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“Dozens of Countries”: Addendum to the “Oswald Institute of Virology” Programs

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COMMENT: A pair of sto­ries in The Wall Street Jour­nal yield under­stand­ing of our media land­scape and the degree of pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of same.

Reportage about the WHO’s resump­tion of its inquiry into the ori­gins of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has­n’t received much cov­er­age in the U.S.

What cov­er­age there has been has–predictably–focused on the “lack of transparency/cooperation” by Chi­na in the probe.

(We reit­er­ate that–at this point in time and some­time before–the Chi­nese response would have be gov­erned by the dis­ci­plines war­rant­ed by a wartime inves­ti­ga­tion of an ene­my attack. In this case, a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare attack. Some­thing of a “bio-North­woods” oper­a­tion.)

A remark­able aspect of the Jour­nal’s cov­er­age con­cerns a devel­op­ment that has been almost com­plete­ly excised from the West­ern press: ” . . . . For months, China’s gov­ern­ment has insist­ed both in pub­lic, and in pri­vate meet­ings with Dr. Tedros, that stud­ies on the ori­gins of the virus should now focus on oth­er coun­tries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. mil­i­tary biore­search facil­i­ty in Fort Det­rick, Md. Dozens of gov­ern­ments aligned with Chi­na have sent Dr. Tedros let­ters in sup­port of Beijing’s posi­tion, a per­son famil­iar with the let­ters said. . . .”

“Dozens of gov­ern­ments?” Which ones? This sounds like a major inter­na­tion­al dialogue/scandal. 

WHY aren’t we hear­ing about it?

I think it affords us some per­spec­tive on just how care­ful­ly man­i­cured the pub­lic per­spec­tive is in this coun­try.

In anoth­er arti­cle in the same issue of the Jour­nal, it was not­ed that Jef­frey Sachs is dis­band­ing the sci­en­tif­ic pan­el he over­saw on behalf of the pres­ti­gious British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet, due to the pres­ence of Eco­Health Alliance chief Peter Daszak and sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the pan­el asso­ci­at­ed with the orga­ni­za­tion.

” . . . . Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said he has dis­band­ed a task force of sci­en­tists prob­ing the ori­gins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safe­ty research. Dr. Sachs, chair­man of a Covid-19 com­mis­sion affil­i­at­ed with The Lancet sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, said he closed the task force because he was con­cerned about its links to Eco­Health Alliance. . . . Eco­Health Alliance’s pres­i­dent, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recus­ing him­self from that role in June. Some oth­er mem­bers of the task force have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dr. Daszak or Eco­Health Alliance on projects. . . . .”

Eco­Health Alliance has been heav­i­ly involved in coro­n­avirus research–including gain-of-func­tion work–at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy. We have not­ed that the DARPA has been heav­i­ly involved with that cat­e­go­ry of research.

As not­ed in past pro­grams and dis­cus­sion, the Eco­Health Alliance is fund­ed pri­mar­i­ly by the Depart­ment of Defense and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that has often served as a cov­er for CIA oper­a­tions. One of the prin­ci­pal advis­ers of the orga­ni­za­tion is David Franz, the for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer of Fort Det­rick.

Worth not­ing is that Jef­frey Sachs–an Amer­i­can eco­nom­ics professor–was tabbed to select those per­son­nel to serve on a pan­el of experts assem­bled under the aus­pices of The Lancet–a British med­ical jour­nal.

In addi­tion to his role advis­ing both Bernie Sanders and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Sachs head­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty con­sor­tium that advised Boris Yeltsin and, in the process, drove Rus­sia back to the stone age.

In Rus­sia, it is wide­ly believed that Sachs work for the CIA–a the­o­ry that is bol­stered by his piv­otal role in man­ag­ing the nar­ra­tive con­cern­ing the ori­gins of the pan­dem­ic.

We have done many pro­grams under­scor­ing our work­ing hypoth­e­sis that Covid-19 is a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon, devel­oped by the U.S. and deployed as part of the desta­bi­liza­tion pro­gram against Chi­na we have cov­ered since the fall of 2019.

(Some of those pro­grams are: FTR#‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170 and FTR#‘s 1183 through 1193, inclu­sive.)

1.   “WHO to Resume Covid-19 Ori­gin Probe” by Drew Hin­shaw and Bet­sy McK­ay; The Wall Street Jour­nal;  9/27/2021; P. A6.

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion is reviv­ing its stalled inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gins of the Covid-19 virus as agency offi­cials warn that time is run­ning out to deter­mine how the pan­dem­ic that has killed more than 4.7 mil­lion world­wide began. . . .

. . . . Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, includ­ing Sec­re­tary of State Antho­ny Blinken, have pressed WHO Direc­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ghe­breye­sus pub­licly and pri­vate­ly to renew the inquiry, which is like­ly to include at least one Amer­i­can. . . .

. . . . In a press con­fer­ence in August, WHO offi­cials said they were aware of new stud­ies being con­duct­ed in Chi­na, but weren’t informed about the specifics. It isn’t clear if those stud­ies will be made avail­able to the new team.

For months, China’s gov­ern­ment has insist­ed both in pub­lic, and in pri­vate meet­ings with Dr. Tedros, that stud­ies on the ori­gins of the virus should now focus on oth­er coun­tries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. mil­i­tary biore­search facil­i­ty in Fort Det­rick, Md. Dozens of gov­ern­ments aligned with Chi­na have sent Dr. Tedros let­ters in sup­port of Beijing’s posi­tion, a per­son famil­iar with the let­ters said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tutes of Infec­tious Dis­eases didn’t respond to requests for com­ment. Few, if any, sci­en­tists out­side Chi­na see the mil­i­tary base as a plau­si­ble ground zero for the pan­dem­ic. Dr. Tedros has resist­ed the idea of inves­ti­gat­ing Fort Det­rick, a per­son with knowl­edge of those con­ver­sa­tions said. . . .

 2.  “Sci­en­tists’ Pan­el on Virus Dis­bands” by Bet­sy Mck­ay; The Wall Street Jour­nal;  9/27/2021; P. A6.

NB: A much longer ver­sion of this sto­ry appears in the online edi­tion of WSJ. The text below was in a small, “box” sto­ry along­side the sto­ry above.

Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said he has dis­band­ed a task force of sci­en­tists prob­ing the ori­gins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safe­ty research.

Dr. Sachs, chair­man of a Covid-19 com­mis­sion affil­i­at­ed with The Lancet sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, said he closed the task force because he was con­cerned about its links to Eco­Health Alliance. The New York-based non-prof­it has been under scruti­ny from some sci­en­tists, mem­bers of Con­gress and oth­er offi­cials since 2020 for using U.S. funds for stud­ies on bat coro­n­avirus­es with the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, a research facil­i­ty in the Chi­nese city where the first Covid-19 out­break occurred.

Eco­Health Alliance’s pres­i­dent, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recus­ing him­self from that role in June. Some oth­er mem­bers of the task force have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dr. Daszak or Eco­Health Alliance on projects.

“I just didn’t want a task force that was so clear­ly involved with one of the main issues of this whole search for the ori­gins, which was Eco­Health Alliance,” Dr. Sachs said.

Discussion

2 comments for ““Dozens of Countries”: Addendum to the “Oswald Institute of Virology” Programs”

  1. This next Octo­ber 8, 2021 Dai­ly­mail arti­cle by Char­lotte Mitchell reveals that a in 2018 grant appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted by Peter Daszak Eco­Health Alliance, the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na and Duke NUS in Sin­ga­pore, to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists had planned to mix genet­ic data of sim­i­lar strains to cre­ate a new virus.

    Also, men­tioned in this arti­cle, is that the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na is where Pro­fes­sor Dr. Ralph S. Bar­ic works for the Depart­ment of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Immunol­o­gy.

    As back­ground, in 2014, the Nation­al Health Insti­tute (NIH) approved a five-year, year­ly grant of $666,000 a year for five years ($3.3million) for Eco­Health Alliance, a US research orga­ni­za­tion, into bat coro­n­avirus. 

    Richard Ebright, a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty, reviewed papers and con­clud­ed that sci­en­tists per­formed ‘the con­struc­tion — in Wuhan — of nov­el chimeric SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es that com­bined a spike gene from one coro­n­avirus with genet­ic infor­ma­tion from anoth­er coro­n­avirus and con­firmed the result­ing virus­es could infect human cells’.  He con­se­quent­ly tweet­ed that asser­tions ‘by the NIH Direc­tor, Fran­cis Collins, and the NIAID Direc­tor, Antho­ny Fau­ci, that the NIH did not sup­port gain-of-func­tion research or poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogen enhance­ment at WIV are untruth­ful,’

    Remem­ber that Peter Daszak, in March 7, 2020 orches­trat­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of a let­ter that con­demned con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries’ sur­round­ing the ori­gins of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. 26 of the 27 sig­na­tures had unre­port­ed links to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and they includ­ing Mr. Daszak had con­flict of inter­est through him being pres­i­dent of the US-based Eco­Health Alliance, which has fund­ed research at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy which would indi­cates a lack of impar­tial­i­ty from them. This let­ter dis­cred­it­ed a pres­ti­gious pub­li­ca­tion, The Lancet.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9980015/26-Lancet-scientists-trashed-theory-Covid-leaked-Chinese-lab-links-Wuhan.html

    An unan­swered ques­tion is why the Chi­nese Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy would sub­mit this pro­pos­al to DARPA.

    Here is the Octo­ber 8, 2021 Dai­ly­mail arti­cle by Char­lotte Mitchell:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9980015/26-Lancet-scientists-trashed-theory-Covid-leaked-Chinese-lab-links-Wuhan.html

    Wuhan sci­en­tists and US researchers planned to cre­ate a new coro­n­avirus in 2018: Con­sor­tium led by Brit Peter Daszak asked DARPA to fund research at lab in city where Covid pan­dem­ic began

    ¥ A 2018 grant pro­pos­al sought to com­bine data from sim­i­lar strains for new virus
    ¥ It was sub­mit­ted by sci­en­tists from US, Chi­na and Sin­ga­pore, but was reject­ed 
    ¥ A genet­ics expert from the WHO told The Tele­graph that such work could explain why a close ances­tor for Covid-19 has yet to be found in nature
    ¥ The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy has con­sis­tent­ly denied cre­at­ing Covid-19 

    By CHARLOTTE MITCHELL FOR MAILONLINE
    PUBLISHED: 18:08 EDT, 5 Octo­ber 2021 | UPDATED: 21:59 EDT, 5 Octo­ber 2021

    US and Chi­nese sci­en­tists were plan­ning to cre­ate a new coro­n­avirus before the pan­dem­ic erupt­ed, leaked pro­pos­als show. 

    Last month, a grant appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists had planned to mix genet­ic data of sim­i­lar strains to cre­ate a new virus.

    The grant appli­ca­tion was made in 2018 and leaked to Dras­tic, the pan­dem­ic ori­gins analy­sis group.  

    ‘We will com­pile sequence/RNAseq data from a pan­el of close­ly relat­ed strains and com­pare full length genomes, scan­ning for unique SNPs rep­re­sent­ing sequenc­ing errors.

    ‘Con­sen­sus can­di­date genomes will be syn­the­sised com­mer­cial­ly using estab­lished tech­niques and genome-length RNA and elec­tro­po­ra­tion to recov­er recom­bi­nant virus­es,’ the appli­ca­tion states.

    Pho­to Cap­tion: US and Chi­nese sci­en­tists were plan­ning to cre­ate a new coro­n­avirus before the pan­dem­ic erupt­ed, leaked pro­pos­als show. Pic­tured: The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, whose sci­en­tists were involved in a grant pro­pos­al for the research

    US and Chi­nese sci­en­tists were plan­ning to cre­ate a new coro­n­avirus before the pan­dem­ic erupt­ed, leaked pro­pos­als show. Pic­tured: The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, whose sci­en­tists were involved in a grant pro­pos­al for the research

    This would result in a virus which had no clear ances­tor in nature, a World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) expert told The Tele­graph.

    The expert, who asked the paper not to pub­lish their name, said that, if such a method had been car­ried out, it could explain why no close match has ever been found in nature for Sars-CoV­‑2.

    The clos­est nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring virus is the Banal-52 strain, report­ed in Laos last month. It shares 96.8 per cent of Covid-19’s genome. 

    No direct ances­tor, which would be expect­ed share around 99.98 per cent, has been found so far. 

    The WHO expert told The Tele­graph that the process detailed in the appli­ca­tion would cre­ate ‘a new virus sequence, not a 100 per cent match to any­thing.’

    ‘They would then syn­the­sise the viral genome from the com­put­er sequence, thus cre­at­ing a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks nat­ur­al as it is the aver­age of nat­ur­al virus­es.

    ‘Then they put that RNA in a cell and recov­er the virus from it. 

    ‘This cre­ates a virus that has nev­er exist­ed in nature, with a new ‘back­bone’ that did­n’t exist in nature but is very, very sim­i­lar as it’s the aver­age of nat­ur­al back­bones,’ the expert said.

    The pro­pos­al was reject­ed and the data­base of viral strains at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy was tak­en offline some 18 months lat­er, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to check what sci­en­tists there were work­ing on.

    The insti­tute’s sci­en­tists have con­sis­tent­ly denied cre­at­ing the coro­n­avirus in their lab.

    The grant appli­ca­tion pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted by British zool­o­gist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which includ­ed Daszak Eco­Health Alliance, the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na and Duke NUS in Sin­ga­pore, The Tele­graph report­ed. 

    Pho­to Cap­tion: The grant appli­ca­tion pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted by British zool­o­gist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which includ­ed Daszak Eco­Health Alliance

    Experts told the paper that cre­at­ing an ‘ide­al’ aver­age virus could have been part of work to cre­ate a vac­cine that works across coro­n­avirus­es. 

    Last month, it emerged that the US had fund­ed sim­i­lar research to that out­lined in the 2018 grant pro­pos­al. 

    Files obtained by The Inter­cept as part of an FOI request to drill down the pos­si­ble root of COVID and whether the US had any role in it showed that in 2014, the Nation­al Health Insti­tute (NIH) approved a five-year, year­ly grant of $666,000 a year for five years ($3.3million) for Eco­Health Alliance, a US research orga­ni­za­tion, into bat coro­n­avirus. 

    Eco­Health Alliance, in its pro­pos­al to the NIH, acknowl­edged the risks involved were ‘the high­est risk of expo­sure to SARS or oth­er CoVs’ among staff, who could then car­ry it out of the lab.

    The NIH gave them the mon­ey any­way — some­thing Dr Antho­ny Fau­ci was pre­vi­ous­ly forced to admit when tes­ti­fy­ing before Con­gress in May this year. Eco­Health Alliance then gave $599,000 of the mon­ey to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.

    At the time and repeat­ed­ly since, Fau­ci has denied that the research con­sti­tut­ed what’s known as ‘gain-of-func­tion’ research. 

    Gain-of-func­tion research is the sci­en­tif­ic term giv­en to research that delib­er­ate­ly changes an organ­ism to make give it new func­tions in order to test a the­o­ry. 

    When applies to study­ing human virus­es, it can mean mak­ing the virus more trans­mis­si­ble and or even dead­ly in order to test what can and can’t sur­vive it. 

    ‘The doc­u­ments make it clear that asser­tions by the NIH Direc­tor, Fran­cis Collins, and the NIAID Direc­tor, Antho­ny Fau­ci, that the NIH did not sup­port gain-of-func­tion research or poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogen enhance­ment at WIV are untruth­ful,’ Richard Ebright, a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty, tweet­ed. 

    Ebright stud­ied the papers and alleged that the sci­en­tists per­formed ‘the con­struc­tion — in Wuhan — of nov­el chimeric SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es that com­bined a spike gene from one coro­n­avirus with genet­ic infor­ma­tion from anoth­er coro­n­avirus and con­firmed the result­ing virus­es could infect human cells’. 

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 6, 2021, 5:20 pm
  2. The BBC News on August 2, 2021, Real­i­ty Fact Check Team pub­lished an arti­cle clar­i­fies that Ralph Bar­ic was involved in Gain of Func­tion (GOF) Research which was stopped in 2014 under the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion. Though Sen­a­tor Rand Paul whose right wing ide­ol­o­gy (as well as his fathers) can be ques­tioned, indi­cates that he believes it was GOF research.

    A US researcher and biol­o­gist Ali­na Chan at the Broad Insti­tute of MIT and Har­vard indi­cates that if the research was not rea­son­ably antic­i­pat­ed to result in GOF research despite its end result it would not be defined as GOF research.

    One could then ascer­tain that using that stan­dard, Dr. Bar­ic or Dr. Fau­ci could legal­ly claim was not deemed to be GOF research but this analy­sis could poten­tial­ly be sub­ject to manip­u­la­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion with cer­tain sit­u­a­tions.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/57932699

    Coro­n­avirus: Was US mon­ey used to fund risky research in Chi­na?
    2 August
    By Real­i­ty Check team
    BBC News

    As the debate con­tin­ues over the ori­gins of the coro­n­avirus, a heat­ed polit­i­cal bat­tle is tak­ing place over virus research car­ried out in Chi­na using US funds.
    It’s linked to the unproven the­o­ry that the virus could have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, the Chi­nese city where it was first detect­ed.

    A report released by Repub­li­can law­mak­ers cites “ample evi­dence” that the lab was work­ing to mod­i­fy coro­n­avirus­es to infect humans and calls for a bipar­ti­san inves­ti­ga­tion into its ori­gins.

    Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Rand Paul also alleges that US mon­ey was used to fund research there that made some virus­es more infec­tious and more dead­ly, a process known as “gain-of-func­tion”.

    But this has been firm­ly reject­ed by Dr Antho­ny Fau­ci, the US infec­tious dis­eases chief.

    What is ‘gain-of-func­tion’ research?

    “Gain-of-func­tion” is when an organ­ism devel­ops new abil­i­ties (or “func­tions”).

    This can hap­pen in nature, or it can be achieved in a lab, when sci­en­tists mod­i­fy the genet­ic code or place organ­isms in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments, to change them in some way.

    For exam­ple, this might involve sci­en­tists try­ing to cre­ate drought-resis­tant plants or mod­i­fy dis­ease vec­tors in mos­qui­toes to make them less like­ly to pass on infec­tions.

    With virus­es that could pose a risk to human health, it means devel­op­ing virus­es that are poten­tial­ly more trans­mis­si­ble and dan­ger­ous.

    Sci­en­tists jus­ti­fy the poten­tial risks by say­ing the research can help pre­pare for future out­breaks and pan­demics by under­stand­ing how virus­es evolve, and there­fore devel­op bet­ter treat­ments and vac­cines.

    Did the US fund virus research in Chi­na?

    Yes, it did con­tribute some funds.

    Dr Fau­ci, as well as being an advis­er to Pres­i­dent Biden, is the direc­tor of the US Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID), part of the US gov­ern­men­t’s Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH).

    This body did give mon­ey to an organ­i­sa­tion that col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.

    That organ­i­sa­tion — the US-based Eco­Health Alliance — was award­ed a grant in 2014 to look into pos­si­ble coro­n­avirus­es from bats.

    Eco­Health received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which was giv­en to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.

    In 2019, its project was renewed for anoth­er five years, but then pulled by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in April 2020 fol­low­ing the out­break of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

    Was US mon­ey used for ‘gain-of-func­tion’ stud­ies?
    In May, Dr Fau­ci stat­ed that the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-func­tion research in the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy”.

    Sen­a­tor Rand Paul asked Dr Fau­ci if he want­ed to retract that state­ment, say­ing: “As you are aware it is a crime to lie to Con­gress.”

    Sen­a­tor Paul believes the research did qual­i­fy as “gain-of-func­tion” research, and referred to two aca­d­e­m­ic papers by the Chi­nese insti­tute, one from 2015 (writ­ten togeth­er with the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na), and anoth­er from 2017.

    One promi­nent sci­en­tist sup­port­ing this view — and quot­ed by Sen­a­tor Paul — is Prof Richard Ebright of Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty.

    He told the BBC that the research in both papers showed that new virus­es (that did not already exist nat­u­ral­ly) were cre­at­ed, and these “risked cre­at­ing new poten­tial pathogens” that were more infec­tious.

    “The research in both papers was gain-of-func­tion research”, he said.

    He added that it met the offi­cial def­i­n­i­tion of such research out­lined in 2014 when the US gov­ern­ment halt­ed fund­ing for such activ­i­ties due to biosafe­ty con­cerns.

    The fund­ing was paused to allow a new frame­work to be drawn up for such research.

    Why does Dr Fau­ci reject this charge?

    Dr Fau­ci told the Sen­ate hear­ing the research in ques­tion “has been eval­u­at­ed mul­ti­ple times by qual­i­fied peo­ple to not fall under the gain-of-func­tion def­i­n­i­tion”.

    He also said it was “mol­e­c­u­lar­ly impos­si­ble” for these virus­es to have result­ed in the coro­n­avirus, although he did not elab­o­rate.

    The NIH and Eco­Health Alliance have also reject­ed sug­ges­tions they sup­port­ed or fund­ed “gain-of-func­tion” research in Chi­na.

    They say they fund­ed a project to exam­ine “at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el” new­ly-dis­cov­ered bat virus­es and their spike pro­teins (which help the virus bind to liv­ing cells) “with­out affect­ing the envi­ron­ment or devel­op­ment or phys­i­o­log­i­cal state of the organ­ism”.

    One of the US sci­en­tists who col­lab­o­rat­ed on the 2015 research on bat virus­es with the Wuhan insti­tute, Dr Ralph Bar­ic from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, gave a detailed state­ment to the Wash­ing­ton Post.

    He said the work they did was reviewed by both the NIH and the uni­ver­si­ty’s own biosafe­ty com­mit­tee “for poten­tial of gain-of-func­tion research and were deemed not to be gain-of-func­tion”.

    He also says that none of the virus­es which were the sub­ject of the 2015 study are relat­ed to Sars-Cov­‑2, which caused the pan­dem­ic in 2020.

    He does acknowl­edge that the work they car­ried out showed the virus­es had “intrin­sic prop­er­ties” giv­ing them the abil­i­ty to infect humans.

    But he adds: “We nev­er intro­duced muta­tions into [the virus] spike to enhance growth in human cells.”

    US researcher and biol­o­gist Ali­na Chan at the Broad Insti­tute of MIT and Har­vard has high­light­ed issues with the word­ing of the gov­ern­men­t’s pause to fund­ing in 2014.

    It says that it would stop fund­ing research that “may be rea­son­ably antic­i­pat­ed to con­fer attrib­ut­es to influen­za, MERS, or SARS virus­es such that the virus would have enhanced path­o­genic­i­ty and/or trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty in mam­mals via the res­pi­ra­to­ry route.”

    This could imply that research on virus­es may not intend to pro­duce “gain-of-func­tion”, although that could be the end result of it.

    A more gen­er­al point is that any eval­u­a­tion of research and the risks involved can be sub­jec­tive.

    Rebec­ca Moritz of Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty told the BBC: “There is not always con­sen­sus [on gain-of-func­tion research] even amongst experts, and insti­tu­tions inter­pret and apply pol­i­cy dif­fer­ent­ly.”

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 6, 2021, 6:47 pm

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