Peter Daszak

Peter Daszak (born 1965 or 1966) is a British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Daszak was the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention, until January 2025. Daszak and other virologists long warned of the potential of SARS-like coronaviruses to cause epidemics like those seen in the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak or the 2012 MERS outbreak, and Daszak collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to study coronaviruses in China. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Daszak became a member of the World Health Organization team sent to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Daszak became a frequent target of criticism, accusations, and threats, obscuring research into the origin of SARS-CoV-2. In 2024, Daszak was questioned by members of U.S. congress, in what virologist Angela Rasmussen described as "essentially an attack on science." In 2025, the United States Department of Health and Human Services debarred Daszak for five years, alleging reporting irregularities and criticizing Daszak's research in China.