Research, editing : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA
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| Images : Web Screenshots of emails to and from Le Duc. Courtesy of The Epoch Times PREMIUM |
Le Duc urged Yuan to “conduct a thorough review of the laboratory activities associated with research on coronaviruses so that you are fully prepared to answer questions dealing with the origin of the virus.” Le Duc suggested a number of areas Yuan should investigate and urged him to be “transparent and proactive.” Le Duc suggested a number of areas Yuan should investigate and urged him to “consider preparing a manuscript that addresses these topics in an effort to be transparent and proactive,” adding that he would be “pleased to work with [Yuan] on such a paper.”
Le Duc told Yuan that the possibility of a lab leak was first discussed on social media, but Le Duc was now being approached by “senior officials and major reputable newspapers” about the role of the Wuhan Institute in the pandemic. Le Duc stated that, while he had “the utmost respect and admiration for Dr. Shi,” he told Yuan the Wuhan facility needed to “aggressively address these rumors.”
Le Duc noted that these “presumably false accusations” needed to be addressed quickly with “definitive, honest information.”
He then told Yuan that “[i]f there are weaknesses in your program, now is the time to admit them and get them corrected.” He closed his email by telling Yuan “I trust that you will take my suggestions in the spirit of one friend trying to help another during a very difficult time.”
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Yuan did not respond to Le Duc's email proposal
Despite the detailed nature of Le Duc’s email proposal and his years-long affiliation with both Yuan and the Wuhan Institute, it appears that he never received a response from Yuan. Le Duc would later relay concerns regarding Yuan’s lack of a response in a message to EcoHealth adviser David Franz. EcoHealth is the organization headed by Peter Daszak, through which Fauci was funding gain-of-function experiments at the WIV.
Despite the concerns that Le Duc conveyed to Yuan regarding the possibility of a lab leak in February 2020, just two months later, Le Duc struck a very different tone during an email conversation with retired and now-deceased Major Gen. Philip Russell.
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Le Duc informed Russell he did not believe in the lab leak theory
Russell, the former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, reached out to Le Duc on 9 April 2020, in an email that contained a video, asking Le Duc, “This is gaining credibility. What do you think?” Although it isn’t known which video Russell shared, it appears to be a video that documents the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Although it has not been confirmed, the video being discussed coincides with the release of the first full-length documentary on the virus’s origins, “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” which was produced by The Epoch Times and premiered on April 7, 2020—two days before Le Duc’s conversation with Russell.
Le Duc responded to Russell, saying that he had already received the unidentified video that morning and told Russell that he did not “believe that the virus originated from the lab in Wuhan.” Le Duc also sent Russell a paper, likely the Proximal Origin paper in which Fauci-funded scientists claimed that the virus had a natural origin. Notably, at the same time the article was being drafted, those same scientists were privately telling Fauci that the virus was likely engineered.
Notably, Le Duc failed to share his lab leak concerns with Russell. Instead, he informed Russell that his group at the NIAID-affiliated Galveston National Laboratory had been working with Shi Zhengli, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that Shi was also in agreement with the natural origin theory.
Le Duc told Russell that Shi had consistently maintained that “bat coronaviruses hold the ability to infect humans through the hACE2 receptor.”
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Le Duc's argument on theory of covi from bats in conflict with the "intermediate host" theory
Put another way, Le Duc was suggesting that the virus could have jumped directly from bat to human. But this theory conflicts with previous bat virus outbreaks–all of which required an intermediate host animal. Additionally, a recent study that conducted a thorough examination of over 13,000 wild bats in China found that none of the bats carried COVID-19 nor any directly related virus. In contrast, that same study did find that many of the 13,000 bats carried the original SARS virus.
Le Duc also noted that the meetings with Shi had included U.S. virologists Ralph Baric and Linda Saif. Le Duc failed to inform Russell that Baric and Shi had co-authored an article in November 2015 that showcased Baric’s gain-of-function techniques—techniques that Shi later adopted.
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Le Duc told Daszak's adviser the lab leak theory was still valid
Le Duc told Russell that he thought “the attached paper makes a strong argument that [Covid] came from nature” and stated that he agreed with the paper’s conclusion. Later that same day, Le Duc expressed an entirely different belief regarding the virus’s origins when he told Franz, the adviser to Daszak’s EcoHealth, that the lab leak issue was “not going away—and it probably shouldn’t.”
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Russell disagrees with Le Duc, insists on believing a bat coronavirus infected a Wuhan lab technician
Russell clearly did not agree with Le Duc or with the paper that Le Duc shared, as he was quite frank in his response, telling Le Duc that this “does not rule out the possibility that one of the many bat coronaviruses isolated in the Wuhan lab infected a technician who walked out the door.” As Russell noted, there was no need “for engineering the virus” in order to precipitate the outbreak.
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Russell: Absence of bats in the market and lack of intermediate host point to a lab leak as cause of pandemic
Russell was equally direct in his criticism of the Natural Origin narrative that was being pushed by Fauci’s group of scientists and promoted by the media at that time, telling Le Duc that the “flimsiness of the epidemiology pointing to the wet market, the absence of bats in the market, the failure to identify an intermediate animal host” all pointed to a lab leak as the likely explanation for the pandemic.
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Russell: CCP takes steps to kill whistleblowers and silence the Wuhan lab personnel
Russell highlighted actions taken by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), citing the “extraordinary measures” taken by Beijing during the advent of the outbreak, “including persecution and probable killing of two brave physicians to cover up the outbreak.” Russell also told Le Duc that the many “steps taken to silence the laboratory personnel,” along with changes in leadership of the lab, were indications that “all point to the lab as the source of the outbreak.”
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Similarities between the covid pandemic and the Soviet Anthrax outbreak
Russell noted similarities between the covid pandemic and the Soviet Anthrax outbreak in 1979, telling Le Duc that “[t]his reminds me of the efforts by Matt Messelson and many colleagues to cover up the Sverdeslosk anthrax outbreak. They succeeded for many years aided and [were] abetted by many in academia until Ken Alibek defected and the truth came out.”
Russell concluded by saying that he had “bought the wet market story for months,” but was now very skeptical of any information that was “coming from the Chinese government.”
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Possibility of a lab accident in WIV
In a subsequent email, Le Duc admitted to Russell that “it is certainly possible that a lab accident was the source of the epidemic” and agreed that “we can’t trust the Chinese government.” Le Duc also finally divulged to Russell that he had sent Yuan “a rather detailed plan to investigate the possibility that the lab might have been the source of the outbreak,” but acknowledged that he never heard back from Yuan.
Reciting a line often put forth by natural origins advocates, Le Duc told Russell that “we need to strike a balance such that we are not in an adversarial situation” with China. Russell’s reply was blunt and to the point.
“I admire your desire to avoid an adversarial situation but [that seems] to be impossible with the Chinese communists.”
Later that afternoon, Le Duc emailed the entirety of his Russell email conversation to the EcoHeath adviser David Franz, who also happens to be the former commander of the U.S. bioweapons lab USAMRIID at Fort Detrick in Maryland. Le Duc told Russell to read the full email conversation and concluded by telling Franz that the lab leak theory “is not going away—and it probably shouldn’t.”
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Le Duc questions about covi vaccine effectiveness
In addition to posting Franz on his conversation with Russell, Le Duc raised some material concerns regarding the development of covi vaccines. Le Duc’s concerns seem particularly relevant in light of ongoing questions that are currently being raised regarding vaccine effectiveness.
Le Duc told Franz that “there is a lot we do not know about immunity to this virus and we need to be very careful as we design and test vaccines.” Le Duc also noted that “[w]e need to address the question of re-infection/re-occurrence of illness,” asking Franz if this is “an artifact of PCR testing or represent[s] a real issue.”
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The furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 is not found in any natural SARS virus
Finally, Le Duc told Franz ‘[t]here is also emerging information on genetic variability of the virus” and rhetorically asked Franz “what the impact might be on transmission and disease.” Le Duc’s comments may have been in reference to the unique furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2, a feature that has never been observed in any natural SARS coronavirus.
As we have since discovered through a September 2021 whistleblower document release, Daszak had drafted a 2018 blueprint for inserting furin cleavage sites into bat coronaviruses.
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Long history of Le Duc's work with WIV
It should be noted that Le Duc, a biodefense expert who previously worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, has a long history of cooperation with the Wuhan Institute, dating back to at least 1986 when Le Duc spent a year working on and off in Wuhan.
In 2014, Le Duc was instrumental in introducing NIAID’s China representative, Chen Ping, to the Wuhan Institute. Surprisingly, Chen, who looked after Fauci’s affairs in China, seemingly was unable to get an introduction through Fauci’s office. Eventually, she reached out to Le Duc as she knew he had collaborated with the Institute. Le Duc immediately replied to Chen and introduced her to staff at the Wuhan lab. Le Duc also mentioned that he personally knew the director of the Institute, Yuan–the same person with whom he shared his concerns about a lab leak in February 2020.
Le Duc also told Chen that staff from the Wuhan lab were undergoing training at Le Duc’s lab in Galveston in 2014 and added that “[w]e have invested considerably in our partnership with the CAS [Chinese Academy of Sciences, parent body of the Wuhan Institute of Virology] in Wuhan and we are anxious to ensure its long-term success.”
Le Duc’s work with the Wuhan lab was again confirmed in 2017, when NIAID’s director of global research, James Meegan, disclosed in an internal email that both he and Le Duc had trained Wuhan lab staff in China and that some staff were later also trained in the United States. Meegan stated that he thought their training efforts “helped [the Wuhan lab] on its way to becoming a center for virology.”
Notably, Le Duc was training Wuhan lab staff on the maintenance and operations of a biosafety level 4 facility in advance of the opening of the WIV’s new BSL-4 lab. Originally that training was to have been provided by French scientists who helped construct the Wuhan Institute’s new biosafety level 4 lab but after France expressed security concerns over the use of China’s new lab for non-civilian activities, that cooperation was ended and U.S. scientists took over certain aspects of staff training.
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New Book: Searching for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, possible leak from the Wuhan Laboratory
British science writer Matt Ridley said, "As more and more evidence supports laboratory leaks and denials of wildlife market incidents, we gradually come to the conclusion that this is slightly more likely."
Recently, at a webinar hosted by the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Ottawa, the two authors of "Virus: Searching for the Origin of Covid-19," Matt Ridley and Alina Chan, explained their views.
Alina Chan, postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University: “Although thousands of wild animal samples were covered from 2017 to today, the SARS2-like viruses found were limited to three pangolin coronaviruses, but we I know that before the pandemic, no pangolins were sold on the Wuhan market."
On 29 October 2021, the assessment report released by the Director of National Intelligence of the United States also believed that natural origin and laboratory-related events were two reasonable assumptions about the virus first infecting humans.
Ridley said that even biological laboratories with the highest security levels are inevitable to leak. A SARS virus leak has also occurred in Beijing. If the CCP is willing to maintain openness and transparency to the Wuhan Institute of Viology, it will be easy to verify whether the virus has leaked.
British science writer Matt Ridley said, "All they have to do is to open their files and show us which virus samples they have processed in the laboratory—all their sequences, all their history, where they came from, and what they did. Which experiments to refute this."
Ref: https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2021/12/07/a103287226.html
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