Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained HERE. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by the fall of 2019. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing THE WORK DAVE EMORY DOES.

FTR #1152 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Flesh­ing out under­stand­ing of Covid-19, this pro­gram looks at the inter­re­la­tion­ship between ele­ments of the mil­i­tary, big phar­ma, ther­a­peu­tic mea­sures select­ed for ear­ly deploy­ment against the pan­dem­ic and the full-court press under­way against Chi­na.

Specif­i­cal­ly, we won­der if the DARPA research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es and the appar­ent dis­sem­i­na­tion of Covid-19 as part of the covert oper­a­tions con­stel­la­tion being direct­ed against Chi­na may have dri­ven devel­op­ment of those ther­a­peu­tic mea­sures.

In March of this year, the Pen­ta­gon secured remde­sivir for treat­ing U.S. ser­vice per­son­nel. In FTR #1138, we looked at remde­sivir  being test­ed on rhe­sus macaques in March of 2019. In August of last year, the CDC  closed down the Unit­ed States Army Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, in part because of defi­cient han­dling of waste pro­duced by “non-human” pri­mates infect­ed with an unnamed “select agent.”

Was that “select agent” Ebo­la? A bat-borne coro­n­avirus? SARS CoV‑2?

Remde­sivir was def­i­nite­ly being test­ed on MERS at a facil­i­ty in Mon­tana that was a base for Willy Burgdor­fer­’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare research result­ing the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease.

The MERS virus was also a focal point for test­ing of the mes­sen­ger RNA vac­cines being devel­oped (large­ly under DARPA aus­pices). That test­ing appears to have been a fac­tor in fast-track­ing the Mod­er­na vac­cine for SARS CoV‑2 (see below).

Next, we review ele­ments of a thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coro­n­avirus­es.

As read­ers digest this infor­ma­tion, remem­ber that DARPA can bring to bear the twined tech­nolo­gies arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and super-com­put­ers. It has the state of the art with respect to both. Com­bined with gene edit­ing, that tech­no­log­i­cal pair­ing offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tru­ly hor­ri­fy­ing syn­thet­ic virus­es.

Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied, includ­ing:

1. DARPA’s study of “gene-dri­ving tech­nol­o­gy”–” . . . . Con­cerns about Pen­ta­gon exper­i­ments with bio­log­i­cal weapons have gar­nered renewed media atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top fun­der of the con­tro­ver­sial ‘gene dri­ve’ tech­nol­o­gy, which has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ics of entire pop­u­la­tions while tar­get­ing oth­ers for extinc­tion. . . .”
2. DARPA’s fund­ing of Mod­er­na’s mRNA vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy.
3. The clo­sure of the USAMRIID:” . . . . The U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases (USAMRIID) facil­i­ty at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land — the U.S. military’s lead lab­o­ra­to­ry for ‘bio­log­i­cal defense’ research since the late 1960s — was forced to halt all research it was con­duct­ing with a series of dead­ly pathogens . . . . USAMRIID has recent­ly been involved in research born out of the Pentagon’s recent con­cern about the use of bats as bioweapons. . . .”

Moderna’s SARS-CoV­‑2 vac­cine con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate con­tro­ver­sy. Despite receiv­ing fund­ing from DARPA, no men­tion of the gov­ern­ment back­ing was men­tioned in its patent fil­ings.

While Mod­er­na was not open about its exten­sive gov­ern­ment sup­port in patent fil­ings, the com­pa­ny has been open about it with the press–for good rea­son: the fast-track­ing of Moderna’s COVID-19 vac­cine devel­op­ment has been jus­ti­fied in large part because of that exten­sive past gov­ern­ment sup­port. That sup­port high­lights the close work Mod­er­na and US gov­ern­ment agen­cies have con­duct­ed togeth­er over the years devel­op­ing this vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy for MERS. Might this devel­op­ment have been part of the DARPA research dis­cussed in the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle?

Next, we high­light a Nature arti­cle from last month describ­ing the exist­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between the NIAID’s Vac­cine Research Cen­ter and Mod­er­na on a dif­fer­ent vac­cine. Mod­er­na sim­ply shift­ed gears and start­ed work­ing on the COVID-19 vac­cine: it’s been a US government/Moderna col­lab­o­ra­tion from the very begin­ning.

An aspect of Mod­er­na’s vac­cine devel­op­ment that is of con­cern is the fact that mRNA vac­cines are inex­pen­sive to pro­duce, facil­i­tat­ing the pro­duc­tion of large amounts of stock. This, in turn, IF it is announced before elec­tion day, might not only boost Trump’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, but such a devel­op­ment could pro­vide a foun­da­tion for an assault on mail-in vot­ing.

The news out of Moderna’s tri­al could be worse. The extreme­ly small size of this sam­ple, how­ev­er, is a mat­ter of con­cern.

Note­wor­thy in that gen­er­al con­text is the obser­va­tion by Jonathan King (pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at MIT), that Pen­ta­gon research into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare could be masked as vac­cine research, which sounds “defen­sive.”

In FTR #1130, we not­ed the role of four-star gen­er­al Gus­tave Per­na in Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed,” insti­tut­ed by Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Whether the pro­gram serves as cov­er for mil­i­tary research seems a rea­son­able ques­tion to ask, under the cir­cum­stances.

We con­clude with a look at the past–a his­tor­i­cal ele­ment of bio­log­i­cal war­fare that reflects on the present.

In past pro­grams and posts, we have briefly not­ed that mil­i­tary and [osten­si­bly] civil­ian pro­grams offi­cial­ly involved with “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” might con­ceal clan­des­tine bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tions designed to cre­ate epi­demics.

The offi­cial dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic.

In that con­text, one should note that the offi­cial title of Unit 731, the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit was “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.”

The Whit­ney Webb arti­cle–once again–fig­ures into this analy­sis:

1. The DARPA research is osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. ” . . . . Many of these recent research projects are relat­ed to DARPA’s Pre­vent­ing Emerg­ing Path­o­gen­ic Threats, or PREEMPT pro­gram, which was offi­cial­ly announced in April 2018. PREEMPT focus­es specif­i­cal­ly on ani­mal reser­voirs of dis­ease, specif­i­cal­ly bats, and DARPA even not­ed in its press release in the pro­gram that it ‘is aware of biosafe­ty and biose­cu­ri­ty sen­si­tiv­i­ties that could arise’ due to the nature of the research. . . . In addi­tion, while both DARPA’s PREEMPT pro­gram and the Pentagon’s open inter­est in bats as bioweapons were announced in 2018, the U.S. mil­i­tary — specif­i­cal­ly the Depart­ment of Defense’s Coop­er­a­tive Threat Reduc­tion Pro­gram — began fund­ing research involv­ing bats and dead­ly pathogens, includ­ing the coro­n­avirus­es MERS and SARS, a year pri­or in 2017. . . .”

1a. In March of this year, the Pen­ta­gon secured remde­sivir for treat­ing U.S. ser­vice per­son­nel. In FTR #1138, we looked at remde­sivir  being test­ed on rhe­sus macaques in March of 2019. In August of last year, the CDC  closed down the Unit­ed States Army Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, in part because of defi­cient han­dling of waste pro­duced by “non-human” pri­mates infect­ed with an unnamed “select agent.”

Was that “select agent” Ebo­la? A bat-borne coro­n­avirus? SARS CoV‑2?

 “How the Mil­i­tary Secured A Coro­n­avirus Drug That Has Yet to Win FDA Approval” by Lila Maclel­lan; Quartz; 4/9/2020.

. . . . On March 10, the Pen­ta­gon announced a deal with Gilead Sci­ences in which the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny would sup­ply the mil­i­tary with the intra­venous drug at no cost. “Togeth­er with our gov­ern­ment and indus­try part­ners, we are pro­gress­ing at almost rev­o­lu­tion­ary rates to deliv­er effec­tive treat­ment and pre­ven­tion prod­ucts that will pro­tect the cit­i­zens of the world and pre­serve the readi­ness and lethal­i­ty of our ser­vice mem­bers,” Army Brig. Gen. Michael Tal­ley, com­mand­ing gen­er­al of the US Army Med­ical Research and Devel­op­ment Com­mand (USAMRDC) and Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, said in a media state­ment at the time. . . .

. . . . The com­pound was craft­ed more than 10 years ago and lat­er devel­oped as a poten­tial treat­ment for the Ebo­la virus out­break in West Africa in the mid-2010s (it had min­i­mal effect). But researchers con­tin­ued to test remde­sivir against oth­er virus­es and dis­cov­ered it worked to block oth­er coro­n­avirus­es from repli­cat­ing in ani­mal stud­ies, includ­ing those behind Severe Acute Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (SARS) and Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS). Phase two tri­als of Covid-19 patients treat­ed with remde­sivir had already been com­plet­ed when the USAMMDA made its announce­ment about acquir­ing the drug. . . .

1b. Remde­sivir was def­i­nite­ly being test­ed on MERS at a facil­i­ty in Mon­tana that was a base for Willy Burgdor­fer­’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare research result­ing the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease.

The MERS virus was also a focal point for test­ing of the mes­sen­ger RNA vac­cines being devel­oped (large­ly under DARPA aus­pices). That test­ing appears to have been a fac­tor in fast-track­ing the Mod­er­na vac­cine for SARS CoV‑2 (see below).

 “Remde­sivir Pre­vents MERS Coro­n­avirus Dis­ease in Mon­keys”; NIAID/NIH; 2/13/2020.

The exper­i­men­tal antivi­ral remde­sivir suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed dis­ease in rhe­sus macaques infect­ed with Mid­dle East res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome coro­n­avirus (MERS-CoV), accord­ing to a new study from Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health sci­en­tists. Remde­sivir pre­vent­ed dis­ease when admin­is­tered before infec­tion and improved the con­di­tion of macaques when giv­en after the ani­mals already were infect­ed.

The new report from NIH’s Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID) appears in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

MERS-CoV is close­ly relat­ed to the 2019 nov­el coro­n­avirus (SARS-CoV­‑2, pre­vi­ous­ly known as 2019-nCoV) that has grown to be a glob­al pub­lic health emer­gency since cas­es were first detect­ed in Wuhan, Chi­na, in Decem­ber. . . .

. . . . The cur­rent study was con­duct­ed at NIAID’s Rocky Moun­tain Lab­o­ra­to­ries in Hamil­ton, Mon­tana. The work involved three groups of ani­mals: those treat­ed with remde­sivir 24 hours before infec­tion with MERS-CoV; those treat­ed 12 hours after infec­tion (close to the peak time for MERS-CoV repli­ca­tion in these ani­mals); and untreat­ed con­trol ani­mals. . . .

1c. Ele­ments of a thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–are reviewed here.

As read­ers digest this infor­ma­tion, remem­ber that DARPA can bring to bear the twined tech­nolo­gies arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and super-com­put­ers. It has the state of the art with respect to both. Com­bined with gene edit­ing, that tech­no­log­i­cal pair­ing offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tru­ly hor­ri­fy­ing syn­thet­ic virus­es.

Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied:

“Bats, Gene Edit­ing and Bioweapons: Rec­cent DARPA Exper­i­ments Raise Con­cerns Amid Coro­n­avirus Out­break” by Whit­ney Webb; The Last Amer­i­can Vagabond; 1/30/2020.

• •  DARPA has engaged in research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es bor­der­ing Chi­na. ” . . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spend­ing mil­lions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed stud­ies were con­duct­ed at known U.S. mil­i­tary bioweapons labs bor­der­ing Chi­na and result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of dozens of new coro­n­avirus strains as recent­ly as last April. Fur­ther­more, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biode­fense lab to a virol­o­gy insti­tute in Wuhan, Chi­na — where the cur­rent out­break is believed to have begun — have been unre­port­ed in Eng­lish lan­guage media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 mil­lion on one project in 2018 ‘to unrav­el the com­plex caus­es of bat-borne virus­es that have recent­ly made the jump to humans, caus­ing con­cern among glob­al health offi­cials.” Anoth­er research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty exam­ine the coro­n­avirus that caus­es Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to under­stand the role of these hosts in trans­mit­ting dis­ease to humans.’  . . . For instance, one study con­duct­ed in South­ern Chi­na in 2018 result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 89 new ‘nov­el bat coro­n­avirus’ strains that use the same recep­tor as the coro­n­avirus known as Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS). That study was joint­ly fund­ed by the Chi­nese government’s Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, USAID — an orga­ni­za­tion long alleged to be a front for U.S. intel­li­gence, and the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Health — which has col­lab­o­rat­ed with both the CIA and the Pen­ta­gon on infec­tious dis­ease and bioweapons research.. . . .”
  • That work involves insti­tu­tions net­worked with Chi­nese research facil­i­ties in Wuhan. ” . . . . The USAMRIID’s prob­lem­at­ic record of safe­ty at such facil­i­ties is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern in light of the recent coro­n­avirus out­break in Chi­na. As this report will soon reveal, this is because USAMRIID has a decades-old and close part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wuhan’s Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy, which is locat­ed in the epi­cen­ter of the cur­rent out­break. . . . Duke Uni­ver­si­ty is also joint­ly part­nered with China’s Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty, which is based in the city where the cur­rent coro­n­avirus out­break began, which result­ed in the open­ing of the Chi­na-based Duke Kun­shan Uni­ver­si­ty (DKU) in 2018. Notably, China’s Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty — in addi­tion to its part­ner­ship with Duke — also includes a mul­ti-lab Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy that has worked close­ly with the US Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute for Infec­tious Dis­eases since the 1980s, accord­ing to its web­site. . . . ”
  • The Pen­ta­gon is research­ing  “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. ” . . . . Con­cerns about Pen­ta­gon exper­i­ments with bio­log­i­cal weapons have gar­nered renewed media atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top fun­der of the con­tro­ver­sial ‘gene dri­ve’ tech­nol­o­gy, which has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ics of entire pop­u­la­tions while tar­get­ing oth­ers for extinc­tion. At least two of DARPA’s stud­ies using this con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy were clas­si­fied and ‘focused on the poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and use of gene dri­ves in agri­cul­ture,’ accord­ing to media reports. The rev­e­la­tion came after an orga­ni­za­tion called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on the military’s inter­est in the tech­nol­o­gy as part of a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request. Co-direc­tor of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this tech­nol­o­gy may be used as a bio­log­i­cal weapon: ‘Gene dri­ves are a pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous new tech­nol­o­gy and poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons could have dis­as­trous impacts on peace, food secu­ri­ty and the envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly if mis­used, The fact that gene dri­ve devel­op­ment is now being pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed and struc­tured by the US mil­i­tary rais­es alarm­ing ques­tions about this entire field.’ . . . .”
  • The Pen­ta­gon research is heav­i­ly net­worked with the U.S. health and med­ical infra­struc­tures. ” . . . . The sec­ond phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that was select­ed by CEPI to devel­op a vac­cine for the new coro­n­avirus is Mod­er­na Inc., which will devel­op a vac­cine for the nov­el coro­n­avirus of con­cern in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. NIH and which will be fund­ed entire­ly by CEPI. The vac­cine in ques­tion, as opposed to Inovio’s DNA vac­cine, will be a mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA) vac­cine. Though dif­fer­ent than a DNA vac­cine, mRNA vac­cines still use genet­ic mate­r­i­al ‘to direct the body’s cells to pro­duce intra­cel­lu­lar, mem­brane or secret­ed pro­teins.’ Moderna’s mRNA treat­ments, includ­ing its mRNA vac­cines, were large­ly devel­oped using a $25 mil­lion grant from DARPA and it often touts is strate­gic alliance with DARPA in press releas­es. . . .”
  • The research involves the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, a facil­i­ty that was closed down in August of 2019 by the CDC for mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. ” . . . . The U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases (USAMRIID) facil­i­ty at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land — the U.S. military’s lead lab­o­ra­to­ry for ‘bio­log­i­cal defense’ research since the late 1960s — was forced to halt all research it was con­duct­ing with a series of dead­ly pathogens after the CDC found that it lacked ‘suf­fi­cient sys­tems in place to decon­t­a­m­i­nate waste­water’ from its high­est-secu­ri­ty labs and fail­ure of staff to fol­low safe­ty pro­ce­dures, among oth­er laps­es. The facil­i­ty con­tains both lev­el 3 and lev­el 4 biosafe­ty labs. While it is unknown if exper­i­ments involv­ing coro­n­avirus­es were ongo­ing at the time, USAMRIID has recent­ly been involved in research born out of the Pentagon’s recent con­cern about the use of bats as bioweapons. . . .”

1d. Moderna’s SARS-CoV­‑2 vac­cine con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate con­tro­ver­sy. Despite receiv­ing fund­ing from DARPA, no men­tion of the gov­ern­ment back­ing was men­tioned in its patent fil­ings.

“Mod­er­na failed to dis­close fed­er­al fund­ing for vac­cine patent appli­ca­tions, advo­cates say” by Ed Sil­ver­man; STAT News; 08/28/2020

An advo­ca­cy group has asked the Depart­ment of Defense to inves­ti­gate what it called “an appar­ent fail­ure” by Mod­er­na (MRNA) to dis­close mil­lions of dol­lars in awards received from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in patent appli­ca­tions the com­pa­ny filed for vac­cines.

In a let­ter to the agency, Knowl­edge Ecol­o­gy Inter­na­tion­al explained that a review of dozens of patent appli­ca­tions found the com­pa­ny received approx­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in grants sev­er­al years ago and the funds “like­ly” led to the cre­ation of its vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy. This was used to devel­op vac­cines to com­bat dif­fer­ent virus­es, such as Zika and, lat­er, the virus that caus­es Covid-19.

In argu­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion, the advo­ca­cy group main­tained Mod­er­na is oblig­at­ed under fed­er­al law to dis­close the grants that led to near­ly a dozen spe­cif­ic patent appli­ca­tions and explained the finan­cial sup­port means the U.S. gov­ern­ment would have cer­tain rights over the patents. In oth­er words, U.S. tax­pay­ers would have an own­er­ship stake in vac­cines devel­oped by the com­pa­ny. . . . 

. . . . One par­tic­u­lar patent assigned to Mod­er­na con­cerns meth­ods and com­po­si­tions that can be used specif­i­cal­ly against coro­n­avirus­es, includ­ing COVID-19. The patent names a Mod­er­na sci­en­tist and a for­mer Mod­er­na sci­en­tist as inven­tors, both of which acknowl­edged per­form­ing work under the DARPA awards in two aca­d­e­m­ic papers, accord­ing to the report by the advo­ca­cy group.

The group exam­ined the 126 patents assigned to Mod­er­na or Mod­er­naTx as well as 154 patent appli­ca­tions. “Despite the evi­dence that mul­ti­ple inven­tions were con­ceived in the course of research sup­port­ed by the DARPA awards, not a sin­gle one of the patents or appli­ca­tions assigned to Mod­er­na dis­close U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment fund­ing,” the report stat­ed.

…

The mis­sive to the Depart­ment of Defense fol­lows a recent analy­sis by Pub­lic Cit­i­zen, anoth­er advo­ca­cy group, indi­cat­ing the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health may own mRNA-1273, the Mod­er­na vac­cine can­di­date for Covid-19. The advo­ca­cy group not­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment filed mul­ti­ple patents cov­er­ing the vac­cine and two patent appli­ca­tions, in par­tic­u­lar, list fed­er­al sci­en­tists as co-inven­tors. . . .

. . . . In the U.S., the effort has focused on the extent to which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed tax­pay­er dol­lars to dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies to help fund their dis­cov­er­ies. In some cas­es, advo­cates argue that fed­er­al fund­ing mat­ters because it clar­i­fies the rights that the U.S. gov­ern­ment has to ensure a ther­a­py or vac­cine is avail­able to Amer­i­cans on rea­son­able terms.

One exam­ple has been remde­sivir, the Gilead Sci­ences (GILD) treat­ment being giv­en to hos­pi­tal­ized Covid-19 patients. The role played by the U.S. gov­ern­ment in devel­op­ing remde­sivir to com­bat coro­n­avirus­es involved con­tri­bu­tions from gov­ern­ment per­son­nel at such agen­cies as the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases.

As for the Mod­er­na vac­cine, ear­li­er this month, the com­pa­ny was award­ed a $1.525 bil­lion con­tract by the Depart­ment of Defense and the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices to man­u­fac­ture and deliv­er 100 mil­lion dos­es of its Covid-19 vac­cine. The agree­ment also includes an option to pur­chase anoth­er 400 mil­lion dos­es, although the terms were not dis­closed. . . .

. . . . This is not the first time Mod­er­na has been accused of insuf­fi­cient dis­clo­sure. Ear­li­er this month, Knowl­edge Ecol­o­gy Inter­na­tion­al and Pub­lic Cit­i­zen main­tained the com­pa­ny failed to dis­close devel­op­ment costs in a $955 mil­lion con­tract award­ed by BARDA for its Covid-19 vac­cine. In all, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has award­ed the com­pa­ny approx­i­mate­ly $2.5 bil­lion to devel­op the vac­cine.

2a. While Mod­er­na was not open about its exten­sive gov­ern­ment sup­port in patent fil­ings, the com­pa­ny has been open about it with the press–for good rea­son: the fast-track­ing of Moderna’s COVID-19 vac­cine devel­op­ment has been jus­ti­fied in large part because of that exten­sive past gov­ern­ment sup­port. That sup­port high­lights the close work Mod­er­na and US gov­ern­ment agen­cies have con­duct­ed togeth­er over the years devel­op­ing this vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy for MERS. Might this devel­op­ment have been part of the DARPA research dis­cussed in the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle?

“Moderna’s SARS-CoV­‑2 Vaccine’s Fast Track to Clin­i­cal Tri­als” by Julian­na LeMieux; Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­o­gy News; 03/26/2020

. . . . One of the rea­sons the SARS-CoV­‑2 vac­cine devel­op­ment has been so fast (for details, see the time­line of events at the bot­tom of the sto­ry) is the work Mod­er­na has done over the past two years in an exist­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Vac­cine Research Cen­ter (VRC) of NIAID to devel­op a vac­cine against MERS-CoV. . . .

. . . . When the com­pa­ny received the SARS-CoV­‑2 genom­ic sequences from Chi­na on Jan­u­ary 11, the stage was already set.

The mRNA vac­cine against SARS-CoV­‑2 (mRNA-1273) was quick­ly designed, test­ed for steril­i­ty, and shipped to the NIAID for clin­i­cal study. The IND was filed on Feb­ru­ary 21 and, on March 2, FDA gave the green light to start clin­i­cal study. The first per­son was dosed last Mon­day and the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly fil­ing an IND to start Phase II. . . .

. . . . The biggest rea­son for Moderna’s progress on this vac­cine is because a lot of the work had been done before—given the time and ener­gy they invest­ed into the MERS vac­cine. He explained that, with­out that, they nev­er would have been able to move as fast. . . .

. . . . Time­line of Moderna’s Path to the SARS-CoV­‑2 Vac­cine

Jan­u­ary 11 The Chi­nese author­i­ties shared the genet­ic sequence of SARS-CoV­‑2.

Jan­u­ary 13 The U.S. Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) and Moderna’s infec­tious dis­ease research team final­ized the sequence for mRNA-1273, the company’s vac­cine against the nov­el coro­n­avirus. . . .

2b. A Nature arti­cle from last month describes the exist­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between the NIAID’s Vac­cine Research Cen­ter and Mod­er­na on a dif­fer­ent vac­cine. Mod­er­na sim­ply shift­ed gears and start­ed work­ing on the COVID-19 vac­cine: mean­ing it’s been a US government/Moderna col­lab­o­ra­tion from the very begin­ning:

“Coro­n­avirus vac­cines get a biotech boost” by Amber Dance; Nature; 07/21/2020

In Jan­u­ary, Bar­ney Gra­ham had a new vac­cine ready for test­ing. Its tar­get was the Nipah virus, which had caused res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness and brain infec­tions in past out­breaks in south­east Asia. Gra­ham, a vac­ci­nol­o­gist and deputy direc­tor at the US Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID) Vac­cine Research Cen­ter in Bethes­da, Mary­land, was work­ing with Mod­er­na Ther­a­peu­tics in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, to build a type of vac­cine nev­er before approved for use. . . .

. . . . Gra­ham and his col­leagues were just about to start man­u­fac­tur­ing the Nipah vac­cine for human tri­als when they got wind of a dis­ease caused by a new coro­n­avirus, now known as SARS-CoV­‑2, wreak­ing hav­oc in Wuhan, Chi­na. They quick­ly changed their plans, but not the design on which their vac­cine was based. Armed with the draft genome for SARS-CoV­‑2, which was shared online on 11 Jan­u­ary, Mod­er­na swapped in the coro­n­avirus RNA and start­ed ship­ping a poten­tial vac­cine to the NIAID for clin­i­cal tests. The process took just six weeks — the fastest turn­around from project start to vac­cine can­di­date in med­ical his­to­ry. . . .

2c. An aspect of Mod­er­na’s vac­cine devel­op­ment that is of con­cern is the fact that mRNA vac­cines are inex­pen­sive to pro­duce, facil­i­tat­ing the pro­duc­tion of large amounts of stock. This, in turn, IF it is announced before elec­tion day, might not only boost Trump’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, but such a devel­op­ment could pro­vide a foun­da­tion for an assault on mail-in vot­ing.

“Covid-19 Vac­cine Push Lacks a Key Ingre­di­ent: Trust” by Tim­o­thy L. O’Brien and Max Nisen; Bloomberg; 08/17/2020

. . . . But the pro­gram also has been shroud­ed in secre­cy. The gov­ern­ment has good rea­sons to keep some parts of the pro­gram under wraps, par­tic­u­lar­ly nego­ti­a­tions that could affect the stock prices of com­pa­nies mak­ing bids. But the process for decid­ing which com­pa­nies were tapped to par­tic­i­pate in the pub­lic health equiv­a­lent of the Man­hat­tan Project has been entire­ly too opaque. And that lack of trans­paren­cy is also like­ly to make the pub­lic — the folks who will have to line up for inoc­u­la­tions — skep­ti­cal that the gov­ern­ment has ensured that we wind up with an effec­tive, safe vac­cine. . . .

. . . . Slaoui also has lit­tle patience for crit­ics of Warp Speed’s struc­ture or goals: “Many, many experts are say­ing, ‘Why, this has nev­er been done,’ and ‘Why, it’s impos­si­ble to do.’ I would like to ask them: Please, can you take 10% of your time and help us try to make it work? … Of course its very dif­fi­cult. Of course it could fail.”

That doesn’t address one of the most per­ti­nent crit­i­cisms: that Warp Speed’s con­tracts and spend­ing aren’t trans­par­ent. The House Select Com­mit­tee on the Coro­n­avirus Cri­sis has just called for Warp Speed offi­cials to pro­vide more infor­ma­tion on its oper­a­tions. . . . .

. . . . “The admin­is­tra­tion still has not pro­vid­ed any expla­na­tion of how it is select­ing vac­cine can­di­dates, what the risks are of nar­row­ing down that short­list or addressed con­cerns about poten­tial con­flicts in con­tracts that pre­date this cri­sis,” Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, a Demo­c­rat from Wash­ing­ton state, observed dur­ing the hear­ing.

The Warp Speed lead­ers declined to offer specifics to sen­a­tors on which com­pa­nies were can­di­dates or how the selec­tion process works. . . .

. . . . Slaoui says a vac­cine could be avail­able by the end of the year for some at-risk indi­vid­u­als, but that would require emer­gency approval from the FDA. Stephen Hahn, the FDA com­mis­sion­er, has said his agency will main­tain high stan­dards in its approval process, but Trump has also made his pref­er­ences clear. That could put pres­sure on Hahn, an inex­pe­ri­enced com­mis­sion­er who already flip-flopped on grant­i­ng emer­gency autho­riza­tion for the use of hydrox­y­chloro­quine, a con­tro­ver­sial and inef­fec­tive drug favored by the pres­i­dent.

Mem­bers of the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty have also raised red flags about Warp Speed’s opaque selec­tion process. They con­tend that some com­pa­nies appeared to have been select­ed because they could man­u­fac­ture a vac­cine quick­ly, not because they demon­strat­ed the most promis­ing sci­en­tif­ic approach­es. “It’s typ­i­cal Oper­a­tion Warp Speed, where every­thing is sort of cryp­tic and it’s unclear what they’re actu­al­ly say­ing,” Peter Hotez, a vac­cine researcher at Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine, told Sci­ence Mag­a­zine in June. “What have these vac­cines been cho­sen to do?” . . . .

. . . . Pric­ing is also a piv­otal issue. Warp Speed com­pa­nies are, for the most part, huge­ly prof­itable enter­pris­es that charge Amer­i­cans the high­est drug prices in the world. With the gov­ern­ment absorb­ing much of the finan­cial risk these com­pa­nies usu­al­ly point to as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for lofty prices, the expec­ta­tion is that any vac­cine that emerges from Warp Speed should come with a rock-bot­tom price. Although the vac­cines will be free to the pub­lic, the ulti­mate cost to tax­pay­ers is still impor­tant.

AstraZeneca, which has pledged to for­go prof­its from any vac­cines it sells dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, plans to deliv­er 300 mil­lion dos­es to the gov­ern­ment in exchange for $1.2 bil­lion in total fund­ing — about $4 a dose.

Mod­er­na has received near­ly $1 bil­lion and is slat­ed to get as much as $1.525 bil­lion more if it can deliv­er 100 mil­lion dos­es — about $25 per dose.

Dis­brow argues that Warp Speed isn’t pay­ing only for shots. The ini­tial $1 bil­lion for Mod­er­na, for exam­ple, was a one-time pay­ment to fund clin­i­cal tri­als and fac­to­ries. Amer­i­cans will ben­e­fit if this helps speed a vac­cine to mar­ket, and the spend­ing could pay off over time if Mod­er­na pro­duces addi­tion­al dos­es. (The com­pa­ny will get less fed­er­al mon­ey if it doesn’t get an approval by Jan. 31.) Even so, Moderna’s pro­posed pric­ing has been espe­cial­ly con­tro­ver­sial, and not only because it’s rel­a­tive­ly high. Tax­pay­ers have been help­ing finance Moderna’s vac­cine research since long before Warp Speed came along. The NIH, as Axios and Pub­lic Cit­i­zen have report­ed, has been such a sig­nif­i­cant backer of Mod­er­na that it may own a stake in the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty under­gird­ing the company’s coro­n­avirus vac­cine. . . .

. . . . Also unre­solved, and poten­tial­ly trou­bling, is the way in which vac­cines will be priced after Warp Speed com­pa­nies deliv­er their first batch of treat­ments. If Covid-19 flares up sea­son­al­ly and ini­tial vac­cine pro­tec­tions fade, boost­er shots may become expen­sive. Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na have both indi­cat­ed that they might charge high­er prices for their vac­cines post-pan­dem­ic.

Slaoui con­cedes that future prices for a vac­cine are like­ly to go up. . . .

2d. The news out of Moderna’s tri­al could be worse. The extreme­ly small size of this sam­ple is a mat­ter of con­cern:

“Mod­er­na says its coro­n­avirus vac­cine shows promis­ing results in small tri­al of elder­ly patients” by Berke­ley Lovelace Jr.; CNBC; 08/26/2020

. . . . The com­pa­ny test­ed its vac­cine on 10 adults between the ages of 56 and 70 and 10 elder­ly adults aged 71 and old­er, Mod­er­na said. Each par­tic­i­pant received two 100 micro­gram dos­es of the vac­cine 28 days apart.

The vol­un­teers pro­duced neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies, which researchers believe are nec­es­sary to build immu­ni­ty to the virus, and T‑cells . . . .

. . . . Sci­en­tists had pre­vi­ous­ly cau­tioned that the phase one study was small, and the results may dif­fer for oth­er pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing the elder­ly who gen­er­al­ly mount a weak­er immune response. The new data Wednes­day will like­ly boost hopes that there could be a safe and effec­tive vac­cine to pre­vent Covid-19 by the end of the year or ear­ly 2021. . . .

3. Note­wor­thy in that gen­er­al con­text is the obser­va­tion by Jonathan King (pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at MIT), that Pen­ta­gon research into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare could be masked as vac­cine research, which sounds “defen­sive.”

In FTR #1130, we not­ed the role of four-star gen­er­al Gus­tave Per­na in Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed,” insti­tut­ed by Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Whether the pro­gram serves as cov­er for mil­i­tary research seems a rea­son­able ques­tion to ask, under the cir­cum­stances.

Gene Wars: Mil­i­tary Con­trol Over the New Tech­nolo­gies by Charles Piller and Kei­th R. Yamamo­to; Beech Tree Books/William Mor­row [HC]; Copy­right 1988 by Charles Piller and Kei­th Yamamo­to; ISBN 0–688-07050–7; p. 217

. . . . King, who has chaired the micro­bial phys­i­ol­o­gy study sec­tion for the NIH, believes that with­out inten­sive inde­pen­dent scruti­ny, the Pen­ta­gon is free to obscure its true goals.

“The Defense Depart­ment appears to be pur­su­ing many nar­row, applied goals that are by nature offen­sive, such as the genet­ic ‘improve­ment’ of BW agents,” King says. “But to achieve polit­i­cal accept­abil­i­ty, they mask these inten­tions under forms of research, such as vac­cine devel­op­ment, which sound defen­sive. . . .

4a.  In past pro­grams, we have briefly not­ed that mil­i­tary and [osten­si­bly] civil­ian pro­grams offi­cial­ly involved with “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” might con­ceal clan­des­tine bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tions designed to cre­ate epi­demics.

The offi­cial dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic.

In that con­text, one should note that the offi­cial title of Unit 731, the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit was “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.”

“Unit 731”; Wikipedia.com.

Unit 731 (Japan­ese: 731部隊, Hep­burn: Nana-san-ichi Butai), also referred to as Detach­ment 731, the 731 Reg­i­ment, Man­shu Detach­ment 731, The Kamo Detach­ment,^[3]:198 Ishii Unit,^[5] Ishii Detach­ment^[5] or the Ishii Com­pa­ny, was a covert bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal war­fare research and devel­op­ment unit of the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army that under­took lethal human exper­i­men­ta­tion dur­ing the Sec­ond Sino-Japan­ese War (1937–1945) of World War II. It was respon­si­ble for some of the most noto­ri­ous war crimes car­ried out by Impe­r­i­al Japan. Unit 731 was based at the Ping­fang dis­trict of Harbin, the largest gas cham­ber in the Japan­ese pup­pet state of Manchukuo (now North­east Chi­na), and had active branch offices through­out Chi­na and South­east Asia.

It was offi­cial­ly known as the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部, Kan­tō­gun Bōe­ki Kyū­suibu Hon­bu). . . .

4b. Fore­shad­ow­ing dis­cus­sion to be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram, we note that osten­si­bly “defen­sive” research into “PREEMPT“ing MERS and SARS was being pur­sued by DARPA in 2017!

“Bats, Gene Edit­ing and Bioweapons: Rec­cent DARPA Exper­i­ments Raise Con­cerns Amid Coro­n­avirus Out­break” by Whit­ney Webb; The Last Amer­i­can Vagabond; 1/30/2020.

• The DARPA research is osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. ” . . . . Many of these recent research projects are relat­ed to DARPA’s Pre­vent­ing Emerg­ing Path­o­gen­ic Threats, or PREEMPT pro­gram, which was offi­cial­ly announced in April 2018. PREEMPT focus­es specif­i­cal­ly on ani­mal reser­voirs of dis­ease, specif­i­cal­ly bats, and DARPA even not­ed in its press release in the pro­gram that it ‘is aware of biosafe­ty and biose­cu­ri­ty sen­si­tiv­i­ties that could arise’ due to the nature of the research. . . . In addi­tion, while both DARPA’s PREEMPT pro­gram and the Pentagon’s open inter­est in bats as bioweapons were announced in 2018, the U.S. mil­i­tary — specif­i­cal­ly the Depart­ment of Defense’s Coop­er­a­tive Threat Reduc­tion Pro­gram — began fund­ing research involv­ing bats and dead­ly pathogens, includ­ing the coro­n­avirus­es MERS and SARS, a year pri­or in 2017. . . .”
• The Pen­ta­gon is research­ing  “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. ” . . . . Con­cerns about Pen­ta­gon exper­i­ments with bio­log­i­cal weapons have gar­nered renewed media atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top fun­der of the con­tro­ver­sial ‘gene dri­ve’ tech­nol­o­gy, which has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ics of entire pop­u­la­tions while tar­get­ing oth­ers for extinc­tion. At least two of DARPA’s stud­ies using this con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy were clas­si­fied and ‘focused on the poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and use of gene dri­ves in agri­cul­ture,’ accord­ing to media reports. The rev­e­la­tion came after an orga­ni­za­tion called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on the military’s inter­est in the tech­nol­o­gy as part of a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request. Co-direc­tor of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this tech­nol­o­gy may be used as a bio­log­i­cal weapon: ‘Gene dri­ves are a pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous new tech­nol­o­gy and poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons could have dis­as­trous impacts on peace, food secu­ri­ty and the envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly if mis­used, The fact that gene dri­ve devel­op­ment is now being pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed and struc­tured by the US mil­i­tary rais­es alarm­ing ques­tions about this entire field.’ . . . .”

5. Look­ing ahead to our next pro­gram (and to the fore­casts of a “twindemic”–seasonal flu and Covid-19 at the same time) we note the obser­va­tions of Dr. Daniel R. Lucey, who has cit­ed Chi­nese research that fer­rets are par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to SARS COV‑2 infec­tion.

In FTR #‘s 1116 and 1117, we not­ed the gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments being done on H5N1 avian flu. Specif­i­cal­ly, the virus was mutat­ed to man­i­fest upper res­pi­ra­to­ry trans­mis­sion in fer­rets.

In FTR #1138, we not­ed that Tamiflu–developed by Gilead Sci­ences (the mak­ers of remde­sivir) was devel­oped to com­bat the fore­cast H5N1 pan­dem­ic. For­mer chair­man-of-the board Don­ald Rums­feld, prof­it­ed enor­mous­ly from Pen­ta­gon and gov­ern­ment pur­chas­es of Tam­i­flu.

We won­der about:

1. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of the GOF func­tions done on H5N1 hav­ing been applied to the devel­op­ment of SARS Cov‑2.
2. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the GOF func­tions done on H5N1 could result in a more vir­u­lent H5N1 pan­dem­ic, coin­cid­ing with Covid-19.
3. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the above devel­op­ments may prove very prof­itable to Gilead Sci­ences.