The first global survey of gain-of-function experiments was published at the end of last month. It found that about 67 per cent of the 7,000 papers examined were collaborative efforts between multiple institutions. U.S.-international collaborations occur most frequently between US and Chinese institutions.
They claim gain-of-function is biodefence but biodefence and biowarfare are two sides of the same coin. In fact, biowarfare was renamed gain-of-function to avoid scrutiny.
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The CIA whistleblower claims ties between virus research, U.S. military industry and Wuhan lab
A week ago, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that a “multi-decade, senior-level, current [CIA] officer” had blown the whistle. The whistle-blower’s testimony appears to reveal how deep the ties between virus research, the military-industrial complex and China really run.
He claimed that when six of the seven specialists tasked by the US Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) with investigating the origins of the virus concluded with low confidence that it likely came from a laboratory in Wuhan, the CIA paid those scientists hush money to reverse their decision from their original conclusion that the virus likely originated from the lab.
Wuhan Institute of Virology was funded by USAID
Why would the CIA want to hide evidence that the virus might have come from a Chinese government laboratory? The Tablet Magazine reports that the answer may have to do with the fact that funding for the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology came from the United States Agency for International Development (“USAID”).
This is not the first time questions regarding America’s intelligence agencies’ ties to the Wuhan lab have come up. One of the earliest gain-of-function experiments done at the Wuhan lab was funded by USAID. The aid agency’s funding was initially omitted from the paper that published the results of those experiments. But these new whistle-blower allegations, which come from the CIA itself, present the first plausible evidence connecting America’s lead intelligence agency to efforts to sway official assessments of the pandemic’s origin.
Read more:
- Blowing the COVID Cover-up Wide Open, Tablet Magazine, 18 September 2023
- Testimony From CIA Whistleblower Alleges New Information on Covid-19 Origins, US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability, 12 September 2023
Researchers have conducted the first global survey of gain-of-function (“GoF”) studies – those in which microbes or viruses are given new abilities through genetic alteration.
Researchers at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology (“CSET”) in Washington DC scanned the scientific literature using an artificial intelligence tool to assess where and how often GoF studies are conducted.
CSET examined about 7,000 GoF and loss-of-function (“LoF”) research publications These studies, in which scientists bestow new abilities on pathogens by, for instance, inserting a fluorescent gene or making them more transmissible, are common in microbiology research. Most GoF or LoF research focuses on viral and bacterial pathogens.
The researchers found that only a small fraction of GoF studies between 2000 and mid-2022 involved agents dangerous enough to require the strictest biosafety precautions.
The report does not “get to the heart of what makes people so upset about these issues”, biosecurity specialist at Johns Hopkins University Gigi Gronvall said – adding that, for many, “it’s about whether we should go against nature [by manipulating pathogens] to try to determine whether something is likely to become a pandemic threat.”
The report noted that while researchers from U.S.-based institutions contributed to about 53 per cent of GoF and LoF papers published between 2000 and 2022, about 67 per cent of identified publications involved a collaboration between researchers at multiple institutions. Collaborations between authors from at least two US institutions are the most common. US-international collaborations occur most frequently between US and Chinese institutions.
“Our data indicates that GoF and LoF research are intertwined and that there are many more studies focused on LoF research than GoF research,” the researchers stated. “In addition to studying diseases, researchers conduct GoF and LoF research to develop new preventative medical countermeasures like vaccines.”
Researchers can genetically alter pathogens using a variety of methods. CEST’s report noted the most common techniques that can be used for both GoF and LoF:
- Serial passaging involves deliberately passing a particular pathogen through a series of cells, tissues, or animals one after the other, using the pathogen from one round of infection to start the next.
- Reverse genetics (also called virus rescue) is a technique that lets researchers engineer new viruses by designing nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) in the laboratory that encode the instructions for a virus.
- Adding, modifying, or removing genes from existing pathogens can alter a pathogen’s characteristics.
- Pathogen recombination is a technique in which two pathogen strains are combined to create a third that consists of a mixture of genes from the two pathogen parents.
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One company commercialialises gain-of-function products: Sino Biological
As the final point above notes, one way to do GoF research is to use recombinant DNA technology to engineer changes in the genome of the organism. CEST’s report focuses on published science papers and as such, it makes no mention of companies that have commercialised GoF products. One such company is Sino Biological, the global leader in recombinant technology, which has more than 280 SARS-CoV-2 variants in its catalogue for researchers to purchase.
Sino Biological was founded in 2007 in Beijing by Chinese-born MIT Professor Dr. Daniel I. C. Wang who was considered one of the founding fathers of the field of biochemical engineering. Biochemical engineering is a field that involves genetically engineering microbes and human cells to produce “useful proteins.”
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Founder of Sino Biological worked in Fort Dietrich before he died
Dr. Wang earned two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”) – a Bachelor of Science in 1959 and a Master of Science in 1961. In 1963, he earned a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He was hired by MIT in 1965. After completing his PhD research, Dr. Wang spent 2 years in the US Army doing bioprocess research at the US Army’s Fort Dietrich Biological Research Laboratories. Dr. Wang died in August 2020 aged 84.
“Dan Wang’s influence as a teacher, mentor, researcher, and friend has been monumental to so many people who have become the leaders in building a biotech industry and biochemical engineering as a profession,” said Charles Cooney, the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.
In August 2021, Sino Biological was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China.
Read more:
- First global survey reveals who is doing ‘gain of function’ research on pathogens and why, Nature, 15 September 2023
- Policy Brief: Understanding the Global Gain-of-Function Research Landscape, CSET, August 2023
- Two viewpoints to challenge the new covid variant hysteria, The Exposé, 6 September 2023
- The Secret History of Fort Dietrich, the CIA’s base for mind control experiments, Politico, 15 September 2019
- Biolabs In Ukraine and Common Connections Between Metabiota and EcoHealth, The Exposé, 18 March 2022
We have known for some time that Fauci has funded a wide array of risky gain-of-function research, including research that may have been instrumental in the creation of SARS-CoV-2. While all of that is being justified in the name of biodefence, in reality, all biodefence research is biowarfare research. Everything has dual use.
The indisputable reality, Glenn Greenwald noted, is that, despite long-standing international conventions banning the development of biological weapons, all large, powerful countries conduct research that, at the very least, has the capacity to be converted into biological weapons. The work conducted under the guise of “defensive research” can, and sometimes is, easily converted into the banned weapons themselves.
Dr. Meryl Nass noted that in 1975, the Biological Weapons Convention (“BWC”) entered into force – an international treaty to prevent the use of biological and toxin weapons, which included snake, snail, frog, fish, bacterial and fungal toxins that could be used for assassinations and other purposes. But during the 48 years the BWC has been in force, the wall it was supposed to build against the development, production and use of biological weapons has been steadily eroded.
Under the guise of preparing their defences against biowarfare and pandemics, nations have conducted “dual-use” – both offensive and defensive – research and development, which has led to the creation of more deadly and more transmissible microorganisms. And, employing new verbiage to shield this effort from scrutiny, biological warfare research was renamed as “gain-of-function” research.
GoF is so risky that funding it was banned by the US government – but only for SARS coronaviruses and avian flu viruses – in 2014 after a public outcry from hundreds of scientists.
Further reading:
- Health, Biowarfare, Surveillance and Digital Dictatorship, The Exposé, 21 October 2022
- Did the US Fund Biolabs in Ukraine for biodefence or biowarfare? , The Exposé, 28 March 2022
- WHO’s Pandemic Treaty should be called the Proliferation of Biological Weapons Treaty, The Exposé, 24 August 2023
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