The irony is that the former guru of the EcoHealth Alliance, Dr Peter Daszak, who was once paid handsomely in public funds, now finds himself “penniless” and“unemployed“, and dares to sue the organisation he used to run.
source: courrier des stratèges 17 november 2025
For almost 25 years, Dr Peter Daszak was head of the EcoHealth Alliance. But his scientific career came to an abrupt end when the American NGO he headed was accused of collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the main culprit behind the Covid-19 pandemic. Daszak decided to sue the EcoHealth Alliance, which decided to dismiss him. The complaint states that the eminent scientist is “unemployed” and “without resources”.
From millions of dollars to “poor” status
Dr Peter Daszak, a key figure in research into the origin of COVID-19 and former chairman of the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), is now the embodiment of the precariousness he could have helped to prevent.
After years of juggling millions of dollars of US public funds for controversial research into bat coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Daszak is now “unemployed” and “poor”, according to his own words in his $3 million lawsuit against EHA.
Indeed, his scientific career came to a swift end when EcoHealth was accused of participating in coronavirus research carried out by the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Chinese laboratory is suspected of being responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
When this affair broke, the EcoHealth Alliance decided to sack Dr Peter Daszak. It was a brutal fall for the scientist, because according to the American NGO’s tax returns, his role as chairman earned him a salary of 443,590 dollars. Daszak was also the subject of an investigation by the House Oversight Committee’s Special Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. He was accused of concealing from government authorities the dangerous research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute.
Earlier this year, the chairman of the committee, Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky, handed down the sanction. For their involvement in gain-of-function research that could be at the root of the Covid-19 pandemic, EcoHealth and Dr Peter Daszak have been banned from receiving federal funding until 2029. This is a fatal blow for a researcher. The organisation closed its doors for good in April. Daszak has decided to take legal action against the EcoHealth Alliance, claiming $3 million. The scientist has stated that he has not received his severance pay. He described himself as a man with a shattered career who finds himself “unemployed” and “destitute”.
Daszak is trying to relaunch his career and hopes to regain his status as a leading figure in global health research.
Once a champion of the “global zoonotic risk”, he is now an unemployed researcher with no income, and worse still, rejected by the US government itself.
Reborn without changing creed
Almost immediately after the collapse of EcoHealth, Daszak and former colleagues founded Nature.Health.Global. Their stated mission? A similar one. Publications resumed, with an article in August on the risks of coronavirus outbreaks in Chinese pig farms.
Nature.Health.Global has not submitted any financial documents to the IRS. The organisation remains silent on its sources of funding and the remuneration of its founder. This lack of clarity is worrying. If the door to American public funding is closed, who is footing the bill? Private foundations? Foreign players? This lack of transparency reproduces the pattern that precipitated the first collapse. Unaccountable science is dangerous science.
Daszak became an activist, organising a demonstration in Washington against the Trump administration’s “war on science” and taking a stand against Robert Kennedy Jr. He claimed that his problems were not related to ethical misconduct but to political persecution.
Covid’s demise doesn’t just put an end to a crisis: it also marks the end of the “pandemic experts” that the state has produced and who, unfortunately, can’t survive a minute without it.
