Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is urging President Joe Biden to make sure the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, is not tainted by any conflicts of interest.
Her comments came in a Tuesday letter to Biden. The letter was obtained by Fox News.
"I urge you to use your leadership to ensure investigations by the World Health Organization (WHO) are free from conflicts of interest,” she wrote Biden. “Concerns have been raised about the lack of transparency of the events that took place at the time the outbreak started in Wuhan, China.
“In addition, concerns have been raised regarding the manner in which World Health Organization investigators were chosen to study the outbreak and some of the conflicts of interest that exist in those investigators.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that China refused to give WHO investigators key data on early coronavirus cases.
The raw, personalized data on the early cases could have helped investigators find out how and when the virus began to spread in China,
Another Wall Street Journal story noted a member on the WHO team whose organization had reportedly administered more than $100 million in grants to fund overseas fieldwork and laboratory experiments — including work by the Wuhan lab where the outbreak is believed by some to have started.
"WHO should be required to have independent investigators to conduct this study,” Blackburn said in the letter without citing any specific examples about conflicts of interest. “WHO should not include researchers with conflicts of interest or with a lack of experience in forensic investigation."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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