Peter Daszak | |
---|---|
Nationality | British |
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 British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention. [1] [2] He is also a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. [2] [3] He lives in Suffern, New York. [4]
Daszak was involved in investigations into the initial outbreak which eventually developed into the COVID-19 pandemic [5] and became a member of the World Health Organization team sent to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.
Daszak earned a B.Sc. in zoology in 1987, at Bangor University and a Ph.D. in parasitic infectious diseases in 1994 at University of East London. [2]
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. Around 2001 he became executive director at a collaborative think-tank in New York City, the Consortium for Conservation Medicine. [6] He has adjunct positions at two universities in the U.K. and three universities in the U.S., including the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. [2] [7]
He was one of the early adopters of conservation medicine. [8] The Society for Conservation Biology symposium in 2000, had focused on the "complex problem of emerging diseases". [8] 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 the Nipah virus infection, the Australian Hendra outbreaks, the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, Avian influenza, and the West Nile virus. [9]
Starting in 2014, Daszak was Principal Investigator of a six-year NIH project which was awarded to the EcoHealth Alliance and which focused on the emergence of novel zoonotic coronaviruses with a bat origin. [10] Among the aims of the project was to characterize the diversity and distribution of Severe 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. [11] The six 1-year projects received $3.75 million in funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health agency. [10]
Daszak has served on committees of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, World Health Organization (WHO), National Academy of Sciences, and United States Department of the Interior. [2] 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. [12]
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. [12] [13] [14] 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". [15]
In October 2019, when the U.S. federal government "quietly" ended the ten-year old program called PREDICT, [16] operated by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s emerging threats division, [17] 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." [17]
As of 2021 [update] , Daszak is the president of the New York-headquartered NGO EcoHealth Alliance. [18] His research focuses 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. [2] [19] [20] The organization has administered more than $100 million in U.S. federal grants to fund overseas laboratory experiments. [21] [22]
After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Daszak noted in The 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. [23] 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 developing vaccines. [24] 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." [23]
Prior to the pandemic, Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance were the only U.S.-based organization researching coronavirus evolution and transmission in China, [25] where they partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, among others. On 1 April 2020, following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the USAID granted $2.26 million to the EcoHealth program for a six-month emergency extension of the program whose funding has expired in September 2019. [26] [27] The University of California announced that the extension would support "detection of SARS-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." [27]
An open letter co-authored by Daszak, signed by 27 scientists and published in The Lancet on 19 February 2020, stated: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy 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. [28] In June 2021, The Lancet published an addendum in which Daszak listed his cooperation with researchers in China, [29] and he also recused himself from The Lancet's inquiry commission focused on COVID-19 origins. [30]
EcoHealth Alliance's project funding was "abruptly terminated" on 24 April 2020, by the National Institutes of Health. The move met with criticism, [19] [31] [32] including by a group of 77 Nobel Prize laureates who wrote to NIH Director Francis Collins that they "are gravely concerned" [33] 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." [34] An article on 8 May 2020 in the journal Science 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." [35]
In May 2020, Daszak "said there was 'zero evidence' that the virus" was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology during an appearance on "60 Minutes." [36]
In 2020 Daszak was named by the World Health Organization as the sole U.S.-based representative on a team sent to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, [37] a team that also included Marion Koopmans, Hung Nguyen, and Fabian Leendertz. [37] Daszak had previously collaborated for many years with Shi Zhengli, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, [38] on efforts to trace SARSr-CoV viruses to bats after the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak.
Some critics, including journalist Nicholas Wade [39] and biologist Richard H. Ebright, [40] 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. [41] The conduct probe by NAM to exonerate Daszak drew wider circles as the Republican minority staff of a bipartisan Senate committee led by Senator Richard Burr concluded "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. [42]
In May 2024, the United 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 permanently debar Daszak and the EHA from federal funding. [43]
In 1999, Daszak received a meritorious service award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [44] In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. [44] [45] He is commemorated in the names of the centipede Cryptops daszaki, [46] as well as the apicomplexan parasite Isospora daszaki. [47]
Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.
EcoHealth Alliance is a US-based non-governmental organization with a stated mission of protecting people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases. The nonprofit organization focuses on research aimed at preventing pandemics and promoting conservation in hotspot regions worldwide.
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.
Spillover infection, also known as pathogen spillover and spillover event, occurs when a reservoir population with a high pathogen prevalence comes into contact with a novel host population. The pathogen is transmitted from the reservoir population and may or may not be transmitted within the host population. Due to climate change and land use expansion, the risk of viral spillover is predicted to significantly increase.
Shi Zhengli is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan. She came to prominence in the popular press as "Batwoman" during the COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses. Shi was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Wildlife trafficking practices have resulted in the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Exotic wildlife trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry that involves the removal and shipment of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and fish all over the world. Traded wild animals are used for bushmeat consumption, unconventional exotic pets, animal skin clothing accessories, home trophy decorations, privately owned zoos, and for traditional medicine practices. Dating back centuries, people from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe have used animal bones, horns, or organs for their believed healing effects on the human body. Wild tigers, rhinos, elephants, pangolins, and certain reptile species are acquired through legal and illegal trade operations in order to continue these historic cultural healing practices. Within the last decade nearly 975 different wild animal taxa groups have been legally and illegally exported out of Africa and imported into areas like China, Japan, Indonesia, the United States, Russia, Europe, and South America.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the provisional name 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), and has also been called human coronavirus 2019. First identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, the World Health Organization designated the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern from January 30, 2020, to May 5, 2023. SARS‑CoV‑2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that is contagious in humans.
The Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, simply known as the Huanan Seafood Market, was a live animal and seafood market in Jianghan District, Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, in Central China. The market opened on 19 June 2002.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which reports to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The institute is one of nine independent organisations in the Wuhan Branch of the CAS. Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it was founded in 1956 and opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory in 2018. The institute has collaborated with the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France, and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The institute has been an active premier research center for the study of coronaviruses.
False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media. False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against "fake news", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant.
Predict was an epidemiological research program funded by a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) grant and led by UC Davis' One Health Institute. Launched in 2009, the program was described as an early warning pandemic system.
Pandemic prevention is the organization and management of preventive measures against pandemics. Those include measures to reduce causes of new infectious diseases and measures to prevent outbreaks and epidemics from becoming pandemics.
Science diplomacy is the collaborative efforts by local and global entities to solve global issues using science and technology as a base. In science diplomacy, collaboration takes place to advance science but science can also be used to facilitate diplomatic relations. This allows even conflicting nations to come together through science to find solutions to global issues. Global organizations, researchers, public health officials, countries, government officials, and clinicians have previously worked together to create effective measures of infection control and subsequent treatment. They continue to do so through sharing of resources, research data, ideas, and by putting into effect laws and regulations that can further advance scientific research. Without the collaborative efforts of such entities, the world would not have the vaccines and treatments we now possess for diseases that were once considered deadly such as tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, influenza, etc. Historically, science diplomacy has proved successful in diseases such as SARS, Ebola, Zika and continues to be relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic today.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been efforts by scientists, governments, and others to determine the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Similar to other outbreaks, the virus was derived from a bat-borne virus and most likely was transmitted to humans via another animal in nature, or during wildlife trade such as that in food markets. While other explanations, such as speculations that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory have been proposed, such explanations are not supported by evidence. Conspiracy theories about the virus's origin have also proliferated.
Gain-of-function research is medical research that genetically alters an organism in a way that may enhance the biological functions of gene products. This may include an altered pathogenesis, transmissibility, or host range, i.e., the types of hosts that a microorganism can infect. This research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics. For example, influenza B can infect only humans and harbor seals. Introducing a mutation that would allow influenza B to infect rabbits in a controlled laboratory situation would be considered a gain-of-function experiment, as the virus did not previously have that function. That type of experiment could then help reveal which parts of the virus's genome correspond to the species that it can infect, enabling the creation of antiviral medicines which block this function.
The COVID-19 lab leak theory, or lab leak hypothesis, is the idea that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, came from a laboratory. This claim is highly controversial; most scientists believe the virus spilled into human populations through natural zoonosis, similar to the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV outbreaks, and consistent with other pandemics in human history. Available evidence suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was originally harbored by bats, and spread to humans from infected wild animals, functioning as an intermediate host, at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019. Several candidate animal species have been identified as potential intermediate hosts. There is no evidence SARS-CoV-2 existed in any laboratory prior to the pandemic, or that any suspicious biosecurity incidents happened in any laboratory.
The WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2 or the Joint WHO-China Study was a collaborative study between the World Health Organization and the Government of China on the origins of COVID-19. The study was commissioned by the Director-General of the World Health Organization following a request by the 2020 World Health Assembly in which 122 WHO members proposed a motion, which included a call for a "comprehensive, independent and impartial" study into the COVID-19 pandemic" The WHO disbanded the team and proposed a new panel called Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens.
The Lancet letter was a statement made in support of scientists and medical professionals in China fighting the outbreak of COVID-19, and condemning theories suggesting that the virus does not have a natural origin, which it referred to as "conspiracy theories". The letter was published in The Lancet on February 19, 2020, and signed by 27 prominent scientists, gaining a further 20,000 signatures in a Change.org petition. The letter generated significant controversy over the alleged conflicts of interest of its authors, and the chilling effect it had on scientists proposing that the COVID-19 lab leak theory be investigated.
Kristian G. Andersen is a Danish evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.
The Proximal Origin is a reference to a scientific correspondence titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" and the events of scientific and political controversies arising from it. The letter, published in the journal Nature Medicine on 17 March 2020, was written by a group of virologists including Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes and Robert F. Garry. The authors examined possibilities of an accidental leak of a natural or manipulated virus from a laboratory, and concluded that genomic analyses indicated that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."