I’m
confident that this “Gain of function” research is a threat equal to - or
greater than - climate change, nuclear war, the failure of democracy, or
violent extremism. And it is irreversibly linked to each.
The
only thing that can even begin to prevent, or prepare for the inevitable, is a
“Gain of Function” in global governance, preceded by a return in the function
of the human mind...to solve existential problems – instead of defending flawed
human principles.
“Today the most important thing, in my view,
is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about
which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some
kind of perpetual motion. It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new
regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our
understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the
world. Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of
behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global
regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.” President Vaclav Havel, Czech
Republic.
Hearing
on Virus Research Funding | C-SPAN.org
Hearing on Virus Research Funding AUGUST 3, 2022.
A panel of scientists and
academics discussed the risks and benefits of gain of function research before
the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Emerging
Threats. According to the National Institutes of Health, gain of function
research involves the genetic modification and experimentation of viruses and
pathogens to increase strength and transmissibility. Richard Ebright, Rutgers University chemistry professor and Waksman
Institute of Microbiology laboratory director, said that although “gain of
function research can advance scientific understanding … it has no civilian
practical applications.” Several topics were discussed during the hearing,
including national security concerns posed by such research, the need for
strict government oversight, and how gain of function research has been used to
identify and mitigate potential virus mutations that could have resulted in
possible pandemics.
Below is the Washington Time’s front page coverage on this
hearing....which contains most of the vital information. But no solution.
By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 9, 2022
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/9/chinas-wuhan-institute-studied-deadly-bioterrorism/
China’s
Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the COVID-19 pandemic may have started,
conducted work on a deadlier virus with a 60% lethality rate, according to
recent Senate testimony.
Steven Quay, a medical doctor, told the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on emerging threats
that the Wuhan institute carried out synthetic biology research on the Nipah virus
genome in December 2019, around the time the first COVID-19 cases surfaced
in Wuhan. Scientists are divided over whether the
coronavirus that causes COVID-19 emerged naturally through animals or can be
traced to a leak or accident at the Wuhan facility.
“The Nipah virus
was in an infectious clone format,” Dr. Quay testified. “Nipah is
a BSL-4 level pathogen and a CDC-designated bioterrorism agent. This is the
most dangerous gain-of-function research I have ever encountered. We should
assume this research continues to this day at the WIV.”
If
confirmed, China’s research on Nipah could
violate the Biological Weapons Convention, which Beijing has signed, that
prohibits work on agents that can be used as bioweapons.
Nipah is smaller than the virus behind COVID-19, known as
SARS-CoV-2, and is less transmissible.
“But
it is one of the deadliest viruses, with a 60% lethality,” said Dr. Quay, chief executive officer of Atossa
Therapeutics, a Seattle-based pharmaceutical company.
“This is 60 times deadlier than SARS-2,” he said, using the shortened term for the
virus behind COVID-19. “The lab where the human specimens were processed is not
the highest-level biosafety lab, BSL-4, but was in the BSL-2 or -3 facility.”
Dr. Quay said he did not know why Chinese researchers
were working on the Nipah virus, “but a laboratory-acquired
infection with a modified Nipah virus
would make the COVID-19 pandemic look like a walk in the park.”
Unlike SARS-CoV-2, Nipah is
unable to spread in the air. Still, if the research produced an aerosolized
version of the virus, it could cause a deadlier pandemic, Dr. Quay testified.
A Black Death parallel?
In an interview, Dr. Quay said he discovered the Wuhan study
on Nipah in Chinese research data mistakenly
posted on GenBank, a U.S.-based repository for DNA sequencing information.
Mr. Quay said the danger in China’s
work on Nipah is that it could become aerosolized
and cause mass death.
“The Black Plague in Europe was a 20% lethal event, and it set
society back 250 years,” he said. A Nipah pandemic
would “set us back over a millennium, in my estimate.”
Spokespeople for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the National Institutes of Health and the Chinese Embassy did not respond to
requests for comment.
A State Department spokesman said: “We are aware of the Aug. 3 testimony. We
have no comment for your story.”
CDC spokeswoman Jasmine Reed
said the center’s knowledge of studies relating to Nipah in China are
limited to what was shared during a December 2019 international conference
on Nipah held in Singapore.
At that conference, Shi
Zhengli, director of the institute’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases,
was a speaker. Ms. Shi has been called “the batwoman of China”
for her research into bat coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2.
Also at the Nipah conference
was EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, who has worked closely with the
WIV and has been criticized for his role in a 2020 UN investigation into the
origin of COVID virus that incorrectly stated the virus behind the pandemic
could not have leaked form the Wuhan laboratory.
According to the CDC website, Nipah was first discovered in 1999
during a natural outbreak in Malaysia and Singapore. The virus spreads through
bodily fluids. Symptoms of infection include fever, headache, nausea and
vomiting, and shortness of breath. Severe symptoms can leave the victim
confused or in a coma. “Death can occur in as many as 80% of cases,” the center
said on its website.
The CDC lists Nipah as
an emerging pathogen and “bioterrorism agent” that “could be engineered for
mass dissemination in the future,” based on availability, ease of production
and dissemination, and high mortality rate.
The State Department’s latest annual report on arms compliance
states that China “continued to engage in activities
with dual-use applications, which raise concerns regarding its compliance with
Article I of the [Biological Weapons Convention].” That article deals with work
on bioweapons. For the past two years, China‘s
government has canceled meetings with U.S. officials to discuss American
concerns about compliance with the biological weapons treaty.
The State Department said in a fact sheet released during the
Trump administration’s last days that U.S. intelligence concluded that the
Wuhan Institute of Virology had engaged in secret military work.
“Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution,
the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications
and secret projects with China’s
military,” the report said. It noted classified research and laboratory animal
experiments for the People’s Liberation Army since at least 2017.
The Chinese research on Nipah was
disclosed on Aug. 3 during a Senate hearing on gain-of-function research,
including China’s work at the Wuhan institute in making
bat viruses more transmissible to humans to study their properties.
Dr. Quay and two other experts, Richard H. Ebright,
director of the Rutgers University Waksman Institute of Microbiology, and Kevin
M. Esvelt, a biochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, warned
that unregulated gain-of-function research poses pandemic threats.
Dr. Ebright said all research that involves making viruses more
infectious should be halted.
“Gain-of-function research of concern can advance scientific
understanding, but gain-of-function research of concern has no civilian
practical applications,” he said. “In particular, gain-of-function research of
concern is not needed for and does not contribute to the development of
vaccines and drugs.”
Dr. Esvelt said the U.S. Agency for International Development
and the National Institutes of Health have funded research to find or create
novel pandemic-capable viruses in laboratories around the world. Both agencies
hope to prevent natural pandemics but “seek to identify viruses that could kill
as many people as a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Well-meaning health experts “never considered that these
advances in technology, which are continuing, plus a list of pandemic-capable
viruses, would allow a single skilled terrorist to unleash more pandemics at
once than would naturally occur in a century,” Dr. Esvelt said.
The hunt for origins
Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who co-chaired the
hearing, said the subcommittee was seeking answers to the origin of the
outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in
December 2019.
“I maintain that the techniques that the [National Institutes of
Health] funded in Wuhan to create enhanced pathogens may
have or could have been used to create COVID-19,” Mr. Paul said.
It was the first hearing in Congress on gain-of-function
research, a possible source of the pandemic, Mr. Paul said. A second theory is
that the virus jumped from a wild animal to a human at a Wuhan market.
U.S. intelligence agencies say they cannot conclusively prove either theory.
Dr. Quay said there is no dispositive
evidence that the pandemic began as a spillover of a natural virus in a market.
“All evidence is consistent with a laboratory-acquired
infection,” he said.
Two scientific studies published last month said the virus began
as a “spillover” event from Wuhan’s
Huanan seafood market, where wild animals were sold as food.
The COVID-19 virus “has features consistent with synthetic
biology gain-of-function research,” Dr. Quay said. He specifically cited two features of the
virus that affect its ability to bind to human cells. Proponents of the lab
leak theory also argue that, in the early months of the pandemic, no animal was
found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 anywhere, including the Wuhan market.
Features of the evolving virus place “the first human infection
in the fall of 2019, long before the December market cases,” he said. “The American people deserve to
know how this pandemic started and to know if the NIH funded research that may
have caused this pandemic.”
The Chinese government has refused to cooperate in investigating
the origin of the pandemic.
During the hearing, it was disclosed that in September 2019,
three months before the COVID-19 outbreak was declared, the Wuhan Institute of
Virology removed a website that listed 21,000 viruses.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19
resource page.
•
Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
Chuck Woolery,
Former Chair
United Nations Association,
Council of Organizations
315 Dean Dr., Rockville, MD 20851
Cell:240-997-2209 chuck@igc.org
Blogs: 435 Campaign: www.435globaljustice.blogspot.com (May
2017 through today)
Dothefreakinmath
http://dothefreakinmath.blogspot.com
(June 2006 to Nov 2016)
The
Trilemma http://trilemma.blogspot.com/
(Oct 2011 to Nov 2013)
“The sad truth...is that most evil is
done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.”
Hannah Arendt quoted in The Bulwork.
What are you doing to ensure the funding and achievement of the
17 Sustainable Development Goals by or before the year 2030?
Connect the dots! See the web of life! Achieve ‘justice for
all’. Or, prepare for the catastrophic consequences. cw
