Griffith Pushes Google for COVID-19 Origins
Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) today pushed Google for help on finding answers regarding the origins of COVID-19. In a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Griffith asked witness Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Chief Health Officer at Google, for information about reported financial ties between Google and EcoHealth Alliance, the organization that provided the Wuhan Institute of Virology with grant money funded by the National Institutes of Health.
A transcript can be viewed below:
GRIFFITH: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I am very happy to follow Congresswoman Castor talking about ensuring transparent and honest information on COVID-19. Ms. DeSalvo, it is being reported that there are financial ties between Google and EcoHealth Alliance, a company that was collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct bat coronavirus and other virus research. As donors to EcoHealth Alliance, do you support its lack of cooperation with my request and the request of other members of this committee as we seek information about the origins of COVID-19?
DESALVO: I appreciate the question, Congressman. I don’t have all the details of that report, but I believe the reporting has been inaccurate. The block grants that were received by that researcher were years ago and predate the pandemic, so my appreciation is they’re not related.
GRIFFITH: Well – and they certainly predate the pandemic as far as the base research – but data indicates that there was a 2010 study on bat flaviviruses that was listed as being supported by Google. There’s also a 2014 study on – if I’m pronouncing it correctly – henipavirus, which infects pteropid fruit bats and microbats, and that that was on the spillover, and then a 2018 EcoHealth Alliance paper entitled “Serologic and Behavioral Risk Survey of Workers with Wildlife Contact in China” that was made possible with the contributions of Google. So it clearly predates the coronavirus outbreak, but this research has been going on for over a decade. And the real question is: does Google support or condemn EcoHealth Alliance that they donate to? Do they support or condemn the stonewalling of Members of Congress who are trying to get information about what happened with COVID-19 and what the origins really are, whether it was a wet market situation or was it a lab leak?
DESALVO: With respect to this particular set of investigators, as I said I haven’t seen the reports, and I’m not intimately familiar with their work. What I can commit to you is that we will work with you and your office and come back with answers that you may have and make certain we have the right people who have more intimate knowledge of the situation.
GRIFFITH: And I appreciate that and I would also appreciate any conversations, emails, etc. that Google may have had from EcoHealth Alliance that may have indicated to them information about COVID-19 since you all were involved in earlier studies related to bat viruses that Mr. Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance was one of the authors of, saying that this was clearly coming from wet markets and from bats, and you all were involved in that. Any conversations you all might have had in 2019, 2020, or 2021 regarding that, if you could get me that information, that would be greatly appreciated. And can you commit to working with us to get that information?
DESALVO: I certainly commit to working with you all. I’ll have the right people follow up with your office.
GRIFFITH: I appreciate that greatly. You know, it’s important that as we talk about having an honest and transparent discussion about these items that we move forward working together, and is Google prepared – because it has been criticized in the past for failing to demonstrate a commitment to fostering open debate on scientific issues such as this – is Google prepared to commit to such an open debate?
DESALVO: I’ll tell you that, Congressman, I very much appreciate you asking that cause as a physician, the debate about the medical treatments and origins and the diagnosis of COVID has been a rich and complex environment for the past year and a half, and not only for the medical community and public health community, but the community at large has been involved in trying to understand as we learn on the journey what works and doesn’t work, how should we be protecting people in communities, how should we treat our patients in the hospital or at home. So as that information has evolved, we’ve relied on trusted authorities like the CDC or the World Health Organization outside of the U.S. to provide authoritative content so we can lean on the group of scientists that build consensus statements from those authoritative groups, and then we use that to inform policies that we apply to information not only to raise up important quality information that we want people to have, people to protect themselves and their families, but also to prevent harmful misinformation.
GRIFFITH: And I appreciate that and I think we should go forward working together, and I hope that Google will have an open policy on scientific discussion because the EcoHealth president has recently been taken off of or left the WHO study, and it’s now becoming clear that they are somehow involved – we don’t know exactly how because they’re stonewalling us – and all we want here are answers for the American people. I yield back.
Learn more about Congressman Griffith’s involvement in the COVID-19 origins investigation here. More information about the Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans investigation can be found here.
