximal Origin’ paper to suppress the lab leak theory, despite all evidence to the contrary,” said Ranking Member Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., in April 2024.
“Documents and testimony made available to this committee have repeatedly shown that British scientist Dr. Jeremy Farrar played the lead role in organizing and shepherding the paper through publication.”
Uncertain future for the WHO
In 2020 and 2021, the Trump administration sought to withdraw American dollars from the organization over concerns about undue Chinese sway on its statements about COVID-19.
“Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organization and pressured the World Health Organization to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities,” Trump said in May 2020.
“China has total control over the World Health Organization, despite only paying $40 million per year compared to what the United States has been paying, which is approximately $450 million a year.”
“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization,” he continued.
Former President Joe Biden restored U.S. participation in the WHO on his first day in office.
Reporting in the intervening years has shed further light on China’s influence.
For instance, U.S. Right to Know reported in 2022 that the first mission to Wuhan by the WHO, co-led by Bruce Alyward, a senior advisor at the WHO, and Wannian Liang, an epidemiologist representing China, apparently abided by demands by the Chinese government to issue a “strong assessment of China’s response.”
“In an excellent and encouraging discussion with Liang on the train we agreed that the best way to ensure we meet China’s need for a strong assessment of its response and where it plans to go next, would be to add [REDACTED],” Aylward wrote.
The report effusively praised the government’s actions.
“In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history,” the report’s number one takeaway reads.
A U.S. Department of State cable — also obtained by U.S. Right to Know through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — indicates that the WHO report was a public relations gift for China.
“CCTV and other Chinese media outlets widely repeated praise from the WHO on China’s ‘pragmatic and flexible anti-epidemic measures,’” the cable read.
“Guanming Daily commented that…The effectiveness of China’s prevention and control work has once again demonstrated the significant advantages of the [Chinese Communist Party’s] leadership and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.”
Tedros has continued to call for a full investigation into all possible pandemic origins, zoonotic or manmade.
The documents used in this story were obtained through FOIA requests and litigation with the NIH, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State. All of the documents can be found here.
