QResear.ch

#12939107 at 2021-02-15 23:54:52 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16514: Anons Are Digital Patriots That NEVER Stop Fighting Edition

Interview with Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance

All of it is revealing, but esp. the part this piece touches on:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4104828

#12936730 at 2021-02-15 21:56:25 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16512: Nothing Will Stop What's Coming Edition

WHO COVID 'Investigator' is Chinese CDC Advisor Who Accepted CCP Research Grants.

Marion Koopmans, a member of the recent World Health Organization mission to discover the origins of COVID-19 in China, has served as an advisor to the Chinese Communist Party's Center for Disease Control and Prevention and authored studies funded by Chinese government-backed grants, The National Pulse can reveal.

The World Health Organization (WHO) delegation concluded that it was "extremely unlikely" the virus came from a Chinese Communist Party lab despite reports showing China refused to share all relevant data to the early days of COVID-19.

But Koopman's ties to the Chinese Communist Party, which resemble a similar relationship to fellow WHO researcher Peter Daszak, call into question the validity of the team's findings.

A document entitled "Scientific Advisory Group members" from the World Health Organization (WHO) contains Koopman's professional bio, which reveals she has served as a "member of the scientific advisory board of the Centres for Disease Control of Guangdong China":

As member of the scientific advisory board of the Centres for Disease control of Guangdong China, she has advised on the building of the laboratory capacity for emerging infectious disease detection in this region, and has ongoing research collaborations trying to unravel emergence and spread of viruses through the animal production chain in this region.

https://thenationalpulse.com/news/exc-who-covid-investigator-is-chinese-cdc-advisor-who-accepted-ccp-research-grants/

#12924783 at 2021-02-14 18:04:57 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16497: Please, Allow us to Counter -mil Pretty Sure Edition

Secret bat cages at Wuhan lab where researchers planned to breed animals for virus experiments - despite denials of British scientist on the WHO team 'investigating' the origins of Covid

The Chinese laboratory at the centre of suspicion over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic was awarded a patent for cages to hold live bats for testing just months before the virus started spreading.

The revelation comes after the World Health Organisation last week backed Beijing's line, saying that a leak from the institute was 'highly unlikely', while giving credence to theories that the virus had entered the country via frozen meat.

The team included Peter Daszak, a British-born zoologist whose organisation EcoHealth Alliance has studied bat-borne viruses with Wuhan lab scientists for 15 years, and who has categorically denied that researchers keep the mammals for testing.

However, The Mail on Sunday has established that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) filed an application in June 2018 to patent 'bat rearing cages' which would be 'capable of healthy growth and breeding under artificial conditions'.

The patent, which has been seen by this newspaper, was granted in January 2019 - 11 months before Beijing reported that the first cases of the virus in the city had broken out just a few miles from the institute.

A separate patent, filed by the institute on October 16, 2020, relates to the 'artificial breeding method of wild bat'.

The patent discusses cross- species transmission of SARS- CoV from bat to humans and other animals, saying: 'Bats infected with the virus naturally or artificially have no obvious clinical symptoms, and the mechanism is unknown'.

It explicitly states that the method is for breeding bats for scientific experiments: 'The invention aims to provide an artificial breeding method of wild bat predators, which aims at overcoming the defects in the prior art, and the wild bat predators are artificially domesticated, bred and passaged to establish an artificial breeding group, thereby providing a brand-new model experimental animal for scientific research.'

Responding to a question over whether researchers were keeping live bats, Mr Daszak tweeted in April last year: 'The researchers don't keep the bats, nor do they kill them.

'All bats are released back to their cave site after sampling. It's a conservation measure and is much safer in terms of disease spread than killing them or trying to keep them in a lab.'

And in December he appeared to repeat the claim by stating the labs he had worked with for 15 years - such as the one in Wuhan - 'DO NOT have live or dead bats in them. There is no evidence anywhere that this happened'.

The cloak of secrecy with which the Chinese government has enveloped the institute makes it hard to establish the extent to which the patents were translated into practice, but an online biography of the lab's work also states that researchers have the capacity to keep 12 bat cages, along with 12 ferret cages.

Last week, Mr Daszak, who has faced fierce criticism over his research and funding connections to the Wuhan lab, also took aim at US intelligence which has pointed to a lab leak being the 'most credible' source of the virus, in the words of the US State Department.

Mr Daszak was part of the investigating WHO team which swung its weight behind the Chinese government's attempts to dent any responsibility for the spread of the virus. Their findings were based on interviews with staff at the WIV, which has strong links to the Chinese army.

This newspaper revealed last year that the WHO had allowed China to vet scientists taking part in the probe, while also appointing Mr Daszak to its ten-strong team - despite the British charity chief's funding for research on bat viruses at the Wuhan laboratory having been previously stopped on safety grounds.

http://www.cuzzblue.com/2021/02/revealed-secret-bat-cages-at-wuhan-lab.html

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#12904913 at 2021-02-12 21:05:51 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16472: The Senate Impeachment Op Is Failing Edition

In Major U-Turn, WHO Says Wuhan Lab-Leak Hypothesis Still A Possibility

Two days after the WHO team of investigators was marched through the Wuhan Institute of Virology, its members declared that any 'conspiracies' about the origins of COVID-19 were simply untrue - confidently exclaiming that it was "extremely unlikely" the pandemic came from a lab leak.

Once the team returned to Geneva, however, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus did a "screeching U-turn to the lab leak theory" - admitting on Thursday that all theories behind the origin of COVID-19 warranted further investigation.

"Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study," Dr. Tedros said Thursday, in a moment of self-awareness over the optics of their 'open-and-shut' investigation.

One of the scientists on the trip was Peter Daszak - whose giant conflict of interest wasn't a problem for the WHO. Daszak worked directly with WIV researcher Shi Zhengli ('Batwoman'), who created chimeric coronaviruses via 'gain-of-function' research to make them more transmissible to humans.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/major-u-turn-who-says-wuhan-lab-leak-hypothesis-still-possibility

#12884924 at 2021-02-10 22:59:18 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16446: Shills Have Us Surrounded Again - Poor Bastards Edition

Peter Daszak trust china

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3121390/american-world-health-organization-coronavirus-investigation-team-urges

American on World Health Organization coronavirus investigation team dismisses US intelligence
Peter Daszak suggests President Joe Biden was only sceptical about the WHO's trip to Wuhan because he 'has to look tough on China'
Observers have criticised the inclusion of Daszak as the WHO mission's sole American because he was affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology

The lone American on the World Health Organization (WHO) coronavirus fact-finding mission in China dismissed US intelligence on the virus' origins and urged the Biden administration to trust Beijing's word.
The comments from Peter Daszak, president of the research organisation EcoHealth Alliance, came after the Biden administration said on Tuesday that the US would not accept the WHO's findings without first independently verifying them with its own intelligence and conferring with allies.

In a series of tweets responding to a South China Morning Post report on the administration's comments, Daszak suggested President Joe Biden was only sceptical about the WHO's trip to Wuhan because he "has to look tough on China".
"Please don't rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects," he tweeted on Tuesday night local time. "Happy to help WH w/ their quest to verify, but don't forget it's "TRUST" then "VERIFY"!"

#12884255 at 2021-02-10 21:45:05 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16445: Only President Trump Is Attacked More Than Q Research By FakeNews Edition

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: WHO's COVID Investigator is Recipient of Chinese Communist Cash, Worked With Wuhan Lab for 18 Years.

A high-profile member of the World Health Organization's recent "investigative" trip to Wuhan to uncover the origins of COVID-19 has accepted research grants from the Chinese Communist Party and runs a controversial U.S.-based organization which collaborates with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Peter Daszak's ties to the Chinese Communist Party call into question the validity of his and the World Health Organization (WHO) investigative team which concluded that it is "extremely unlikely" COVID-19 came from a Chinese Communist Party lab. Their claims echo Chinese Communist Party narratives, and Daszak himself implored the world to not "rely" on U.S. intelligence for it is "wrong on many aspects" and "politically charged."

In April 2020, Daszak told the Washington Post he had "no conflicts of interest," despite working with the Wuhan lab for nearly 20 years. Daszak was Project Leader on a $3.7 million "grant supporting bat coronavirus surveillance at Wuhan Institute of Virology and... bat coronavirus gain-of-function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology.
EcoHealth.

Peter Daszak - who donated to Hillary Clinton 13 times in 2016 - serves as the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a research organization that has partnered with the Wuhan Institue of Virology (WIV) - the very same lab many count as the source of COVID-19.

The type of research conducted by the group in tandem with the WIV prompted concern among National Institutes of Health officials for its role in COVID-related research, as outlined in a letter by NIH's Deputy Director for Extramural Research Dr. Michael Lauer.

Dr. Lauer announced the suspension of NIH grants to the group, which saw its studies engineer the "highly specific doorway into the human body" as COVID-19, as a response:

"It is our understanding that one of the sub-recipients of the grant funds is the Wuhan Institute of Virology ('WIV'). It is our understanding that WIV studies the interaction between corona viruses and bats. The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from WIV of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of WIV from participation in Federal programs."
Chinese State Media.

While speaking at a conference sponsored by state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN), Daszak also revealed that he was a recipient of Chinese Communist Party cash.

He revealed he "has been working in China in collaboration with Chinese scientists and the government of China for over 15 years supported by federal funding from the U.S. and federal funding from China."

https://youtu.be/li2sDhsCbfU

The news will cause concern that Daszak is nowhere near being the "independent" arbiter required to get to the bottom of the Wuhan COVID origins.

https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/who-investigators-ccp-covid-ties/

#12884238 at 2021-02-10 21:43:29 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16445: Only President Trump Is Attacked More Than Q Research By FakeNews Edition

Peter Daszak is part of the WHO's Covid "investigative team" that just determined a leak from the Wuhan lab was "extremely unlikely."

Daszak worked with the Wuhan lab for nearly 20 years and was Project Leader on a 3.7 million "grant supporting bat coronavirus surveillance at Wuhan Institute of Virology and... bat coronavirus gain-of-function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology."

https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/who-investigators-ccp-covid-ties/

#12822012 at 2021-02-04 18:48:17 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16367: Third Bake's The Charm Edition

Unanswered questions shadow NIH-funded Wuhan lab that performed COVID research pre-pandemic

Feds have denied controversial "gain-of-function" research; grant-funded projects sought to study "emergence potential" of coronaviruses.

Critical questions continue to surround a series of coronavirus research projects performed at a viral laboratory in Wuhan, China just prior to the start of the pandemic there, with significant amounts of the funding sourced to the National Institutes of Health by way of a science nonprofit.

Just the News reported in September on the NIH's funding of New York nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance to carry out a series of experiments that sought to determine, in part, the "emergence potential" of pandemic coronaviruses in China, including "what factors increase the risk of the next [coronavirus] emerging in people." The grant was awarded by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which has been run for several decades by Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert who has helped manage the federal government's response to the COVID crisis under both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Federal spending records indicate that EcoHealth Alliance sub-awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars from those federal funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in partnership on that research.

Questions have persisted over whether or not any research at the Wuhan lab in the years leading up to the pandemic - whether funded by NIH or not - constituted "gain-of-function" experiments, a controversial biomedical procedure in which scientists increase the pathogenicity of a virus in order to study its potential transmission in human populations.

EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak, whose name is on the NIH documentation detailing the nonprofit's government funding stream, has failed to respond to numerous queries over the last several months from Just the News, including questions regarding the full scope of the work conducted by EcoHealth and via the Wuhan lab.

The National Institutes of Health, meanwhile, has denied that EcoHealth and the WIV were participating in any gain-of-function research using NIH dollars.

An institute spokeswoman last year told Just the News that a 2019 EcoHealth project "did not involve the enhancement of the pathogenicity or transmissibility of the viruses studied," and thus did not qualify as gain-of-function research under government definitions.

Asked this week about a 2014 EcoHealth project that utilized "reverse genetics" and "virus infection experiments" to assess coronavirus threats, the spokeswoman referred Just the News to the earlier EcoHealth initiative, again denying it constituted gain-of-function experimentation.

Asked repeatedly to clarify whether the 2014 project and any other EcoHealth projects funded by NIH involved gain-of-function experiments, the spokeswoman said they did not.

The Wuhan laboratory has been the focus of intense scrutiny over the past 13 months due to its immediate proximity to the location where Chinese officials claim COVID-19 was first detected. The Communist Chinese government officially posits that the outbreak likely originated in a wet market in the city of Wuhan, just a few miles from the WIV.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/unanswered-questions-surround-nih-funded-wuhan-lab-performed-covid

#12774910 at 2021-01-31 04:19:49 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16307: CNN Qanon Prime Time Edition

WHO Team 'Tightly Controlled' By CCP During COVID-19 Origins Investigation

The World Health Organization (WHO)'s probe into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, appears to be nothing more than the media blitz that most skeptics predicted.

According to Reuters, the team's visit is being "tightly controlled by its Chinese hosts" as they visited a hospital on Saturday in Wuhan which treated early COVID-19 patients.

On its second day after two weeks in quarantine, the team went to Jinyintan Hospital, where doctors had collected samples from patients suffering from an unidentified pneumonia in late 2019.

"Important opportunity to talk directly w/ medics who were on the ground at that critical time fighting COVID!", team member Peter Daszak said on Twitter.

Team members leaving the hospital did not speak to journalists, who have been kept at a distance since the group left its quarantine hotel on Thursday.

And of course, the team will visit the Wuhan 'wet' market tied to the first cluster of cases - except the CCP razed and sanitized the site months ago. Maybe the WHO team can take some memorable photos?

#Wuhan Huanan Seafood Market was claimed to be the origin of #COVID2019 #Coronavirus #CoronavirusOutbreak, although we may never be able to find out, as the market was closed and everything cleaned up on Jan 1. It was said that this market is now going to be demolished. pic.twitter.com/qRDyU0Dweg
- Jennifer Zeng ?? (@jenniferatntd) March 3, 2020

The WHO origins probe prominently includes Peter Daszak - president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit group that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Of note, Daszak drafted a February, 2020 statement in The Lancet on behalf of 27 prominent public health scientists which condemned "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/who-team-tightly-controlled-ccp-during-covid-19-origins-investigation

#12753683 at 2021-01-29 11:07:30 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16281: U.S. Officials confirm Chinese are collecting Americans' DNA Edition

US Scientist With Close Ties To Wuhan Lab Discussed Manipulating Bat-Based Coronaviruses Just Weeks Before Outbreak

Daszak routed funds from former President Barack Obama's Predict program and the National Institute of Health to Shi's bat-surveillance team through his nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, according to New York magazine.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/01/21/peter-Daszak-manipulating-coronavirus-interview/

#12708260 at 2021-01-25 16:37:02 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16224: Sign The Petitions Edition

WHO probe into COVID origins taps scientist who funneled NIH grants to suspect Wuhan lab

January 25, 2021 - 9:09am

Funds came from federal government, through science nonprofit, to Wuhan virology lab suspected of involvement in the initial outbreak of COVID-19.



Ascientist helping lead the World Health Organization's investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus himself helped channel federal funding grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2019, the year prior to the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Peter Daszak, a British infectious disease expert, is among the ten scientists leading the WHO's global study on the origins of SARS-Cov-2. Daszak is also the president of New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, an organization which bills itself as "a global environmental health nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease."
In that capacity at EcoHealth, he previously led scientific inquiries into the pathogenicity of bat-based coronaviruses. EcoHealth under Daszak was awarded a total of $3.4 million in National Institutes of Health grants over six years to study, in part, "the origin, diversity, capacity to cause illness, and risk of spillover" of those viruses.
Among the sub-awardees of EcoHealth's federal grants included the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab in Wuhan, China, that has been at the center of fiercely swirling controversy over the last year due to concerns that the lab may have been involved in the initial outbreak of COVID-19 that led to the global pandemic.
Some commentators have speculated that just prior to the pandemic the Wuhan virology lab was participating in the controversial practice known as "gain-of-function," in which viruses are intentionally manipulated in order to increase their infectiousness.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/whos-covid-origin-team-includes-scientist-who-funneled-coronavirus

#12590994 at 2021-01-18 22:19:11 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16075: Peaceful Transition To Military Power Edition

US Scientist Who Led Charge Against COVID Lab Leak Theory Admits He Was Trying To Protect Chinese Scientists

Dr. Peter Daszak orchestrated a statement at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that condemned "conspiracy theories" that the virus doesn't have a natural origin.
Daszak admitted on Friday through a spokesman that he issued the statement to protect Chinese scientists from online criticism.
Daszak has worked directly with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and allegedly played a key role in directing taxpayer-funded grants to the research center.
The State Department announced on Friday that it has obtained evidence showing that researchers at the WIV became sick with flu-like symptoms in Fall 2019, prior to the first known cases of COVID-19

The U.S. scientist behind an effort to stymie debate surrounding the possibility that COVID-19 could have accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology admitted through a spokesman that he did so to protect Chinese scientists from online criticism.

Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, orchestrated a statement published in The Lancet medical journal in February, prior to any serious research on the origins of COVID-19, condemning "conspiracy theories" that suggest the virus doesn't have a natural origin.

Daszak has worked directly with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was studying bat-based coronaviruses prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, and he allegedly played an influential role in directing two taxpayer-funded grants from the National Institute of Health to the Chinese research center.

An email obtained by U.S. Right to Know, an investigative research group, shows that Daszak worked to significantly broaden a line in the draft version of the statement that had condemned the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a Chinese manufactured bio-weapon.

"I think this is a bit too specific, because there are other conspiracy theories out there," Daszak said in the Feb. 6, 2020, email. "Our current statement neatly refutes most of them by saying that 'We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that 2019-nCoV does not have a natural origin. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this virus originated in wildlife, as have many other emerging diseases."

A spokesman for Daszak told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that his statement, which was cited by numerous news outlets during the onset of the pandemic, was meant to protect Chinese scientists.

"The Lancet letter was written during a time in which Chinese scientists were receiving death threats and the letter was intended as a showing of support for them as they were caught between important work trying to stop an outbreak and the crush of online harassment," Daszak's spokesman told The Journal.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/01/18/peter-Daszak-lancet-statment-protect-chinese-scientists/

#12379840 at 2021-01-07 18:05:48 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #15803: Traitors Separate From Patriots Edition

Darkness Falls Upon America And Secrecy Fills The Air As Democrats Cement Their Coup - More Signs Covid 19 Was An Act Of War To Help The Globalists Bring In Their 'New World Order'

While according to Ian Birrell in this December story over at the Daily Mail, Americans may never find out the truth about China and their ties to this 'pandemic' that has led to the 'ravaging' of small businesses in America, the fact that two inquiries into the origination of Covid-19 are being completely cloaked in secrecy, and the World Health Organization is allowing China's government in Beijing to 'vet' anyone investigating it, tells us much that need to know.

With Joe Biden completely 'owned' by China, so the likelihood of truth emerging about Covid-19's origin in the months and years ahead should Biden ever make it into the White House sadly ranging from '0%' to 'not a snowballs chance in hell', President Trump's last two weeks in office are absolutely critical if Americans want to learn the truth about this 'pandemic', or anything else for that matter.

Because with what's being called 'the week that will change America' having arrived, and it looking more and more like Democrats will not only control the White House and the House of Representatives but now the US Senate, too, anyone who thinks America will ever have a better chance than now to learn 'the truth' about many things hasn't been paying attention to the secrecy and fraud Democrats invoke everywhere they go, behaving just like their 'communist overlords' in China.

So, despite the fact that, as Ian Burrell reports in his story, highly explosive emails from a group of top-level scientists and government doctors have revealed Covid-19 may have originated from 'human activities' in China (or US 'deep state labs'?) rather than naturally from animals, Burrell also reports that another email asked if this virus may have been deliberately engineered, with such a possibility hinting Covid-19 may have been a 'stealth attempt' to launch a biological attack upon America, an act of war.

And while China would never ever admit to such a stunt, a 'stunt' that also helped Democrats in the 2020 election, allowing them to 'weaponize' fraudulent and mail-in-ballots against President Trump and the American people, the chance of Americans ever learning the truth about this virus, the lockdowns that followed, the 2020 election and all of the deep state crimes upon the American people will be disappearing completely should President Trump leave office in just weeks. From this Daily Mail story before we continue.:

The documents also show that a key letter sent early in the pandemic from America's top scientists to the White House had a line deleted that suggested the virus could have been 'an unintentional release from a laboratory'.

These revelations come as evidence of China's cover-up grows, alongside fears the World Health Organization, widely criticized for its failure to challenge Beijing at the start of the pandemic, is letting the regime dictate its inquiry into the origins.

The WHO has allowed China to vet scientists taking part in the probe, while also appointing to its ten-strong team the British charity chief Peter Daszak whose funding for research on bat viruses in a high-security Wuhan laboratory was stopped on safety grounds.

https://allnewspipeline.com/Covid_19_An_Act_Of_War_Upon_America.php

#12105595 at 2020-12-20 18:34:15 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #15456: Washington DC Get Ready - HERE WE COME Edition

Will we ever learn the truth about China and the pandemic? Two inquiries are 'cloaked in secrecy', WHO lets Beijing vet investigators and it appoints British scientist with links to Wuhan

Explosive emails from a group of top-level scientists and Government doctors in the United States reveal one suggested Covid-19 could have originated from human activities rather than arising naturally from animals.

Another asked if it might have been deliberately engineered.

The documents also show that a key letter sent early in the pandemic from America's top scientists to the White House had a line deleted that suggested the virus could have been 'an unintentional release from a laboratory'.

These revelations come as evidence of China's cover-up grows, alongside fears the World Health Organisation, widely criticised for its failure to challenge Beijing at the start of the pandemic, is letting the regime dictate its inquiry into the origins.

The WHO has allowed China to vet scientists taking part in the probe, while also appointing to its ten-strong team the British charity chief Peter Daszak whose funding for research on bat viruses in a high-security Wuhan laboratory was stopped on safety grounds.

Daszak, president of Eco-Health Alliance, has led efforts that have dismissed concerns over lab leakage as a 'baseless' conspiracy theory. Also, to the fury of critics, he is heading a task force on the pandemic's origins for The Lancet medical journal.

Although it is crucial to find the pandemic's source in order to help protect against further eruptions, some experts fear that official investigations will sweep aside even the possibility that Sars-Cov-2 - the strain that causes Covid-19 - might be man-made.

'A lot of time has been lost and there is still no evidence of an effective independent investigation starting into the origins of Covid-19,' said Nikolai Petrovsky, professor of medicine at Flinders University in Australia and a leading vaccine researcher.

David Relman, an expert on emerging infectious diseases, has condemned both the WHO and Lancet inquiries for being 'cloaked in secrecy' and demanded that conflicts of interest must be 'addressed' to ensure credibility.

'Rather than resorting to hunches and finger-pointing, each scenario must be systematically and objectively analysed using the best available science-based approaches,' he wrote in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2020/12/will-we-ever-learn-truth-about-china.html

#11833227 at 2020-11-29 23:03:21 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #15104: Great Falls - Waterfalls of Evidence Edition

Chinese Government Stepping Up Propaganda to Change COVID Origin Story

The Chinese Communist government is stepping up its PR campaign to try and convince the world that the coronavirus did not originate in the Chinese city of Wuhan a year ago, but was brought to China from elsewhere.

Their efforts have been, at the very least, creative.

Their latest gambit is to promote the story that the coronavirus traveled to China via frozen food imports - a nearly impossible feat, say epidemiologists. The communist propagandists have pointed the finger at Italy, India, and on "many continents" before the poor Chinese became victims of the coronavirus. They see China as a double victim: unwitting patients got sick from a virus that arrived from elsewhere and then were unfairly blamed for starting it.

It probably works with the Chinese masses, but with few others.

Guardian:

"Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected but it was not where it originated," it quoted Zeng Guang, formerly a chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, as saying. A foreign ministry spokesman, asked about state media reports that the virus originated outside China, said only that it was important to distinguish between where Covid-19 was first detected and where it crossed the species barrier to infect humans.

"Although China was the first to report cases, it doesn't necessarily mean that the virus originated in China," Zhao Lijian told a briefing. "Origin tracing is an ongoing process that may involve multiple countries and regions."

This isn't necessarily false, but China has been resisting that kind of investigation for months. Now all of a sudden they want to cooperate with the rest of the world? It's just more PR flak because if investigators ever got close to the truth, China would find a way to shut it down quickly.

Claims that the virus had origins outside China are given little credence by western scientists. Michael Ryan, director of the health emergencies programme at the World Health Organization (WHO), said last week that it would be "highly speculative" to argue that the disease did not emerge in China. "It is clear from a public health perspective that you start your investigations where the human cases first emerged," he told a news briefing in Geneva.

The WHO has recently announced a full-blown investigation into the origins of the coronavirus with a blue-ribbon panel of experts heading up the project.

South China Morning Post:

The 10-person team includes public health experts, animal health specialists and virus hunters from Japan, Qatar, Germany, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States.

They will work alongside Chinese scientists on a set of investigations into how the virus that causes Covid-19 emerged and spilled over into humans, triggering a pandemic that has now claimed over 1.4 million lives.

Most importantly, the international team will include cutting edge scientists who study the emergence of diseases as they travel from animals to humans.

It includes several researchers who have focused on the animal and environmental roles of disease emergence - Ken Maeda of Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Vietnamese scientist Hung Nguyen, co-leader of the Animal and Human Health Programme at the International Livestock Research Institute, and virus hunter Fabian Leendertz of Germany's Robert Koch Institut. Among them is also disease ecologist Peter Daszak, known for his research into Sars-like bat coronaviruses in southeastern China and president of US group EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak is also heading a separate task force looking into the virus origins under The Lancet scientific journal's Covid-19 Commission.

This will be the key that unlocks the mystery of the coronavirus's origins. The question is, will China let them get that far? After fighting for a year to shift blame for the virus's origins to everyone but themselves, I find it difficult to believe that the Chinese communists will suddenly develop an interest in getting to the bottom of the coronavirus detective story. They have too much invested in lying about its origins to give up now.

Expect this team of experts to eventually give up in disgust at China's stonewalling.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/11/29/chinese-government-stepping-up-propaganda-to-change-covid-origin-story-n1179966

#11361987 at 2020-10-30 17:55:02 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #14511: Not About R v D Edition

Fauci's Treacherous Ties to China and Globalists

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, this year rose to national prominence as the leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. By the time everything is said and done, he may end up wishing he'd gained less public exposure.

In the October 19, 2020, report "Dr. Fauci's COVID-19 Treachery," Dr. Peter Breggin reveals Fauci's "chilling ties" to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its military.

A second, legal, report by Breggin titled "COVID-19 & Public Health Totalitarianism: Untoward Effects on Individuals, Institutions and Society," was filed in a federal court in Ohio, August 31, 2020, as part of a lawsuit and injunction to put an end to the state's pandemic measures.

According to Breggin, Fauci "has been the major force" behind research activities that enabled the CCP to manufacture lethal SARS coronaviruses, which in turn led to the release - whether accidental or not - of SARS-CoV-2 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China.

Breggin claims Fauci has helped the CCP obtain "valuable U.S. patents," and that he, in collaboration with the CCP and the World Health Organization, initially suppressed the truth about the origins and dangers of the pandemic, thereby enabling the spread of the virus from China to the rest of the world.

Fauci has, and continues to, shield the CCP and himself, Breggin says, by "denying the origin of SARS-CoV-2" and "delaying and thwarting worldwide attempts to deal rationally with the pandemic."

In the executive summary of the report, Breggin documents 15 questionable activities that Fauci has been engaged in, starting with the fact that he funded dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, both by individual Chinese researchers and the WIV in collaboration with American researchers. This research, Breggin says, allowed the CCP and its military to create their own bioweapons, including SARS-CoV-2.

He points out that the American-Chinese collaboration was initially detailed in a paper written by two Chinese researchers, Botao Xiao (trained at Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School) and Lei Xiao back in February 2020. According to Breggin, the CCP forced them to recant and the paper was withdrawn.

"The stated purpose [of gain-of-function research] is to learn to prevent and treat future outbreaks; but research labs are the most common source of outbreaks from dangerous pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, as well as two earlier accidental escapes by SARS viruses in 2004 from a research facility in Beijing," Breggin writes.

As previously reported by Newsweek, the NIAID-funded gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses was conducted in two parts. The first, which began in 2014 and ended in 2019, focused on "understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence." Initial findings were published in Nature Medicine in 2015.

The program, which had a budget of $3.7 million, was led by Wuhan virologist Shi Zheng-Li and sought to catalogue wild bat coronaviruses. It also involved U.S. scientists such as Ralph Barric from the University of North Carolina and Charles Lieber from Harvard.

The second phase that began in 2019 included additional surveillance of coronaviruses along with gain-of-function research to investigate how bat coronaviruses might mutate to affect humans. This second phase was run by the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research group led by Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. According to Newsweek, the project proposal explained the research to be conducted as follows:



"'We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.'

In layman's terms, 'spillover potential' refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.

According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail."

more https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/10/30/dr-anthony-fauci-coronavirus-chinese-communist-party.aspx

#10453196 at 2020-08-28 17:57:21 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #13378: 17 Flags For Potus Edition

Global Announcements
>>10430503, >>10432390 NEW: FBI Confirms QAnon Group Not A 'Terrorist Threat'. Source Info: >>10394806, >>10430534
>>10411911 LIVE Baking Class: this week ONLY on FRIDAY 7pm ET (after end of RNC) >>>/comms/23071

Notables are NOT endorsements

#13377
>>10452933 PF updates
>>10453119 Emily Miller and Another P.R. Expert Ousted At F.D.A. After Blood Plasma Fiasco
>>10453068 Caesar Cordova, Actor in 'Scarface,' 'Carlito's Way,' Dies at 84
>>10453005 After Hundreds of Thousands Rally Against Pandemic Measures, Berlin Bans Covid Protests
>>10452990 Regarding the Contract Dr. Fauci gave to ECO Health Alliance, Peter Daszak
>>10452977 Wisconsin Lutheran College no longer will have VP Pence deliver commencement address/safety?
>>10452948 Vernon Jones, Georgia Democrat who backed Trump, escorted through angry crowd outside White House
>>10452913 How many dems are shitting their pants currently?
>>10452882 Judge will not publish full investigatory report on state's attorney's handling of Smollett case
>>10452708, >>10452723 CIA fired the first shot a little while before SS
>>10452715 CALLED OUT!
>>10452682 Ret Adm Rogers has reportedly met with Durham multiple times re Russia investigation
>>10452649 NJ Sting Operation Leads to Arrests of 21 Alleged Child Sexual Predators
>>10452586 Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) Joins the American Center for Law and Justice (@ACLJ) as Special Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy
>>10452575 U.S. Marshals recover 25 missing Ohio children in 20 days
>>10452568 POLITICO: FDA removes top spokesperson Emily Miller after two weeks on the job
>>10452543 Potus with a missing S-succes
>>10452541 BLM surrounds the residence of the Seattle Police Union President - last night vid
>>10452510 Dare[Devil] - Nessun Dorma Arrest Montage
>>10452472 LIVE Hearing: Protecting America's Democracy Ensuring Every Vote Counts
>>10453166 #13377

#13376
>>10451803, >>10452059 planefaggin
>>10452354 Poll flip, for the keks!
>>10452344 @USNavy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, America's #BlueGreenTeam stands ready in support of a #FreeAndOpenIndoPacific
>>10452280 @realDonaldTrump Succes: Since the National Guard moved into Kenosha, Wisconsin, two days ago, there has been NO FURTHER VIOLENCE, not even a small problem.
>>10452245 @amyklobuchar Get off our lawn. ???
>>10452214 Engel announces contempt proceedings against Pompeo
>>10452210 OAN's Chanel Rion interviews President Trump
>>10452155 Russian navy conducts major war games near Alaska
>>10452138 Report on U.S. Hypersonic Weapon Development
>>10452041 Shutdown Democrats could create a 'double-dip recession' costing U.S. economy $700 billion if they succeed in keeping schools closed
>>10452002 Egyptian Security Forces Arrest Muslim Brotherhood Leader in Cairo
>>10451996 Herbalife charged by U.S. with bribing Chinese officials
>>10451964, >>10451975 DOJ charges 74 in Portland riots
>>10451963 Maryland State Trooper kills man while being dragged on I-95
>>10451945 Refresher diggz: "Justice Democrats" Founder is THE Organizer of Evangelical Social Justice Movement
>>10451908 Kim Jong-un Visits Cornfield Following Reports of Coma
>>10451872 The U.S. welcomes President Tsai Ing-Wen's August 28 statement that Taiwan will move quickly to lift restrictions on imports of U.S. pork and beef
>>10451857 CALL FOR MEMES 'No Mail In Vote'
>>10451856 Lindsay Graham's staff interviewed Joe Pientka without informing the rest of the Judiciary Committee
>>10451841 There's a challenge to put yourself in the officer's place. vid
>>10451834 Aluminum in Vaccines..poisoned by design.. vid
>>10451821 China has 600 outposts across the world to recruit scientists
>>10451775 Did you know that on this day in history Congress passed legislation making it a federal crime to assassinate the President?
>>10451767 Firearm Instructors united August 15th and 16th in Taylor - a Detroit suburb - to provide free firearm training to 1,938 metro-Detroit women.
>>10451743 Young voters flocking to Trump
>>10451731 If you're riding around in your car with a mask on, you don't need a #BidenHarris2020 bumper sticker For the Keks!
>>10451714 Lin Wood - Defense Fund for Kyle Rittenhouse
>>10452409 #13376

#10453166 at 2020-08-28 17:52:54 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #13377: Flotus Got Her Kek "ON" Edition

#13377
>>10452933 PF updates
>>10453119 Emily Miller and Another P.R. Expert Ousted At F.D.A. After Blood Plasma Fiasco
>>10453068 Caesar Cordova, Actor in 'Scarface,' 'Carlito's Way,' Dies at 84
>>10453005 After Hundreds of Thousands Rally Against Pandemic Measures, Berlin Bans Covid Protests
>>10452990 Regarding the Contract Dr. Fauci gave to ECO Health Alliance, Peter Daszak
>>10452977 Wisconsin Lutheran College no longer will have VP Pence deliver commencement address/safety?
>>10452948 Vernon Jones, Georgia Democrat who backed Trump, escorted through angry crowd outside White House
>>10452913 How many dems are shitting their pants currently?
>>10452882 Judge will not publish full investigatory report on state's attorney's handling of Smollett case
>>10452708, >>10452723 CIA fired the first shot a little while before SS
>>10452715 CALLED OUT!
>>10452682 Ret Adm Rogers has reportedly met with Durham multiple times re Russia investigation
>>10452649 NJ Sting Operation Leads to Arrests of 21 Alleged Child Sexual Predators
>>10452586 Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) Joins the American Center for Law and Justice (@ACLJ) as Special Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy
>>10452575 U.S. Marshals recover 25 missing Ohio children in 20 days
>>10452568 POLITICO: FDA removes top spokesperson Emily Miller after two weeks on the job
>>10452543 Potus with a missing S-succes
>>10452541 BLM surrounds the residence of the Seattle Police Union President - last night vid
>>10452510 Dare[Devil] - Nessun Dorma Arrest Montage
>>10452472 LIVE Hearing: Protecting America's Democracy Ensuring Every Vote Counts
#13377

#10453050 at 2020-08-28 17:36:11 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #13377: Flotus Got Her Kek "ON" Edition

>>10453039
Baker please see: >>10452990

Regarding the Contract Dr. Fauci gave to ECO Health Alliance, Peter Daszak

#10452990 at 2020-08-28 17:30:09 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #13377: Flotus Got Her Kek "ON" Edition

Regarding the Contract Dr. Fauci gave to ECO Health Alliance, Peter Daszak

Building Early Warning Systems Against Pandemic Threats

NEW YORK - August 27, 2020 - Perhaps one of the greatest lessons from COVID is that we're not nearly prepared enough to fight emerging infectious diseases. Pandemics leave in their wake loss of life, major economic devastation, mental health crises, and many other unprecedented societal disruptions. By targeting the critical inflection points where novel pathogens make the jump from animals to humans, we can avoid the catastrophe altogether. EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit working at the intersection of animal, environmental, and human health on a global scale, is proud to announce its latest program: The Emerging Infectious Diseases Southeast Asia Research Collaboration Hub (EID-SEARCH). This is one of a new group of Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health, with a grant of $7.5 million over 5 years.

Collaborators on this project include Conservation Medicine and government partners in Malaysia, Chulalongkorn Hospital in Thailand, Duke - National University of Singapore, Uniformed Services University in the USA, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the USA.

"Duke-NUS brings the highest standards of research and laboratory capacity into a region that has seen a number of emerging disease outbreaks. Our work on EID-SEARCH will allow us to bring the latest molecular and serological techniques to identify and stop diseases before they have a chance to emerge," Lin-Fa Wang, Duke-NUS, Singapore, said. "Thailand's partnership in this Center will continue to build international collaboration with the USA on research capacity for emerging disease threats in Thailand and throughout southeast Asia," Dr. Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, said. "This research will advance our understanding of the ability of zoonotic viruses to spill over into high-risk human populations and cause illnesses that may have been previously unreported, or undiagnosed. The results will be scientifically important, and have great public health value in the region, and globally, by identifying key pandemic threats in an EID hotspot," Tom Hughes, Director Conservation Medicine, Malaysia, said. "With this Center, we will gain a better understanding of what viruses are out there in reservoir species and whether or not they have the potential to spill over into humans. The goal is to be better prepared for the next emerging viral pandemic," Dr. Timothy Sheahan, University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health said.
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2020/08/building-early-warning-systems-against-pandemic-threats

Contract Awarded to: PETER Daszak, Fiscal Year: 2020 Award Notice Date: 17-JUN-2020
https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_details.cfm?aid=9968924&icde=50988006
''
Project Information
UNDERSTANDING RISK OF ZOONOTIC VIRUS EMERGENCE IN EID HOTSPOTS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA
https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9968924

Emerging Infectious Diseases - South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub
Program Info
EcoHealth Alliance's EID-SEARCH is part of the NIAID-funded Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) Network. EID-SEARCH is a collaboration among scientist leaders in emerging disease research in the USA, Thailand, Singapore, and the three major Malaysian administrative regions. The collaborative networks include more than 50 clinics, laboratories, and research institutes across Southeast Asian countries to better understand and respond to the risk of zoonotic viral emergence in Southeast Asia.
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/program/south-east-asia-research-collaboration-hub
''
We Knew Disease X Was Coming. It's Here Now.
We need to stop what drives mass epidemics rather than just respond to individual diseases.
Opinion By Peter Daszak
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/opinion/coronavirus-pandemics.html

*Other than this leads back to China..Wonder what Pharma companies are going to benefit by this. Also what exactly is the relationship between Fauci and Daszak?*

#10345844 at 2020-08-19 21:19:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #13239: Potus Presser Comin Up Edition

>>10345075 PB NIH requests info from ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE

EcoHealth is an intermediary and involved with USAID and others. Web page here
http://livescience.ecohealthalliance.org/

The President is Dr. Peter Daszak and according to his bio…
"Dr. Daszak's research has been instrumental in identifying and predicting the origins and impact of emerging diseases across the globe. This includes identifying the bat origin of SARS, the drivers of Nipah virus emergence, publishing the first global emerging disease 'hotspots' map, discovering SADS coronavirus, designing a strategy to identify the number of unknown viruses in wildlife, launching the Global Virome Project…"
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/personnel/dr-peter-Daszak

A list of their scientists here:
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/scientists

One this anon thought especially interesting was Dr AL. Her bio from another site:
"s an eco-epidemiologist and wildlife biologist who, through her interest in the interface between human, animal, and environmental health, became a One Health disease ecologist. Dr. Laudisoit holds a joint Ph. D from the University of Antwerp and Liège working on plague epidemiology in Tanzania.
Dr. Laudisoit has spent extensive time in Africa; she has spent the last several years in the Democratic Republic of Congo studying neglected tropical diseases like onchocerciasis-associated epilepsy, emerging zoonotic diseases like monkeypox, Rickettsia, and Bartonella, and teaching at the University of Kisangani. She now works with EcoHealth Alliance on the PREDICT program, aiming to predict future viral epidemics globally."
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/personnel/anne-laudisoit
Definitely an interesting group.

#10009772 at 2020-07-19 16:59:05 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #12809: Haven't Had my Covfefe Yet. Wake and Bake Edition

https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741

Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab with U.S. Dollars for Risky Coronavirus Research

Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic-and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt.

But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it's possible-but not likely-that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)

Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: "Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic…. scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory."

The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.

A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.

The project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential."

In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.

According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.

Ebright, along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a pandemic through accidental release from a lab.

#9902087 at 2020-07-09 05:28:58 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #12672: Sailing the comfy nightshift sea Edition

>>9902069
The virus that subsequently escaped from the Wuhan Lab

Sauce on it's origins... Part three.

Chinese and US scientists genetically engineered bat coronaviruses in dangerous gain-of-function research stretching back years

https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19410-chinese-and-us-scientists-genetically-engineered-bat-coronaviruses-in-dangerous-gain-of-function-research-stretching-back-years

Excerpt from this article:

Research was omitted from landmark paper claiming natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. Report: Claire Robinson

Chinese and US scientists have been collaborating for years in dangerous gain-of-function experiments that involve genetically engineering coronaviruses from bats and other animals, as revealed by a series of scientific publications. The coronaviruses are related to the SARS viruses that cause severe respiratory diseases in humans. The scientists were based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, the lab suspected by some of accidentally releasing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, and at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in the US.

Oddly, however, this long and high-profile research history was entirely omitted from the scientific paper, published in Nature in February this year, in which Shi Zhengli and her team at the WIV claimed to have identified a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2. The origin, according to the WIV scientists, was a bat virus, RaTG13, that was thought to have jumped from an animal to a human at a Wuhan seafood and wildlife market (the "zoonotic" theory - that is, coming from animals by a natural spillover event).

Why the omission? To understand the possible reason, we need to first understand the nature of the research work that was done by the WIV scientists and their US collaborators.

The purported benign aim of this line of research was to investigate the potential of bat coronaviruses to infect humans, to improve scientists' ability to predict pandemics, and to develop vaccines or other therapies.

However, this is also gain-of-function research, which aims to make viruses more infective or transmissible. Such research has come under increasing criticism by scientists for many years, due to its tendency to pose huge risks for little benefit.

This fear is borne out by the results of a particularly risky gain-of-function experiment carried out in the US and published in 2015 by scientists from the UNC in collaboration with WIV scientists, including Shi Zhengli, dubbed China's "bat woman" for her work with bat coronaviruses. The work was funded by: * The National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease (NIAID) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The director of the NIAID is Dr Anthony Fauci, who currently heads up the US COVID-19 response. The NIH's money was directed through the US-based Eco-Health Alliance, headed by Dr Peter Daszak;
* USAID; and
* Chinese institutions.

In the published paper reporting the risky experiment, the scientists state that they began their work before the 2014 US temporary moratorium on virus gain-of-function studies, which was prompted by several high-profile biosafety failures at US labs. But in spite of the moratorium, as stated in the paper, the NIH gave permission for the study to continue. Dr Fauci of the NIAID "outsourced" the research to the WIV in China, in the words of one media article.

Alarming finding
In the experiment, the scientists took a mouse coronavirus and exchanged its spike protein - the part on the surface of the virus that determines infectivity - for one from a bat coronavirus that was similar to the virus that causes the human epidemic disease SARS. They kept the mouse virus "backbone" - its basic RNA and protein molecular structure. The bat coronavirus, in its natural state, was unable to infect humans as its spike protein was inadequate - it was not able to dock onto the ACE2 receptor on human cells.

Infectivity is supposed to be determined just by the spike protein. So joining the bat spike protein with the mouse virus backbone should have resulted in a virus that was non-infectious to humans

. But the resulting genetically engineered chimeric virus unexpectedly turned out to be highly infectious to humans. In fact, its infectivity, tested in human airway cells, was comparable to the human epidemic-causing virus strain SARS-CoV Urbani.

(end of excerpt, but there is much more…)

Speculation ON

So that is probably the virus that subsequently escaped from the Wuhan Lab.

Speculation OFF

Here is a good web search if you want to do your own research.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=gain-of-function+research+on+bat+coronaviruses&ia=web

#9875070 at 2020-07-06 17:21:26 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #12638: The Fun We'll Have To Freedom, Can You Taste It? Edition

New Evidence Confirms China Lied - Current Coronavirus is Not New and Was Identified Back in 2014

Yet another stunning revelation about the true origin of COVID-19 - China Lied People Died!

Guest post by Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D.

In 2013, Zheng-Li Shi, the "bat woman," and her team from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were asked to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan Province after six miners contracted pneumonia with symptoms similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). [We were the first to report on Dr. Shi back in April.]

After sampling the mine shaft for a year, the researchers identified a diverse group of bat coronaviruses, one of which was designated RaBtCoV/4991 (GenBank KP876546) and partially sequenced as a 440-base pair fragment targeting the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene (RdRp).

Despite being unique enough to be considered a new strain and associated with a human SARS-like outbreak as a Potential Pandemic Pathogen, thereafter, RaBtCoV/4991 disappeared from the scientific literature.

That is, until 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an intensive search for the origin of the coronavirus responsible, SARS-CoV-2.

In the February 3, 2020 Nature article, scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led by Zheng-Li Shi, stated that the coronavirus RaTG13, isolated from bats in Yunnan Province, China, showed a 96.2% sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, "RaTG13 is the closest relative" forming a distinct lineage from other coronaviruses and supporting China's claim that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally-occurring.

A month later, on March 17, 2020, the article "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," widely-cited by scientists and the media, supported the conclusion that RaTG13 is SARS-CoV-2's closest relative, which likely "jumped" from animals to humans in the Wuhan Seafood Market.

It is important to note that, Ian Lipkin, one of the authors of "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," the article supporting China's claim that SARS-CoV-2 is naturally occurring, received a medal from the Chinese government in January, 2020.

It did not take long for doubts to appear about the validity of the RaTG13 argument or even its existence . We have now learned that RaTG13 existed only on paper. RaTG13 and RaBtCoV/4991 are the same virus.

The entire RaTG13 genome was first uploaded to the National Institutes of Health GenBank on January 27, 2020 and updated on March 24, 2020. In those filings, there is no mention of RaBtCoV/4991.

Yet, in a Chinese virus database, dated March 7, 2020 in the source code, RaTG13 and RaBtCoV/4991 are listed as being the same virus. It means that China knew early on that RaTG13 was not a unique coronavirus, but merely a duplicate of RaBtCoV/4991 and kept that important fact secret.

China has long implied that RaTG13 was only discovered in 2020 after the onset of the pandemic via a search of its coronavirus database.

That claim was echoed by Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance and long-time collaborator of the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/exclusive-new-evidence-suggests-china-lied-source-coronavirus-not-man-made/

#9241357 at 2020-05-19 19:21:28 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11827: We Don't Want Any Damn Vax! Edition

Global Virome Project (GVP). Attendees include: Dennis Carroll - USAID, Cara Chrisman - USAID, Peter Daszak - EcoHealth Alliance, Amy Espeseth - Merck & Co., Keiji Fukuda - WHO, George Gao - Director General, Chinese CDC, Michael Kurilla - NIAID, NIH, W. Ian Lipkin - NIH

#9128810 at 2020-05-11 22:13:41 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11684: Drop Mic Moment "Obamagate" Edition

EXCLUSIVE: 60 Minutes' Trump Critic Doctor Donated to Hillary Clinton 13 Times in TWO MONTHS

Dr. Peter Daszak, the researcher who appeared on 60 Minutes to criticize the Trump administration's decision to withdraw millions of taxpayer dollars funding his joint research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign 13 times in 2016. While the segment hammers the Trump administration for letting "pandemic politics" influence its coronavirus response, 60 Minutes is guilty of its own charge: citing political affiliation only when it bolsters their anti-Trump smear campaign but ignoring it if it would force viewers to think twice about Dr. Daszak's underlying motives. The infectious disease researcher and president of EcoHealth Alliance - the organization that received the $3.7 million grant in question - directed numerous donations towards the Hillary For America PAC, Clinton's official campaign political action committee (PAC), totaling over $850. And of course, this narrative-crashing background information appeared nowhere in 60 Minutes' spectacle.

Yet they were sure to tee up Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz - the alleged peddler of misinformation that got the grant rescinded - as a bona fide Trump ally: "Gaetz is a vigorous defender of the president. He's been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly threatening a witness against Mr. Trump, and he led a protest to delay impeachment testimony." The show likened the administration's decision to cut the grant to a "political disinformation campaign targeting China's Wuhan Institute," a probable origin of the virus. Critics including President Trump, however, have equated the segment to a cover up of the CCP's botched virus response, silencing doctors who alerted co-workers about the growing pandemic and purposely withholding information from authorities and the world about its extent and transmission pathways.

And this criticism is warranted: 60 Minutes, airing on the mainstream media outlet CBS, is a fount for left-wing talking points. They've cast Nancy Pelosi as a 'Giant Slayer' and 'Patron Saint of Shade,' fretted over Justice Kavanaugh's "temperament" questioning if he "belonged on the Supreme Court," and asked hardened President Trump disparager John McCain if he "worried that [President Trump] is not fit for the office?" And this is just their latest politically-motivated hit piece, letting China off the hook for spawning and spreading the virus while bolstering the CCP's narrative that the US is impairing the world's response.
https://thenationalpulse.com/news/60-minutes-hillary-donor/
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1259625738858303490

#9116624 at 2020-05-11 02:17:39 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11668: #OBAMAGATE PASSES 1 MILLION TWEETS - #KENYA TRENDING NOW Edition

"Oct. 25, 2019

In a move that worries many public health experts, the federal government is quietly shutting down a surveillance program for dangerous animal viruses that someday may infect humans.

The United Nations Environment Program estimates that a new animal disease that can also infect humans is discovered every four months. Ending the program, experts fear, will leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from unexpected places, such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns.

The program, known as Predict and run by the United States Agency for International Development, was inspired by the 2005 H5N1 bird flu scare. Launched 10 years ago, the project has cost about $207 million.

The initiative has collected over 140,000 biological samples from animals and found over 1,000 new viruses, including a new strain of Ebola. Predict also trained about 5,000 people in 30 African and Asian countries, and has built or strengthened 60 medical research laboratories, mostly in poor countries.

Dennis Carroll, the former director of USAID's emerging threats division who helped design Predict, oversaw it for a decade and retired when it was shut down. The surveillance project is closing because of "the ascension of risk-averse bureaucrats," he said.

Because USAID's chief mission is economic aid, he added, some federal officials felt uncomfortable funding cutting-edge science like tracking exotic pathogens.

Congress, along with the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were "enormously supportive," said Dr. Carroll, who is now a fellow at Texas A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service.

"But things got complicated in the last two years, and by January, Predict was essentially collapsed into hibernation."

The end of the program "is definitely a loss," said Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit global health organization that received funding from the program. "Predict was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge and then mobilizing. That's expensive."

"The United States spent $5 billion fighting Ebola in West Africa," he added. "This costs far less."

ImageA civet cat in a meat market in Guangzhou,China
, in 2004. Researchers isolated the lethal SARS virus in civet cats, suggesting that they were infecting humans.

The goal of Predict was to speed up and organize the previously haphazard hunt for zoonotic diseases - those that may jump from animals to humans. In recent years, scientists have discovered many lethal viruses lurking in wild and domestic animals.

It has long been known, of course, that AIDS originated in chimpanzees and probably was first contracted by bushmeat hunters. Ebola circulates in bats and apes, while SARS was found in captive civet cats in China.

In South Asia, Nipah virus reaches humans through pigs or date palm sap infected by bats carrying the virus. In Saudi Arabia, MERS also is carried by bats; they infect camels, which then infect humans. The virus can jump from human to human, especially in hospitals.

Novel influenza viruses originate in migratory ducks and geese. The viruses spread first to domestic poultry flocks, then to pigs and humans. Mutations picked up along that viral highway can render the viruses far more dangerous.

These discoveries led to new ways of preventing spillovers of infections into human populations: closing markets where wildlife is butchered for food,; putting bamboo skirts on sap-collection jars to keep bats out; or penning pigs and camels in places where they cannot eat fruit that bats have gnawed.

Predict teams have investigated mysterious disease outbreaks in many countries, including a die-off of 3,000 wild birds in a Mongolian lake. One team proved that endangered otters in a Cambodian zoo were killed by their feed - raw chickens infected with bird flu.

A Predict laboratory helped identify bat-borne viruses that a boys' soccer team might have been exposed to while trapped for weeks in a cave in Thailand".

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/health/predict-usaid-viruses.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/09/us-uk-intelligence-agencies-examining-report-mobile-phone-data/

#8780364 at 2020-04-13 21:13:43 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11241: Vote WQKE Edition

I try again
Have eyes been on this?

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

Nov. 12, 2015 article
Never mind the Mar. 2020 editor's note...(Nothing to see here)

"The study findings 'move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER',
says Peter Daszak,"
(Caps are mine)

Lots to Dig

#8705531 at 2020-04-06 20:50:02 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11146: MAGA SPACE FORCE EO Edition

anons, we must be getting close to exposing the source of the virus.

CNN had a piece on just now about how it is most likely that the CV did come from bats and entered humans via bat to farm animal to human transmission.

piece featured these tow Scientiest/doctors.

Peter Daszak of Eco health Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance

Andrew Cunnigham

#8700038 at 2020-04-06 03:22:51 (UTC+1)
Q Research General: #11039 A WEEK TO REMEMBER Edition

Have eyes been on this?

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

Nov. 12, 2015 article
Never mind the Mar. 2020 editor's note...(Nothing to see here)

"The study findings 'move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER',
says Peter Daszak,"
(Caps are mine)

Lots to Dig

#8695254 at 2020-04-05 20:30:15 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #11133: Tippie Top Days To Come Edition

Have eyes been on this?

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

Nov. 12, 2015 article
never mind the Mar 2020 editor's note, "nothing to see here"

"The study findings 'move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER',
says Peter Daszak,"
(Caps are mine)

lots to dig

#8680945 at 2020-04-04 04:21:47 (UTC+1)
Q Research General: #11115: Operation Finale Edition

>>8680919
>>8680483

>>8680578

>>8680595

>>8680597

>>8680640

3. (3) Chinese article tracing Covid-19 to Wuhen biolab, since removed: 'The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus'

ORIGINAL AT https://www.docdroid.net/EZUN6cB/originsof2019-ncov-xiaob-res.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128



4. (4) Nature journal (2015): Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research; Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research

Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.

The above comments relate to the research at the University of North Carolina, as reported in this paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

Published: 09 November 2015

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence



5. (5) Wuhan Lab (Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge) did the genetic engineering for Ralph Baric at UNC

https://deplorablecoder.club/index.php?id=10725

Wuhan Lab did the genetic engineering for Baric (publicplace)

Actual website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (the bioweapons lab) confirming two of their scientists are the ones that did the genetic engineering for Ralph Baric of the SARS virus to make it hyper dangerous to humans (engineered a bioweapon)

http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Research2016/Research_Progress2016/201712/t20171215_187953.html

Recently, Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge from WIV, in cooperation with researchers from University of North Carolina, Harvard Medical School, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology and etc, examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus..

Here's Baric's paper showing their names: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus pose threat for human emergence

Zhengli-Li Shi - Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China

Xing-Yi Ge - Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China

This PROVES - with highly credible references - that the Wuhan lab has actively and successfully genetically engineered and tested SARS contagions specifically designed to create global pandemics capable of wiping out much of the human species.

Comment (Peter M.): "… But they knew that they were playing with fire. Other virologists had sounded the alarm over what they were doing.

The Nature article referenced in item 4above, 'Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research', referring to engineering in which Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge were involved, reports:

'Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that "grows remarkably well" in human cells. "If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," he says.'



6. (6) Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge from WIV, in cooperation with University of North Carolina

http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Research2016/Research_Progress2016/201712/t20171215_187953.html

whiov = Wuhan Institute of Virology; CAS = Chinese Academy of Sciences


7. (7) The spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV contains a cleavage absent in CoV - showing that it was engineered rather than evolved

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166354220300528



9. (9) Wuhan Institute of Virology reports 'Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses' (Nov 2017)

Nearly all of these authors are from Wuhan Institute of Virology (=WIV).

CAS = Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zheng-Li Shi is listed as having the role of "Project administration, Supervision".

Peter Daszak, an American, is listed as having the roles of "Funding acquisition, Writing ­ review & editing".

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698

#8544337 at 2020-03-24 10:53:26 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #10939: Man Ingests Fish Tank Cleaner w/Fatal Results; NBC blames POTUS Edition

>>8544073
>>8544078
>>8544189
>>8544307
Notable
4. Nature journal (2015): Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research; Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells
https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787

Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
The above comments relate to the research at the University of North Carolina, as reported in this paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
http://mailstar.net/coronavirus.html

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/china-biological-warfare/?fbclid=IwAR2bQvJ8aoGvXcsC-c4Tk9B_vRcCqkAwO3vQHg8P860SCdrzFpsV1H1kzWY


5. (5) Wuhan Lab (Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge) did the genetic engineering for Ralph Baric at UNC
https://deplorablecoder.club/index.php?id=10725

Wuhan Lab did the genetic engineering for Baric (publicplace)
Actual website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (the bioweapons lab) confirming two of their scientists are the ones that did the genetic engineering for Ralph Baric of the SARS virus to make it hyper dangerous to humans (engineered a bioweapon)
http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Research2016/Research_Progress2016/201712/t20171215_187953.html

Recently, Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge from WIV, in cooperation with researchers from University of North Carolina, Harvard Medical School, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology and etc, examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus..
Here's Baric's paper showing their names: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/

SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus pose threat for human emergence
Zhengli-Li Shi - Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
Xing-Yi Ge - Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
This PROVES - with highly credible references - that the Wuhan lab has actively and successfully genetically engineered and tested SARS contagions specifically designed to create global pandemics capable of wiping out much of the human species.

Comment (Peter M.): "… But they knew that they were playing with fire. Other virologists had sounded the alarm over what they were doing.

The Nature article referenced in item 4above, 'Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research', referring to engineering in which Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge were involved, reports:
'Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that "grows remarkably well" in human cells. "If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," he says.'

6. (6) Prof. Zhengli Shi and Xingyi Ge from WIV, in cooperation with University of North Carolina
http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Research2016/Research_Progress2016/201712/t20171215_187953.html
whiov = Wuhan Institute of Virology; CAS = Chinese Academy of Sciences

7. The spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV contains a cleavage absent in CoV - showing that it was engineered rather than evolved
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166354220300528

9. Wuhan Institute of Virology reports 'Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses' (Nov 2017)
Nearly all of these authors are from Wuhan Institute of Virology (=WIV).

CAS = Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Zheng-Li Shi is listed as having the role of "Project administration, Supervision".
Peter Daszak, an American, is listed as having the roles of "Funding acquisition, Writing ­ review & editing".
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698
Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus

10) Professor Shi Zhengli is Director of the P4 lab at Wuhan Institute of Virology
Her photo is at http://archive.is/QIBmE/e4db79e76096564291cea980219a2b374e760304.jpg.
http://english.whiov.cas.cn/ne/201903/t20190308_206697.html
Prof. SHI Zhengli elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology

11. (11) Chinese patent for coronavirus S gene (2004)
https://patents.google.com/patent/CN1276777C/en?q=pshuttle-SN&oq=pshuttle-SN
SARS vaccine of adenovirus vector and preparation method, application of coronavirus S gene


12. (12) Chinese Patent genetic engineering protein FSPA relevant to S protein of coronavirus SARS- CoV (2005)
http://europepmc.org/article/pat/CN1990502

#8216776 at 2020-02-22 15:46:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #10519: Trust God, Clean House, and Work With Others Edition

>>8216749
 
>"If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.

>. "[The results] move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger," Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which samples viruses from animals and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe, told Nature.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502

#7904978 at 2020-01-25 01:57:09 (UTC+1)
Q Research Edition #10116: The Great Excellent and Affordable Editon

2015: "Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate"

The creation of a chimeric SARS-like virus has scientists discussing the risks of gain-of-function research.

Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team's efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of to one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team's results, which were published in Nature Medicine.

The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus-or other coronaviruses found in bat species-may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. "If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.

In October 2013, the US government put a stop to all federal funding for gain-of-function studies, with particular concern rising about influenza, SARS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). "NIH [National Institutes of Health] has funded such studies because they help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, enable the assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents, and inform public health and preparedness efforts," NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement at the time. "These studies, however, also entail biosafety and biosecurity risks, which need to be understood better."

Baric's study on the SHC014-chimeric coronavirus began before the moratorium was announced, and the NIH allowed it to proceed during a review process, which eventually led to the conclusion that the work did not fall under the new restrictions, Baric told Nature. But some researchers, like Wain-Hobson, disagree with that decision.

The debate comes down to how informative the results are. "The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk," Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University, told Nature.

But Baric and others argued the study's importance. "[The results] move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger," Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which samples viruses from animals and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe, told Nature.

https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=57204