TRUTH WILL OUT
Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID (DRASTIC) lists Reaper's Dance on their website.
Since the earliest days of the pandemic, a small dedicated band of international sleuths called DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID) have pursued the truth of the pandemic origins with bulldog tenacity. This group has been instrumental in unearthing almost all the critical documents that have driven the evidence towards a lab leak as the cause of this pandemic by piercing the wall of institutional obstructionism on both the US and Chinese ends of the globe. The work of DRASTIC is now being used by WHO, the US Congress, FBI and the White House in deciding the future directions of institutional policy governing all pandemic potential research.
It is an honor to be recognized by the DRASTIC team.
Reproduced below is the entire Chapter 6 of The Reaper's Dance detailing the full work of the DRASTIC team that underpins the current opinion that the COVID 19 pandemic that slaughtered 25 million people and producced damages in probable excess of $10 Trillion was the result of a lab leak.
The Reaper's Dance
Chapter 6
Gain of Function
From inability to let well alone, from too much zeal for the
new and contempt for what is old, from putting knowledge before wisdom, science
before art and cleverness before common sense, from treating patients as cases
and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the
same, good Lord deliver us.
—Sir Robert Hutchison, “The
Physician’s Prayer”
Early Warnings
The process
by which a virus natural to an animal host acquires the ability to infect a
human requires the virus to acquire new capabilities to bind with human cell
surface receptors and use the human cellular machinery for its replication and
propagation or, in essence, a “gain of function.” This process can occur
randomly in nature by just chance exposure, though in actuality, this leap from
the natural animal reservoir of a virus to a human host often requires an
intermediary host animal to facilitate the acquisition of these new human-specific
functions. The process of such events is, fortunately, far from common. But
ecological degradation and climate change has been altering the equation toward
increasing the probability of such an event. Still, there have been prescient
minds in the scientific community ringing the alarm bells of the risk of viral
pandemics for years.
Experts and
public figures have been variously warning of pandemic unpreparedness, pandemic
vulnerabilities and risks, and pandemic inevitability since 2005.[1], [2], [3], [4]
Indeed the growing ability of scientists to manipulate the genome of organisms
by inserting foreign genes or deleting endogenous genes or splicing portions of
genes from other species to create chimeric organisms with novel biological properties has raised alarm in both scientists, regulatory agencies and
knowledgeable members of the public. Developments as early as 2001 by Jackson
et al. who developed a strain of mousepox that overcame both natural disease-induced and vaccine immunity along with the separate complete synthesis of the
polio virus made it clear that humankind had the potential to unleash upon itself a
catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
These fears
were given impetus in 2011, when scientists Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and Ron
Fouchier, independently demonstrated a cross species jump of the avian
influenza virus from birds to mammalian ferrets by repeatedly infecting ferrets
with the avian virus. Such repeated exposure allowed the viruses to acquire the
capability to spontaneously spread as a respiratory virus between ferrets
without the aid of manual infection by the scientists. In addition, the
mutations that the viruses had acquired in the process of adaptation to the
cooler respiratory passages of the ferrets also conferred upon them the ability
to be transmitted from one ferret to another as a droplet-transmitted infection.[5] The
virus was now airborne! The firestorm of debate that followed had proponents
hailing the merits of such work in furtherance of mankind’s understanding of
virulence, transmissibility, and the fundamental determinants of immune
resistance and vaccinology while opponents were aghast at the potential hazards
of such research regarding accidental mutagenesis that could easily run amuck
and unleash a global biologic catastrophe. [6], [7]
Moratorium on Doomsday
The growing
drumbeat of such concerns , led a group of scientists in Cambridge,
Massachusetts to form the Cambridge Working Group (CWG) in 2014, to push for a
moratorium and tighter regulation on all potentially hazardous biologic
research involving organisms of pandemic potential. The push by CWG was given
greater urgency since it coincided with a series of unintentional lapses in
laboratory safety at the CDC, FDA and USDA involving anthrax bacteria, samples
of smallpox virus and H9N2 and H5N1 influenza strains.[8] The July
14, 2014, moratorium call on all research involving pathogens of pandemic
potential, by the 18 member CWG which
was endorsed by over three hundred scientists, academics, and physicians was
ultimately followed by a decision of the White House Office of Science and
Technology and the Department of Health and Human Services to institute a gain
of function research and funding moratorium that lasted from October 2014 until
December 2017.[9]
The world owes much of
the ensuing evidence to the investigative work performed by members of the
private group DRASTIC which is an acronym for Decentralized Radical Autonomous
Search Team Investigating Covid-19. This group of globally widespread internet sleuths
have managed to sleuth out and excavate a huge trove of diverse data that has
enabled much of the world's policy bodies to penetrate the obfuscating wall of
institutional obstructionism surrounding this pandemic. Widely acclaimed by
agencies and news organizations as doing higher quality work than governments,
some notable contributors in this effort both within and without the DRASTIC
team include Gilles Demaneuf, William Bostickson, Prasanjeet Ray (aka The
Seeker), Monali Rahalkar and investigative journalists of the Wall Street
Journal.
EcoHealth and NIH
EcoHealth Alliance was
created by Peter Daszak, a conservation biologist, in 2011 to foster a
scientific and environmental alliance to understand the delicate balance
between ecological health, its degradation, wildlife health, and human health.
Daszak felt the combination of global warming, ecological degradation, and
global freshwater crisis was increasing the probability for outbreaks of new
diseases. It is well recognized that there currently exist many animal and
plant microbes and viruses’ humans never encounter because human populations do
not have significant contact with these wilderness flora and fauna. But Daszak
saw ecological degradation, climate change, and freshwater decline as a trifecta
of conditions creating a perfect storm for the emergence of new diseases. He
argued that these conditions were reducing agricultural harvesting of protein,
increasing contact between wild animals and humans, and pushing increased
exposures due to pressure on human populations that were already under
nutritional pressure. He felt that scientists were too siloed in their narrow
disciplines. EcoHealth Alliance was conceived as an organization that would
bring microbiologists, virologists, epidemiologists, climatologists,
soil-science experts, agricultural experts, botanists, and zoologists in a
cross-disciplinary network to study and map out the risks, as well as guide the
development of visionary policies by governmental agencies.
It would seem
inconceivable that such an organization would find itself in the eye of the
firestorm surrounding the origins of SARS-CoV-2. On May 27, 2014, EcoHealth Alliance
was awarded a $4.3 million RO1 grant (# R01AI110964) to fund research towards “Understanding the Risk of
Bat Coronavirus Emergence”[10]. The research proposed to
study bat coronaviruses of the type that caused the first SARS epidemic of
2003.[11] The original
award was to run from 2014 in annual renewal increments till June 2023. As fate
would have it the grant was not renewed after June 2019 after about $3.7
million dollars had been spent for reasons that will become evident. The
Ecohealth grant was issued prior to the October 2014 NIH funding pause on all
new pandemic-related research, and hence, NIH Grant # R01AI110964 slipped under the regulatory oversight radar and continued
to operate. In addition, the wording of the grant research proposal was merely
to identify the prevalence of coronaviruses in bat populations and to catalogue
the possibility of an emergence. This stated aim appeared on surface innocuous
enough to slip beneath the regulatory oversight radar that existed at the time.
To make things more convenient, the grant was to be carried out overseas in the
Wuhan Institute of Virology in collaboration with Daszak’s long-time
collaborator Shi Zhengli who had long studied the type of bats that harbored
SARS-type coronaviruses and was famous in China as the “batwoman”. The bat species (Rhinolophidae)
that were the natural reservoir of these coronaviruses were residents of the
cave systems in the mountains of Enshi prefecture in the Hubei province of
China. Under the terms of the collaboration drafted, EcoHealth used some of the
NIH funds to execute the research at WIV using WIV resources with EcoHealth
being the grant prime recipient and the WIV as a sub-recipient. Daszak’s
scientific relationship with Shi Zhengli, a WIV virologist, goes back to 2006,
and the two have coauthored many papers on SARS-type bat coronaviruses. Another
significant collaborator on the same project was Ralph Baric of the University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill whose humanized mice bearing the human ACE-2 receptor
would serve as an animal model to test the infectivity of SARS-type
coronaviruses in the later years of the grant.
THE BASIS OF RO1 AI110964
Scientists
do not submit grant proposals without knowing to some degree beforehand the
answers to the questions they want to ask. Contrary to popular belief
scientists do not ask for funding and then go out into the wilderness to
conduct their research. Often what they want to study has already been studied
by them to some degree and this forms the basis of the funding proposal. Both
Daszak and Shi Zhengli already knew in 2014 that a certain cave in South China
harbored bats that were capable of sickening humans with a respiratory illness
but did not reveal this information in RO1 A1110964 grant proposal.
In 2020,
Prasanjeet Ray of the DRASTIC team who was researching internet records of
scientific publication on SARS-type infections in China, unearthed a masters and
doctoral thesis of a Chinese student. The thesis, which was published in
Chinese upon translation, revealed that in April 2012 six miners harvesting bat
guano from a defunct copper mine near Tong Guan in Mojiang Hani county of the Yunnan
province fell ill with a mysterious and serious respiratory illness[12],[13],[14] . Three
of the six miners would eventually die. Biological samples from these patients
were tested at the WIV and were positive for a SARS-type virus infection in at least
2 out of the 6 cases.
Records
unearthed by the DRASTIC team revealed that Shi Zhengli proceeded to visit the
Tong Guan mine in 2013 and collected at least 9 novel virus samples. An October
2013 paper coauthored by her, and Daszak in Nature announces the discovery of 2
novel bat coronaviruses isolated from the Chinese horseshoe bat species which
she labeled as RsSHCO14 and Rs3367, Shi also announced the successful
laboratory culture of a bat coronavirus strain that bore 99.9% identity with Rs3367
and therefore presumably was derived from the Rs3367 wildtype parent. This lab
strain was given the name bat-SL-CoV-WIV1 and was found to infect human cells,
civets, and bats via the ACE-2 receptor. Shi goes on to assert that “Our results provide the strongest evidence to
date that Chinese horseshoe bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV and that
intermediate hosts may not be necessary for direct human infection by some bat
SL-CoVs. They also highlight the importance of pathogen-discovery programs targeting
high-risk wildlife groups in emerging disease hotspots as a strategy for
pandemic preparedness”[15].
PRE-ADAPTATION TO HUMAN SPREAD
The
finding by the WIV scientists as detailed in the October 2013 Nature paper of
bat coronavirus strains in the wild capable of direct transmission to humans
without an intermediary animal host is important because what follows is that
WIV and EcoHealth’s subsequent work was all concerning derivatives of this
progenitor bat virus strain. One of the first observations of epidemiologists
and virologists in Dec2019 and Jan 2020 was that SARS-CoV2 was not behaving as
if it were a virus freshly entering the human population for the first time.
Most viruses that jump from animals to humans go through a period of host
adaptation. It is like a dating game between a boy and a girl pairing up for
the first time. The initial interactions are tentative as the virus evolves
towards its best fit to its host. So, in such cases, the initial spread is
hesitant and sporadic. By contrast, the COVID-19 illness produced by SARS-CoV2
was spreading like wildfire in November and December 2019. The initial Ro
of the virus in November and December 2019 (Ro is a co-efficient of
its transmissibility and virulence) was estimated at 2.5 to 4.0, with some
estimates of as high as 6.5. Essentially a Ro of 3 means that each
infected individual would infect three additional individuals before the
disease ran its course in that person. To provide some perspective Ebola has a
Ro of 1.5. The SARS-CoV2 virus was behaving as if it was already
well adapted to its human host. Such a situation would be true under two scenarios.
1) SARS-CoV2 was already circulating at low levels in the human population for
some time prior to 2019. But apart from the 6 cases of the Tong Guan miner’s
illness there was no evidence of SARS-like illness between 2013 to September
2019. In addition, the level of exposure of the miners in the Tong Guan cave to
bat genetic material through contact with bat excreta and inhaled particles
within the closed environment of the mine's narrow passages at depths of up to
150 feet, ensured that the infective inoculum that these 6 patients experienced
would have been extremely high. That spoke to an initial wild-type strain with
a low virulence and transmissibility. This would explain the scenario of a lack
of other cases in the 7 years after April 2012, where the bat viruses with human
infective capability would have existed in that region, but the virus would not
readily spread into the human population spontaneously on a random casual contact
and would instead require high concentrated exposure to the virus. 2) The SARS-CoV2 was a human-capable bat virus,
to begin with that had subsequently acquired an enhancement of its virulence
capability that enabled its wildfire spread once it got the opportunity to
infect even 1 or 2 individuals. But how did that happen? To investigate that we
must turn back the pages of events by a few years.
A UNIQUE BREED
Scientists
are a unique breed of individuals. In
addition to exceptionally high levels of intelligence, and analytic and
deductive logic, collectively they exhibit personality traits of unbridled
curiosity, innovative thinking, a willingness to boldly test boundaries and to
design methods and tools to further this thirst for satisfaction of their
intellectual hunger. For the most part, the scientific community is also
possessed of high indices of integrity and a moral code of beneficence to
humanity. But this code of beneficence is always in juxtaposition and in some
respects subservient to the end goal of all scientists’ endeavors, which is to
continually satisfy their intellectual curiosity. The means of achievement of
that end goal is based on employing the tools of their intellect and a willingness
to push boundaries. The events that followed the 2014 moratorium on the gain of
function research must be viewed in this context of the innate tendency towards
intellectual hubris of the scientific community in general. The three years
that followed the CWG moratorium in 2014 were always suffered by the scientific
community as a burden and resented by many as shackles on research that many
virologists felt was overzealous regulatory oversight. Virologists engaged in
pandemic research felt they knew the risks involved and that they knew better
and were the best people to be trusted to conduct such research responsibly and
safely. The power of the pharmaceutical-academic-regulatory complex is immense.
So, when the Trump administration arrived with its philosophy of dismantling
regulation at every level and unleashing the hounds of business and enterprise,
the scientific community felt their time had come. In 2017 a group of thirty-seven
scientists formed Scientists for Science and pushed for a resumption of
research on dangerous pathogens arguing that such research was essential and
that adequate safety measures existed to protect the public. [16],[17] This
argument found a receptive ear with the Trump administration and in December 2017, the NIH resumed
funding of gain-of-function research on pathogens of pandemic potential.[18]
GOFR and DURC
One of the key issues of
debate is how to define what constitutes gain-of-function research (GOFR or
“gopher”). GOFR may be defined based on (a) the design of the actual experiment
or (b) the express intent of the experiment. For example, a GOFR experiment may
be designed to specifically introduce a mutation in a microbial (bacteria or
virus) genome to confer a new property the original organism (wild type) did
not have. Even though the new function does not increase the organism’s
virulence or pathogenicity, this would be classified as GOFR since there is a
new function acquired.
An alternate example of GOFR
would be the repeated manual passaging (exposure) of a microbe to a whole
animal or animal cells in culture not a normal host of the organism to allow
the acquisition by the organism of the ability to replicate and thrive in the
new non-native cell or animal. Here, the intent is specific acquisition of
extra-species infectivity and propagability by a microbe that hitherto would
never have infected this new animal or cell.
It is this gray zone of
potential interpretation of GOFR that makes the regulation of GOFR tricky. For
example, a property like increased pathogenicity, transmissibility, and
virulence may be a multistep process. A GOFR experiment may result in
acquisition of a new nonpathogenic, nonvirulence function, but this new
function can be a link in the chain, where the next step would be the
acquisition of increased virulence and lethality. In this manner, the ball is
tipped a little closer to the edge of chaos.
This is very well seen
even in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The original wild type of virus prevalent from
November 2019 till April 2020 spontaneously mutated into alpha, beta, gamma,
delta, and omicron variants with progressive increase in transmissibility. From
a mechanistic perspective, each variant was becoming progressively better
adapted to transmission, replication, and propagation in the human population.
This, in certain respects, is nature performing GOFR, except it’s occurring as
random chance over a huge number of iterative attempts.
So, when a government
functionary declares to a congressional committee that its agency has never
funded GOFR at any lab or research institution, the statement could be
technically truthful but not really accurate based on how GOFR is being
defined.
Due to the inherent
difficulties of the definition of what constitutes GOFR, research on pathogens with
potential for accidental release or potential for intentional release was
classified as “dual use research of concern” (DURC) requiring additional
regulatory and institutional oversight.[19],[20]
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,
critics of GOFR have been vociferous in emphasizing that the enhanced
classification DURC should have been necessarily instituted on all bat virus research,
even if the projects did not constitute actual GOFR manipulation of the viruses
so isolated.[21]
DARPA DEFUSE PROJECT
In April 2018 EcoHealth
submitted a $14 million multi-year bat coronavirus research proposal called
DEFUSE that outlined its plans to isolate the viruses from the Tong Guan cave complex
and engage in genetic recombination and GOFR research on these samples at the
WIV. The researchers planned to create chimeric bat viruses and immunologically
reactive spike protein vaccine conjugates that they proposed to reintroduce
into wild free bat populations in the same Tong Guan cave system in a massive
bat anti-SARS vaccination program. The intent was to carry out a genetic
modification and immunological modification program of unprecedented scale and
scope. DARPA rejected the DEFUSE research proposal in December 2018 because they
deemed it too risky and because the proposal lacked appropriate safeguards for
GOFR-DURC capable research[22].
Though the grant funding was turned down in its entirety, the DEFUSE proposal
is alarming in its stated intentions. Once again, the existence of this
rejected proposal would never have seen the light of day except for the work of
the DRASTIC team who unearthed the evidence while sleuthing for answers to the
COVID origins debate[23]. The
experiments outlined in the DEFUSE proposal is a rare look into the thought
process of the virologists at EcoHealth, the WIV and its collaborating
institutions and raise serious long-term concerns about the continuing risk of
pandemic grade research to humanity in our world today.
The concerns raised in
the DEFUSE proposal belong to 4 categories.
1) GOFR Experiments: The proposal detailed virulence-enhancing
experiments that were proposed to be done on the Tong Guan mine bat viruses
that already were capable of binding to human ACE-2 receptors and infecting
human cells. The DEFUSE proposal planned to insert a Furin Cleavage Site (FCS)
into the SARS-CoV spike protein structure. The FCS has long been recognized as
a virulence-enhancing mutation in many viruses and as such the SARS-type
coronaviruses do not commonly bear an FCS in their structure, though it is seen
in other lineages of coronaviruses. As I mentioned earlier, scientists seldom
write a grant detailing an experiment that they have not at least already
attempted in a preliminary manner to ensure that they would be successful in
the attempt. So the evidence of this intent reveals that the EcoHealth-WIV
researchers were (a) thinking of ways to enhance the virulence of the human
pathogenic bat coronaviruses they had harvested from the Tong Guan mine, and,
(b) in all probability had already created a variant with precisely such an
inserted FCS in the spike protein. It is also evident from the wording of the
DEFUSE grant proposal that the researchers knew that their viruses were already
capable of infecting human cells and already possessed at least epidemic-causing
capability. “However, our test cave site in Yunnan Province harbors a
quasispecies (QS) population assemblage that contains all the genetic
components of epidemic SARS-CoV. We have isolated three strains there (WIV1,
WIV16 and SHCO14) that unlike other SARSr-CoVs, do not contain two deletions in
the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike, have far higher sequence
identity to SARS-CoV (Fig. 1), use human ACE2 receptor for cell entry, as
SARS-CoV does (Fig. 2), and replicate efficiently in various animal and human
cells.”
2) DURC conflicts: The DEFUSE grant
proposal requested monies that were
intended to pay WIV researcher's salaries at least in part. It is relevant the
WIV is at least partly a Chinese military lab and conducts classified
bioweapons work for the PLA in addition to non-classified civilian research.
The idea of seeking US military agency funding of research with GOFR/DURC
parameters in collaboration with a foreign governmental laboratory with
military ties is alarming, to say the least. It is also evident that the
researchers attempted to minimize this by including language that attempted to
bypass P3CO (GOFR) and DURC framework restrictions by asserting that such risks
did not exist, thereby demonstrating that the grant authors were not unaware
that the DARPA reviewers may consider these conflicts.
3) Poorly Regulated Wild
Population Biologic modification: EcoHealth planned to conduct regular field visits
to the Tong Guan cave to collect bat samples and to inoculate wild free-ranging
bats with lab-engineered anti-SARSCoV vaccines to eradicate these viral strains
in the bats themselves. The proposal offered no discussion of the existing level
of understanding of the bat immune system and what could be the possible
ecological ramifications of such unrestricted modifications of a wild free-ranging
flying mammal population.
4) Unregulated Transport of
Infective Viral strains across international borders: EcoHealth proposed to
ship viral samples overseas to collaborating investigators in UNC Chapel Hill and
to Duke Universities Singapore campus for additional work.
“Samples will be preserved in viral transport medium,
immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen dry shippers, and transported to partner
laboratories with a maintained cold chain and under strict biosafety
protocols.” They
also assert that “Drs Shi, Zhang, and Daszak have collaborated together
since 2002 and have been involved in running joint conferences, and shipping
samples into and out of China.”[24].
This
piece of evidence raises the question as to how many SARS strains are already
floating in the US in the repositories of laboratories at UNC-Chapel Hill and
other institutions and what is the level of oversight on these. The researchers
also assert in the DEFUSE proposal that EcoHealth and its collaborating labs in
China, Singapore, and the US already had more than 180 SARS strains that had
not yet been examined for spill-over potential, and proposed that work on these
strains would also be carried out in the laboratories of collaborating
institutions in these countries.
On
a scale of just scope and audacity the DEFUSE proposal is an example of a
staggeringly risky endeavor. It is now well documented by multiple sources that
Chinese researchers often entered these caves without appropriate PPE and
handled bats in the field and in the lab in BSL-2 level biosafety environments.
A BSL-2 level at its best is comparable to a researcher working with a surgical
mask, gloves and lab coat in a laminar flow hood that is vented into the
ambient environment without filtration of its outflow. At its worst, a BSL-2
would be no more than what exists in a dentist’s office. Though DARPA rejected
this proposal citing biosafety and biosecurity concerns, the fact that these
researchers saw fit to submit such a proposal reveals the operational culture
of their research conditions and their own thought process of what these
researchers would consider safe and responsible research.
Natural Emergence or Lab
Leak
The question of the
precise origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the pandemic it caused is still far
from settled. The official consensus has so far been that the SARS-CoV-2 virus
and the COVID-19 pandemic was the outcome of a natural spillover from bats to
humans arising from proximity of each in the unsanitary wet market conditions of
the Wuhan animal market. But ever since the early days, there have remained
whispers of its origin as a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The
fact that the grant conditions and oversight exercised by the NIH on the grant
awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and its collaborator, Wuhan Institute of
Virology, had serious deficiencies in regulatory oversight is one of the
factors cited by proponents of this view.
In addition, the lack of
transparency afforded by Chinese authorities to investigative teams attempting
to determine the pandemic origins has not helped settle the debate either.
Investigators from the United States, Europe, and the WHO have repeatedly decried
the Chinese government’s refusal to make available critical data that could
help resolve key issues in the COVID-19 origins debate. The geopolitical
ramifications of these investigations into the origins of a pandemic that has
caused 25 million dead and nearly $9 trillion in global economic loss are
astronomical, and hence, the barriers raised by the Chinese government are not
entirely surprising. Despite all that, the
official view that COVID-19 “most probably” arose as a natural spillover event
in the environment of the Wuhan wet market, even though it cannot be
conclusively eliminated that it did not occur as an accidental leak from the
WIV lab because of a lapse in biosafety protocols has recently come under
serious challenge.
While multiple investigations
by WHO teams and other teams into WIV as a potential source of COVID-19 have
failed to establish a definitive link, it is now accepted that WIV did harvest
bat species that harbored coronavirus strains closely related to SARS-CoV-2
that emerged in Wuhan. In addition, WIV engaged in experiments from June 2018
to June 2019, in which an engineered version of a bat coronavirus expressing
SARS spike proteins was evaluated on transgenic mice expressing human ACE2
receptor. EcoHealth Alliance’s own final report to NIH from a section labeled
“In vivo infection of Human ACE2 (hACE2) expression mice with SARSr-CoV S
protein variants in year 5” is alarming, to say the least. [25]
Essentially the
WIV/EcoHealth scientists created an animal model of transgenic mice that had
been engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor on their cell surfaces. The
WIV scientists took four different strains of recombinant bat SARS-CoV viral
strains created by grafting different pieces of the Spike protein (S protein).
While 3 of the 4 strains had only 50% mortality, the 4th chimeric virus killed 6 out of 8 mice infected
and the viral titers steadily increased as the days post infection increased
until the
viral load reached more than 109 genome copies/g at the demise point
of the mouse. Autopsy and histopathological section examination revealed gross
tissue lesions and lymphocyte infiltration in the lung which was maximal in the
mice infected with the rWIV1-SHC014 S strain suggesting that the pathogenicity
of SHC014 is higher than other tested bat SARSr-CoVs strains. The viral load of
the chimeric rWIV1-SHCO14 strain-infected mice at the time of death was a
staggering 1 billion genome copies per gram of mouse brain tissue, whereas
three other chimeric viruses (rWIV1, rWIV1-WIV15S, and rWIV1-4231S) were undetectable
in mice tissue by day four after infection.
Strikingly, the NIH
deemed this experiment not a GOFR since the original viruses being studied were
not viruses that were pathogenic to humans, a determination that is hotly
contested by other virologists. Several virologists have called the
relationship between the NIH and EcoHealth unduly cozy and point to a lack of
true regulatory oversight and accountability.[26]
Indeed, a review of all the data emerging in this saga strongly implies the
parties may have done the equivalent of a wink and a nod to allow scientists to
skate at the far edge of the boundaries of what could be defined as not GOFR or
DURC in an effort to push the boundaries of zoonotic biology knowledge.[27]
SEPTEMBER 2019
A series of strange
events in early September 2019 in the city of Wuhan point to a mysterious
convergence of facts indicating that the pandemic may have arisen as a lab leak
event at the WIV. Early reports suggested that three researchers from the Wuhan
Institute of Virology (WIV) had fallen ill with a respiratory illness of
sufficient severity to be hospitalized in September 2019.[28]
These illnesses would predate the first reported COVID cases in China by more
than a month. The intelligence reported was derived from multiple sources and
was described as of “exquisite quality” and very “precise.” These reports at
the time were met with vehement rebuttals from the Chinese government and even
from Western scientists who praised the scientific integrity of Dr. Shi
Zhengli, who ran the coronavirus lab at WIV and who was the collaborator with
EcoHealth Alliance on the NIH-funded SARS chimeric virus project described
earlier. Dr. Zhengli’s work has been variously described by fellow scientists
as very important and of the highest quality. But it must be noted that Dali
Yang in a March 2020 report in the Washington Post detailed the Chinese
government’s penchant for coverup of viral outbreaks, intimidation of
whistleblowers and obfuscation[29],
On September 12, 2019,
the WIV viral database repository of the gene sequences of every virus ever
harvested or studied at WIV, that until then had been a publicly accessible
resource for scientists worldwide, suddenly, and inexplicably went dark.
Chinese authorities initially claimed that a massive server upgrade was being
performed. Later the reason was modified to allegations that they were being
hacked. To this date, the WIV database has not come back online. On the heels
of this event, WIV administrative command was switched from civilian control to
that of a Chinese military general. Lastly in the same month, an outside
air-conditioning and ventilation contractor was brought in to perform a massive
$606 million overhaul of WIV air handling and ventilation systems[30].
These findings were part of an 84-page memo released to the US House Foreign
Affairs Committee in August 2021. Despite all this, the question of a lab leak
essentially has foundered on the shoals of noncooperation by the Chinese
authorities, who have, to this date, denied investigative teams access to key
environmental data, biological samples, lab safety data, and other records from
WIV and the Wuhan town from the earliest days of the pandemic. This fact was
reiterated by FBI Director Wray who observed that the Chinese government has
been doing its utmost to thwart and obstruct the work of US and other
international agencies. [31]
It is now unofficially
maintained by most scientists and nearly all US government agencies that the
pandemic arose as an unintentional lab leak event due to a failure of biosafety
protocols and practices in the WIV. It is widely accepted off the record that
the researchers at WIV were engaged in GOFR research on human infection capable
bat SARS-type coronaviruses with a high probability of virulence enhancement of
the wild-type virus by introduction of a Furin Cleavage site. This coupled with
the fact that these experiments were being performed in BSL-2 grade facilities
with inadequate ventilation may have resulted in infection of one or more lab
personnel who may have spread the virus elsewhere in the city. This event was
aggressively suppressed by the Chinese government in the period from the end of
August 2019 till January 2020 a behavior that is consistent with the Chinese
government’s penchant for coverup of viral outbreaks, intimidation of
whistleblowers, and obfuscation[32].
The fact that the
research activities at the WIV had been at least partly funded by the US
Government through the NIH is source of embarrassment to both Republican and
Democrat sides of the aisle resulting in at least some reluctance to have an
open dialogue into these mishaps. The situation was even more bluntly stated by
Dr. Marty Makary, MD, MPH, at the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus
Pandemic on February 28, 2023. In
forcefully direct testimony Dr Makary argued that the only reason that a debate
existed over the origins of the pandemic is because of the embarrassing fact
that the U.S. had funded bat coronavirus research in a high-level Chinese
virology lab that was 5 miles away from the epicenter of the pandemic outbreak.
He called it a no-brainer and said that any attempt to acquire more information
would only confirm a lab leak as the source. [33]
But since January 2023,
a series of disparate events have begun to point toward a quiet undercurrent of
opinion in the US administration that new thinking on pandemic research and
pandemic preparedness must prevail. The first of these events was a little-publicized
report that was released on January 27, 2023. The National Science Advisory
Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) issued a draft report titled, “Proposed
Biosecurity Oversight Framework for the Future of Science” with its latest
recommendations on the subject of GOFR, Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and
Oversight (P3CO), and DURC.[34]
The report has recommended broadening the rules that determine whether proposed
studies count as dual-use research to include work with all human, plant, and
animal pathogens, even those causing only mild disease.[35], [36]
Then on February 10,
2023, a group of scientists announced the formation of a nonprofit organization
called Protect Our Future to advocate for tighter biolab safety and to prevent
“lab-generated pandemics that could threaten the survival of the human
species.”[37] Separately there was the public admission by
FBI Director Christopher Wray in a Fox News interview on February 28, 2023,
that the FBI had revised its assessment to come to the conclusion that the
pandemic most likely arose as the result of a “lab incident” in Wuhan.[38]
Director Wray observed that the issue at hand concerned the leak of a deadly
pathogen from a Chinese government lab.
Director Wray’s
statement represented the first official and significant escalation from the
FBI’s prior assessment in 2021 that the bureau had only a “moderate confidence”
in the lab leak theory.
The FBI assessment also represented
the second US governmental agency to assert that the pandemic may have
originated because of a breakdown in biosafety protocols. At around the same
time as the FBI’s reassessment, the US Energy Department released a new
assessment that the pandemic originated because of an accidental lab leak from
a Chinese virology lab. Like the FBI, the energy department’s assessment was also
a reversal from its previous opinion on the matter and was part of a classified
intelligence report provided to the White House and select members of Congress and
this was reported by the Wall Street Journal.[39]
In
August 2023, the NIH terminated the subaward to the WIV of its original grant
to EcoHealth Alliance on the grounds of material failure to comply with
oversight requests and requests for access to lab notebooks. The other portions
of the grant have been allowed to continue. Around the same time USAID began
measures to terminate its ambitious, $125 million, global virus hunting project
called DEEP VZN (pronounced Deep Vision) with a formal announcement of the
closure in the first week of September 2023. The grounds for closure were based
on a reassessment of the US Government pandemic preparedness priorities and a
growing concern that such a project may well unleash the very pandemics they
proposed to prevent.
The
question of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins is not one of political blame and
shame gaming. It is imperative for humanity to understand how the greatest
biological catastrophe of this century came about so we may be better able to
forestall a future occurrence. The pandemic so far has resulted in measurable
global monetary damage of at least $8.5 trillion and counting. The immeasurable
damages are far higher by several orders of magnitude. If you begin to count
the nearly 25 million lives lost, the millions of lives impaired by long COVID,
the millions of children orphaned globally by loss of one or both parents, the
millions of orphan minors consumed by human trafficking, the educational
development lost, the generational wisdom lost by the mortality of seniors, the
cost becomes incalculable. The search for answers is, therefore, not likely to
cease any time soon, and neither should it ever if we as a species are to avoid
becoming a victim of our own hubris.
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[31]
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likely’ originated from Chinese lab. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-says-covid-pandemic-most-likely-originated-chinese-lab
[32] Dali L.
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[33]
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[34] Jocelyn
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research to more pathogens, panel says. https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-should-expand-rules-risky-virus-research-more-pathogens-panel-says
[35] Proposed
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[36]
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[37] Jocelyn
Kaiser. Science Feb. 6, 2023. Critics of risky virus studies launch nonprofit
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[38] Adam
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originated from Chinese lab. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-says-covid-pandemic-most-likely-originated-chinese-lab
[39] Michael
R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel. Wall Street Journal Feb 26, 2023. Lab leak most
likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, Energy department now says. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a
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