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FTR #1156 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: 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.
This program further develops that inquiry
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.”
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.
In our last program, we weighed New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s thoughts about a white-supremacist minority grouped around the GOP. Blow saw those interests working to preserve their privilege in a number of respects.
This program asks, in effect, if the global equivalent of Blow’s malefactors might be doing something similar with the Covid-19 “op” and related, overlapping clandestine operations. How might the interests we saw in FTR #1128
Selected excerpts of a Whitney Webb article provide insight into the possible offensive nature of programs ostensibly aimed at preventing epidemics. Like Unit 731 (see above), “Epidemic Prevention” may well be masking “epidemic creation.”
In connection with that possibility, the DARPA focus on gene-driving technology is frightening and fraught with devastating possibilities.
Whether or not gene-driving impacts DARPA assisted Covid-19 vaccine development by Moderna and Inovio, the Pentagon underwriting of these firms is of concern.
Some interesting points raised by Dr. Daniel R. Lucey are particularly important in light of the information we have developed in the past about gain of function experiments.
Lucey’s points of inquiry–although not discussed in this article–are particularly important when considered in conjunction with the joint U.S./Chinese program to investigate bat-borne coronaviruses, a program whose American funding apparatus involved USAID, a frequent front for CIA operations.
The gain of function experiments we discussed in FTR #‘s 1116, 1117 and 1121 involving adapting the H5N1 avian flu virus to ferrets is worth contemplating in the context of information indicating that the SARS Cov‑2 virus is particularly infective for ferrets.
Was part of the modified H5N1 flu virus adapted to SARS Cov‑2?
A key factor spurring our suspicion concerning genetic-engineering of one or more variant of the Covid-19 virus concerns a 2015 Gain-of-Function experiment. This should answer Dr. Lucey’s query.
“. . . . 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 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. . . . 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 . . . .”
Critics have flagged Gain-Of-Function research as dangerous. Proponents are not dissuaded, including Peter Daszak. “. . . . 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. . . .”
Of more than passing interest is the disclosure that the project on bat-borne coronaviruses conducted in the Wuhan laboratory was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Baric was a key American partner in the project.
This is the undertaking about which we have reported and discussed extensively in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Professor Ralph Baric from North Carolina University, said in an interview with ‘Science Daily’ at the time: ‘This virus is highly pathogenic and treatments developed against the original SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebola fail to neutralise and control this particular virus.’ . . . .”
We note that the WIV project co-funded by USAID involved genetic manipulation of bat-borne coronaviruses.
” . . . . Now Dr Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University (USA), has alerted the public to evidence that WIV and US-based researchers were genetically engineering bat viruses to investigate their ability to infect humans, using commonly used methods that leave no sign or signature of human manipulation. Ebright flagged up a scientific paper published in 2017 by WIV scientists, including Shi Zhengli, the virologist leading the research into bat coronaviruses, working in collaboration with Peter Daszak of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance. Funding was shared between Chinese and US institutions, the latter including the US National Institutes of Health and USAID. The researchers report having conducted virus infectivity experiments where genetic material is combined from different varieties of SARS-related coronaviruses to form novel ‘chimeric’ versions. . . .”
In May, the Trump administration terminated the funding for the project. A key point of analysis was set forth by Dr. Christine Johnson: ” . . . . Virus samples in labs are almost never still infectious, after being frozen in nitrogen during the collection process and then inactivated in the lab to preserve their genetic sequence. . . .
1a. 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.
. . . . 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. . . .
2. 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 (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). . . .
3. Selected excerpts of a Whitney Webb article provide insight into the possible offensive nature of programs ostensibly aimed at preventing epidemics. Like Unit 731 (see above), “Epidemic Prevention” may well be masking “epidemic creation.”
In connection with that possibility, the DARPA focus on gene-driving technology is frightening and fraught with devastating possibilities.
Whether or not gene-driving impacts DARPA assisted Covid-19 vaccine development by Moderna and Inovio, the Pentagon underwriting of these firms is of concern.
- ” . . . . 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.. . . .”
- 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.’ . . . .”
- The DARPA research has backed two companies–Inovio and Moderna–that use nucleic acid infusions into cells for their therapeutic action. ” . . . . 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 very companies recently chosen to develop a vaccine to combat the coronavirus outbreak are themselves strategic allies of DARPA. . . . For instance, the top funders of Inovio Pharmaceuticals include both DARPA and the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the company has received millions in dollars in grants from DARPA, including a $45 million grant to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Inovio specializes in the creation of DNA immunotherapies and DNA vaccines, which contain genetically engineered DNA that causes the cells of the recipient to produce an antigen and can permanently alter a person’s DNA. Inovio previously developed a DNA vaccine for the Zika virus, but — to date — no DNA vaccine has been approved for use in humans in the United States. Inovio was also recently awarded over $8 million from the U.S. military to develop a small, portable intradermal device for delivering DNA vaccines jointly developed by Inovio and USAMRIID.
4. Some interesting points raised by Dr. Daniel R. Lucey are particularly important in light of the information we have developed in the past about gain of function experiments.
Lucey’s points of inquiry–although not discussed in this article–are particularly important when considered in conjunction with the joint U.S./Chinese program to investigate bat-borne coronaviruses, a program whose American funding apparatus involved USAID, a frequent front for CIA operations.
The gain of function experiments we discussed in FTR #‘s 1116, 1117 and 1121 involving adapting the H5N1 avian flu virus to ferrets is worth contemplating in the context of information indicating that the SARS Cov‑2 virus is particularly infective for ferrets.
Was part of the modified H5N1 flu virus adapted to SARS Cov‑2?
Another subject worth contemplating concerns Gilead Sciences, Tamiflu and the prognostications concerning a “twindemic” this fall, with influenza and Covid-19 combining to overwhelm the health system.
Might we see an enhanced H5N1 avian influenza this fall, providing enormous profits to Gilead Sciences, which, as we saw in FTR #1138, made an enormous amount of money (for itself and former Chairman of the Board Donald Rumsfeld) developing Tamiflu to negate the possibility of an H5N1 pandemic?
. . . . The sixth and seventh questions go to whether the deadly pathogen leapt to humans from a laboratory. Although some intelligence analysts and scientists have entertained that scenario, no direct evidence has come to light suggesting that the coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s labs.
Even so, given the wet market’s downgrading in the investigation, “It is important to address questions about any potential laboratory source of the virus, whether in Wuhan or elsewhere,” Dr. [Daniel R.] Lucey wrote in his blog post.
To that end, he urges the W.H.O. investigators to look for any signs of “gain of function” research — the deliberate enhancement of pathogens to make them more dangerous. The technique is highly contentious. Critics question its merits and warn that it could lead to catastrophic lab leaks. Proponents see it as a legitimate way to learn how viruses and other infectious organisms might evolve to infect and kill people, and thus help in devising new protections and precautions.
Debate over its wisdom erupted in 2011 after researchers announced success in making the highly lethal H5N1 strain of avian flu easily transmissible through the air between ferrets, at least in the laboratory.
In his blog, Dr. Lucey asks “what, if any,” gain-of-function studies were done on coronaviruses in Wuhan, elsewhere in China, or in collaboration with foreign laboratories.
“If done well scientifically, then this investigation should allay persistent concerns about the origin of this virus,” he wrote. “It could also help set an improved standard for investigating and stopping the awful viruses, and other pathogens, in the decades ahead.”
Finally, Dr. Lucey asks the W.H.O. team to learn more about China’s main influenza research lab, a high-security facility in Harbin, the capital of China’s northernmost province. In May, he notes, a Chinese paper in the journal Science reported that two virus samples from Wuhan were studied there in great detail early this year, including in a variety of animals. It reported that cats and ferrets were highly susceptible to the pathogen; dogs were only mildly susceptible; and pigs, chickens and ducks were not susceptible at all. . . .
7a. A key factor spurring our suspicion concerning genetic-engineering of one or more variant of the Covid-19 virus concerns a 2015 Gain-of-Function experiment. This should answer Dr. Lucey’s query, above:
“Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate” by Jef Akst; The Scientist; 11/16/2015
. . . . 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 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. . . . 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. . . .
. . . . 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. . . .
7b. Of more than passing interest is the disclosure that the project on bat-borne coronaviruses conducted in the Wuhan laboratory was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Baric was a key American partner in the project.
This is the undertaking about which we have reported and discussed extensively in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Professor Ralph Baric from North Carolina University, said in an interview with ‘Science Daily’ at the time: ‘This virus is highly pathogenic and treatments developed against the original SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebola fail to neutralise and control this particular virus.’ . . . .”
In FTR #1121, we noted that Baric was the selectee to reconstruct the SARS Cov2 virus from scratch. We also noted that: ” . . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
. . . . Their November 2015 study, done in conjunction with the University of North Carolina, concluded that the SARS-like virus could jump directly from bats to humans and there was no treatment that could help.
The study acknowledges the incredible danger of the work they were conducting.
“The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens,” they wrote. . . .
. . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Professor Ralph Baric from North Carolina University, said in an interview with Science Daily at the time: “This virus is highly pathogenic and treatments developed against the original SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebola fail to neutralise and control this particular virus.” . . . .
7c. We note that the WIV project co-funded by USAID involved genetic manipulation of bat-borne coronaviruses.
“Wuhan and US scientists used undetectable methods of genetic engineering on bat coronaviruses” by Jonathan Matthews and Claire Robinson; GMWatch; 05/20/2020
Evidence has emerged that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, working in collaboration with scientists in the USA, have been genetically engineering bat viruses for the past several years to investigate infectivity – using undetectable methods. The WIV is just a few miles from the Chinese city where the COVID-19 pandemic is thought to have originated and is the chief suspect in the possible scenario that the virus emerged from a lab.
The evidence rebuts claims by journalists and some scientists that the SARS-CoV‑2 virus responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic could not have been genetically engineered because it lacks the “signs” or “signatures” that supposedly would be left behind by genetic engineering techniques.
Those making these claims cite as evidence a letter published in Nature Medicine in March by American microbiologist Kristian Andersen and colleagues. The article stated that there was no evidence that the virus had been genetically manipulated and concluded that it emerged through natural mutation and selection in animal and human hosts.[1]
Typical of the media response to the Nature Medicine letter was an article published in The Scientist, which stated, “there are no signs of genetic manipulation in the SARS-CoV‑2 genome”. The BBC also reported that “the study of the coronavirus genome … found no signs it had been engineered”.
Other experts, however, have pointed out that there are well known ways of manipulating the genetic material of a virus without leaving any such signs.
Now Dr Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University (USA), has alerted the public to evidence that WIV and US-based researchers were genetically engineering bat viruses to investigate their ability to infect humans, using commonly used methods that leave no sign or signature of human manipulation.
Ebright flagged up a scientific paper published in 2017 by WIV scientists, including Shi Zhengli, the virologist leading the research into bat coronaviruses, working in collaboration with Peter Daszak of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance. Funding was shared between Chinese and US institutions, the latter including the US National Institutes of Health and USAID. The researchers report having conducted virus infectivity experiments where genetic material is combined from different varieties of SARS-related coronaviruses to form novel “chimeric” versions. This formed part of their research into what mutations were needed to allow certain bat coronaviruses to bind to the human ACE2 receptor – a key step in the human infectivity of SARS-CoV‑2.
The WIV scientists did this, Ebright points out, “using ‘seamless ligation’ procedures that leave no signatures of human manipulation”. This is noteworthy because it is a type of genetic engineering that Andersen and his team excluded from their investigation into whether SARS-CoV‑2 could have been engineered – and it was in use at the very lab that is the prime suspect for a lab escape.
A group of scientists from the University of North Carolina in the USA, with the WIV’s Shi Zhengli as a collaborator, published a study in 2015 describing similar experiments involving chimeric coronaviruses, which were also created using standard undetectable genetic engineering techniques.
6. Of more than passing interest is the disclosure that the project on bat-borne coronaviruses conducted in the Wuhan laboratory was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Baric was a key American partner in the project.
This is the undertaking about which we have reported and discussed extensively in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Professor Ralph Baric from North Carolina University, said in an interview with ‘Science Daily’ at the time: ‘This virus is highly pathogenic and treatments developed against the original SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebola fail to neutralise and control this particular virus.’ . . . .”
In FTR #1121, we noted that Baric was the selectee to reconstruct the SARS Cov2 virus from scratch. We also noted that: ” . . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
. . . . Their November 2015 study, done in conjunction with the University of North Carolina, concluded that the SARS-like virus could jump directly from bats to humans and there was no treatment that could help.
The study acknowledges the incredible danger of the work they were conducting.
“The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens,” they wrote. . . .
. . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Professor Ralph Baric from North Carolina University, said in an interview with Science Daily at the time: “This virus is highly pathogenic and treatments developed against the original SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebola fail to neutralise and control this particular virus.” . . . .
7a. The research highlighted above was a joint U.S. and Chinese project, with funding coming from USAID (a U.S. intelligence cut-out) and the NIH (which has networked with, and fronted for, both CIA and Pentagon.) In May, the Trump administration terminated the funding for the project.
The Trump administration has pulled funding for a group of scientists studying coronaviruses in bats and the risk of their spillover into humans — the very kind of infection that started the COVID-19 pandemic — according to EcoHealth Alliance, the New York-based nonprofit organization conducting the research.
The cancellation of the grant after more than a decade of work in this field seems to be tied to EcoHealth Alliance’s partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the biomedical lab at the heart of conspiracy theories that the Chinese government created or unleashed the virus or the unproven thesis that the outbreak started with an accident because of faulty safety standards in the lab.
Either way, the group expressed regret at the decision by the National Institutes of Health to terminate funding, saying its work has helped in “designing vaccines and drugs to protect us from COVID-19 and other coronavirus threats” and pointing out the Wuhan Institute’s participation had been approved by the NIH for years, including just last year under President Donald Trump. . . .
. . . . EcoHealth Alliance has worked with that lab for over a decade, according to a source familiar with the grant, as has the U.S. Agency for International Development’s PREDICT project, which for over 10 years has also studied viruses in animals and prepared local partners around the world to detect that kind of “spillover.”
But in a letter last Friday, the National Institutes of Health informed the EcoHealth Alliance it was terminating the grant and denying it access to the remaining $369,819 in its account for Fiscal Year 2020. . . .
. . . . EcoHealth Alliance has received NIH funding for this work since 2008, amounting to $5.96 million over 12 years, according to NIHdata. That work has helped “develop predictive models of global ‘hot spots’ for the future emergence of bat viruses” and used its “large repository of bat biological samples to conduct targeted surveillance in these ‘hot spots’ for known and undiscovered bat pathogens,” according to the group. . . .
. . . . Since Fiscal Year 2014, that work has been awarded to EcoHealth Alliance’s “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” project in particular, which is explicitly focused on China and done in partnership with the Wuhan Institute and others.
“This project aims to understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV [coronavirus] emerging in people by studying CoV diversity in a critical zoonotic reservoir (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China),” the group’s NIH-approved research abstract said. . . .
. . . . But while U.S. intelligence agencies look for clues of a potential lab accident, epidemiological experts say it’s highly unlikely the first transmission happened that way. Virus samples in labs are almost never still infectious, after being frozen in nitrogen during the collection process and then inactivated in the lab to preserve their genetic sequence.
“It’s an unlikely probability because the laboratory is a controlled setting and people wear personal protective equipment. I’ve seen hearsay that they maybe didn’t have enough or they weren’t skilled enough, but there are barriers, huge barriers between people and viruses in the laboratory setting,” said Dr. Christine Johnson, principal investigator with USAID’s PREDICT project, which will end this September after 10 years and two six-month extensions as USAID launches a new project that applies the data PREDICT collected. . . .
. . . . In the face of that, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has now started to call into the question of China’s biomedical labs, demanding that they provide international inspectors access to them, although it’s unclear if the administration has formally requested that of the Chinese government. Many of the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been trained by the U.S. government’s PREDICT project. . . .
. . . . A 2017 report by EcoHealth Alliance’s project, whose authors include Wuhan Institute scientists, was published in the research journal Virologica Sinica and warned that “some bat SARSr-CoVs [severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronaviruses] are able to directly infect humans without intermediate host.”
8a. In FTR#55, we noted in 1997 that U.S. Army researchers had successfully recovered genetic material from the 1918 influenza epidemic.
As will be seen in future programs, one of the variants of the Covid-19 does indeed behave like the 1918 flu virus. As we will also see in future programs, that virus was resurrected by researchers in 2005.
“Genetic Material from 1918 Flu is Found” by Gina Kolata; The New York Times; 3/21/1997.
A group of Defense Department researchers has found genetic material from the notorious Spanish flu virus that killed at least 20 million people worldwide in the influenza pandemic of 1918.
Fragments of the virus were found lurking in a formaldehyde-soaked scrap of lung tissue from a 21-year-old soldier who died of the flu nearly 80 years ago. And now, medical experts say, investigators at last hope to answer a question that has troubled them for decades: what made this virus so deadly?
One part of the answer is that the Spanish flu virus passed from birds to pigs and then to humans, a mode of transmission that is thought to produce the most dangerous strains of influenza viruses. Indeed, fear of a swine flu epidemic in 1976 caused President Gerald R. Ford to mobilize the nation to immunize against a flu strain that infected soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. That particular virus, however, turned out not to be a threat.
The search for the 1918 virus is of more than historical interest, said Dr. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, the leader of the team whose report is being published today in the journal Science. Dr. Taubenberger and other researchers hope that understanding the genetic code of the Spanish flu virus might help scientists prepare for the next influenza pandemic, which many scientists think is coming soon.
The Spanish flu epidemic seems to have begun in the United States in late spring and early summer of 1918, when doctors reported scattered outbreaks in military installations where recruits were reporting for training before going to France.
By September, when schools opened, the epidemic was roaring through the entire population and spreading rapidly to every corner of the world, attacking the young and healthy and killing them, often within days.
The flu virus itself is gone, vanished with the epidemic. But scientists have repeatedly tried to find traces of it, studying autopsy specimens and even exhuming bodies buried in Alaska where, they hoped, the virus would have remained preserved.
Even now, an expedition is being proposed to Spitsbergen, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean about 400 miles north of Norway, to exhume the bodies of miners who died of the flu.
An epidemic like that of 1918 ”can come again, and it will,” said Dr. Robert Webster, chairman of viral and molecular biology at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a geneticist and Nobel laureate who is president emeritus of Rockefeller University in New York, called influenza ”the most urgent, patently visible, acute threat in the world of emerging infections.” And, Dr. Lederberg added, ”the sooner we can learn what to anticipate, the more likely we will be able to blunt the next appearance” of a deadly flu virus.
Dr. Taubenberger studied specimens from Spanish flu victims that are among the millions of autopsy specimens that the pathology institute has been storing in warehouses since the Civil War. But he said he doubted that the study would succeed in light of the dismal history of failed efforts to find the virus.
For example, in the 1950’s, a group of scientists that included Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, director of the Merck Institute in West Point, Pa., who was then directing viral research at the Walter Reed Army Institute in Washington, traveled to Nome, Alaska, in a secret mission to examine the exhumed bodies of Eskimos who had died of the 1918 flu.
When Eskimo flu victims died, Dr. Hilleman said, they were buried in the middle of winter, in the frozen ground. The Army thought that these bodies, buried in the permafrost, might have remained frozen and preserved. But, Dr. Hilleman said, ”the bodies were in such an advanced state of deterioration that no live virus was found.”
More recently several scientists, including Dr. Webster, examined autopsy tissue from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology but were unable to find viruses.
Dr. Taubenberger decided to go ahead anyway. Looking in the computerized records, he requested autopsy slides of the lungs of 198 soldiers who died of the Spanish flu.
In examining the slides, he looked for a particular type of pathology. Since the flu virus stops replicating within a couple of days after a person is infected, Dr. Taubenberger and his team wanted lung tissue from someone who died quickly, within a week after becoming ill, so that there might still be virus particles present.
That was possible, Dr. Taubenberger said, because the 1918 influenza strain was so deadly.
”The lungs of some who died in a few days were completely filled with fluids, as if they had drowned,” he said. ”No one has ever seen that before or since. It was a unique pathology.”
Of the 198 cases that Dr. Taubenberger requested, 7 met his criteria. But only one had other features that led the researchers to believe that the flu virus was actively replicating when the man died.
The man was a private from New York State stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C., when he caught the flu.
”He was a healthy 21-year-old male with no medical history until he got this,” Dr. Taubenberger said.
The soldier died within five days of infection, on Sept. 26, 1918, and in October his lung tissue was shipped to Washington, where it was stored, undisturbed, for nearly 80 years.
With the soldier’s lung tissue in hand, the researchers began the tedious process of trying to extract the viral genetic material. The virus carries its genes in eight pieces of RNA that are packaged together in a protein coat. But over the years of storage, the 15,000 nucleotides that make up the viral RNA had broken apart into shards about 200 nucleotides long.
The researchers spent nearly two years amplifying the tiny segments of viral RNA so that they would have enough to analyze and assemble like a jigsaw puzzle. In their paper in Science, they report on the sequences of nine fragments of the virus that include pieces of its major genes.
The group has analyzed only about 7 percent of the virus, Dr. Taubenberger said, although he expects that he will eventually be able to complete the job. Others, like Dr. Webster, agree, but say it is still uncertain whether even that will reveal the secret of the virus’s lethality.
But with his preliminary analysis, Dr. Taubenberger and his colleagues have already ruled out two hypotheses on why the virus was so deadly.
One was based on an analysis of a chicken influenza virus that swept through flocks of chickens in the early 1980’s, killing them overnight.
The chicken virus was peculiar. One of its proteins had three basic amino acids at a spot where the host’s enzymes had to break that protein in order for the virus to infect a cell. Ordinarily, there was only one such amino acid at that spot. So, investigators thought, maybe the three basic amino acids were a clue to lethality, and maybe they were a feature of the Spanish flu virus.
But, Dr. Taubenberger found, that was not the case. There was nothing unusual about the amino acids at that position in the Spanish flu virus.
Another hypothesis was that the flu had gone directly from birds to humans. Ordinarily, human flu viruses spread only in humans, but genetically distinct flu viruses also fester, independently, in birds, which do not become ill when they are infected. Occasionally, viruses from birds infect animals like pigs, and then jump to people. Even worse, some researchers proposed, might be a virus that jumped directly from birds to humans.
Antibodies of survivors of the 1918 epidemic indicated that the virus had lived in pigs before infecting humans. But the antibody evidence was indirect, and some thought it might be incorrect. The genetic analysis, however, indicated that the virus had, indeed, come to humans from pigs.
”I can’t hold up one gene fragment and say, ‘This is the reason,’ ” Dr. Taubenberger said. ”This is the beginning of the story.”
But it raises additional questions, the most immediate of which is whether the planned expedition to Norway should go forward.
The trip was proposed by Dr. Kirsty Duncan, who studies medicine and geography at the University of Windsor in Ontario. Dr. Duncan learned that seven miners who were digging coal in Spitsbergen died of the flu in 1918 and were buried there. She and her colleagues have been working with Dr. Nancy Cox, the chief of the influenza branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, to plan the trip to Norway.
Dr. Duncan said the team would meet in Atlanta. ”We’ll be debating how to proceed,” she said.
Dr. Cox said the study of viral RNA from autopsy specimens might reveal all of the virus’s secrets.
The question, of course, is whether it is worthwhile to risk unleashing live viruses that might still be in the frozen tissue of the miners.
8b. The above-mentioned Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-function modification on the Horseshoe Bat coronavirus, has been selected to engineer the Covid-19.
Note what might be termed a “virologic Jurassic Park” manifestation:
. . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .
Dave,
I do not wish to detract from the larger hypothesis you put forward, but I felt the need to offer the following small correction as well as a couple comments that may be of interest to you:
At around 17:44 you state that “the Moderna vaccine uses mRNA to change the genome of the person receiving the vaccine” and “Inovio uses DNA vaccine to do the same thing.” You then double down and state that both use genetic material to “change the genome of the person receiving the vaccine.” I believe you reiterate this in 1160 as well.
Although there may perhaps be some unknown/theoretical mechanism by which mRNA vaccines could alter the DNA of the the recipient, there is no evidence to support the idea that mRNA vaccines alter DNA. Without belaboring the point, they essentially hijack your cellular machinery to turn them into viral protein factories, which your immune system is then to recognize as if it were the viral threat. Whitney Webb makes that distinction in her piece as well. This is not however to say that it is without its problems. If I am wrong on this please correct me.
Another note:
There are many DNA vaccines in development (INO-4800 by Inovio, one by Sanofi,etc.) which present serious acknowledged risk of insertional mutagenesis(i.e. changing the recipient’s genetics), although it is stated that they do not specifically aim to do that. This article states that the DNA vector is indeed taken up into the cell and transcribed in the nucleus, which even on the surface seems like risky business. (https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/715527_8). There’s one article acknowledging these uncertainties & risks, including altering the DNA of the recipient, that may be of particular interest to you as it was written by none other than Ralph S. Baric. The 2016 article looks at a DNA vaccine for MERS-CoV, and the last paragraph contains several interesting observations. Discussing the FDA guidelines for DNA vaccines, he quite frankly observes that “the preclinical research studies that established the precedent for assessing biodistribution / integration profiles were performed more than a decade ago, prior to initiation of most human clinical trials (16), and continue to be referenced as the established precedent for a lack of detectable biodistribution/integration (18).” He then goes on to state that due to the many DNA vaccine trials underway, it would be wise “to use highly sensitive methods to profile the human genome for putative sites of insertional mutagenesis” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5233508/pdf/atm-04–24-499.pdf).
Additionally, if you type in the NIH grant numbers at the end of the article you can find much more prescient work by Baric and others pertaining to coronaviruses, as well as research on DNA vaccines, therapeutics, etc. over the past several years up to today. Following is a small sampling of article titles as I haven’t read through all of these(some of these may be covered in the Webb piece):
+“Broad-spectrum antiviral GS-5734 inhibits both epidemic and zoonotic coronaviruses” from 2017( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28659436/ ). I’d like to point out GS-5734 is Remdesivir, the drug with a dubious history which is currently being pushed as a cure by Fauci & the NIH. This research also seems to be extraordinarily prescient, as can be seen in the last sentence of the abstract, which states that “these data provide substantive evidence that GS-5734 may prove effective against endemic MERS-CoV in the Middle East, circulating human CoV, and, possibly most importantly, emerging CoV of the future.” Read that again. This very study has listed in the conflict of interest statement that many of the authors work for Gilead, those same contributers own intellectual property assosciated with the research, and Gilead subsidized them to present the research.
+Related to that is the article “Comparative therapeutic efficacy of remdesivir and combination lopinavir, ritonavir, and interferon beta against MERS-CoV” from January of this year, which was also coauthored by Ralph Baric and has the same glaring conflicts of interest.
+“Jumping species‑a mechanism for coronavirus persistence and survival” from 2017. Here’s a quote from the abstract. “Zoonotic transmission of novel viruses represents a significant threat to global public health and is fueled by globalization, the loss of natural habitats, and exposure to new hosts. For coronaviruses (CoVs), broad diversity exists within bat populations and uniquely positions them to seed future emergence events.”
@Daedalus–
Thanks so much for the correction.
I assumed the messenger RNA directed the genes to direct the cellular machinery.
Apparently, the mRNA re-directs the cellular machinery itself, without routing through the DNA.
If my understanding is correct, the mRNA vaccines work rather like a retro-virus in key respects.
Retro-viruses have RNA, rather than DNA, and hijack the host’s cells to reproduce themselves in that manner.
Please correct me if this is in error.
It would be nice to know who the “the Major”–the unnamed Defense Department official in charge of Moderna’s production is, no?
https://spitfirelist.com/news/medical-martial-law/
My error and your appropriate correction notwithstanding, I still feel VERY uneasy about the rush to vaccinate.
There has never been a mRNA vaccine approved before and wiser heads than mine have cautioned of serious side effects that manifest down the line.
The notes you have provided are more than a little “interesting.”
I continue to be amazed that people are not able to see the Covid-19 outbreak in the context of the anti-China “Full-Court Press:” NED/CIA/Azov Battalion in Hong Kong; NED/CIA/Muslim Brotherhood/Captive Nations Committee offshoot in Xinjiang; all-encompassing trade wars and thoroughly weaponized media.
I will be doing a show developing further on this post:
https://spitfirelist.com/news/peter-daszaks-ecohealth-alliance-largest-funders-are-pentagon-usaid-state-department-cia/
It will be called Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 25: The Oswald Institute of Virology.
Thanks for your valuable input!
Best,
Dave
Dave,
Thank you for acknowledging your mistake. It is a true sign of integrity when one is willing to change their mind in light of new facts. I appreciate you for developing this information that no one else seems to want to touch, and also for bringing to my attention the series by Alexis Baden-Meyer (https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/gain-of-function-hall-of-shame). Keep up the great work.