Doublespeak to disguise being called by its real meaning: the creation of bioweapons. According to the U.S. Department Health and Human Services, research which involves increasing the capacity of a pathogen to cause illness. The method risks new viruses leaking out of laboratories and into the population. In the period 2014 to 2018 this type of research was prohibited in the U.S., but in December 2017, American authorities announced that these kinds of studies would again be allowed.”1
Despite an ongoing cover-up by government authorities, the biotech industry, the military industrial complex and the mass media, there is growing scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was created and leaked from a dual-use military/civilian lab in Wuhan, China.
The ensuing pandemic (currently with 14 million infected and 585,000 dead, which has precipitated a global economic meltdown) is the predictable, yet preventable, collateral damage of a reckless, decades-long, and accident-prone biodefense/biowarfare program carried out by the U.S. (including both the Obama and Trump administrations, and their predecessors), China, Russia and other highly industrialized and militarized nations.
Unbeknownst to the public, a shadowy international network of thousands of virologists, gene engineers, military scientists and biotech entrepreneurs are weaponizing viruses and microorganisms in civilian and military labs under the euphemism of gain-of-function research. They hide behind the guise of “biodefense” and “biomedicine.” But as investigative reporter and bioweapons expert Sam Husseini writes, gain-of-function/biowarfare scientists in labs such as Wuhan, China or Fort Detrick, Maryland, are deliberately and recklessly evading international law:
“Governments that participate in such biological weapon research generally distinguish between ‘biowarfare’ and ‘biodefense,’ as if to paint such ‘defense’ programs as necessary. But this is rhetorical sleight-of-hand; the two concepts are largely indistinguishable. ‘Biodefense’ implies tacit biowarfare, breeding more dangerous pathogens for the alleged purpose of finding a way to fight them. While this work appears to have succeeded in creating deadly and infectious agents, including deadlier flu strains, such ‘defense’ research is impotent in its ability to defend us from this pandemic.”
A growing arsenal of Frankenstein viruses and microorganisms have been created, despite U.S. and international laws supposedly banning biowarfare weapons and experimentation. A disturbing number of these so-called “dual-use” biowarfare/biodefense labs have experienced leaks, accidents, thefts and even deliberate releases like the 2001 anthrax attacks over the past three decades.
The creation of COVID-19, engineered by repeatedly “passaging” a bat virus through animal and human cells and/or genetic engineering or splicing specific genetic sequences into the virus, violated a ban on gain-of-function experiments called for by many of the world’s top scientists. These experiments also violated the precautionary principle of a Global Biowarfare Convention, designed to prevent the accidental or deliberate release of biological weapons of mass destruction.
Despite the 24/7 story—that the virus jumped accidentally from bats into humans—relentlessly peddled by the Chinese government, the World Health Organization (which was supposedly monitoring the Wuhan Lab), the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which provided funding for the Wuhan gain-of-function experiments, the Trump Administration, global military and intelligence agencies, government- and corporate-funded entities such as the EcoHealth Alliance and the mass media, there is mounting evidence that COVID-19 was caused, not by an accident in nature, but by a lab escape or leak.
Fortunately, some media outlets aren’t afraid to question this carefully orchestrated narrative. Here are a few examples:
- Infowars, “Smoking gun” bombshell interview: Prof. Francis Boyle exposes the bioweapons origins of the CoVid-19 coronavirus, February 20, 2020
- GM Watch, “Lab Escape Theory of SARS-CoV-2 Origin Gaining Scientific Support,” May 28, 2020
- Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “Did the SARS-CoV-2 Virus Arise from a Bat Coronavirus Research Program in a Chinese Laboratory? Very Possibly,” June 4, 2020
- The Times (UK), “Revealed: Seven-Year Coronavirus Trail from Mine Deaths to a Wuhan Lab,” July 4, 2020
- Newsweek, “Scientists Shouldn’t Rule Out Lab As Source of Coronavirus, New Study Says,” May 17, 2020
- Independent Science News, “The Case Is Building That COVID-19 Had a Lab Origin,” June 2, 2020
- Taiwan News, “Norwegian virologist claims coronavirus is ‘chimera’ Made in Chinese Lab,” June 10, 2020
Gain-of-function experiments on bat viruses aren’t new. Going back decades, these types of experiments have been publicly documented in a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers co-authored by the Director of the Wuhan lab, Dr. Zhengli Shi, popularly known as the “Bat Woman.” Published papers reveal that researchers have been collecting samples, and carrying out experiments to manipulate the bat coronavirus so that it can readily infect human cells.
For example, in a 2008 article in the Journal of Virology, Zi Sheng Li and other scientists report on how Chinese and U.S. scientists have genetically engineered SARS-like viruses from horseshoe bats, to enable the viruses to gain entry into human cells.
These highly controversial gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab were funded in large part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases NIAID (under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci) and the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, led by Peter Daszak, who’s become a ubiquitous spokesperson for the “it evolved in nature and jumped to humans” story.
Fauci, who since 1984 has held government positions under six presidents, both Republican and Democrat, has been a strong advocate for U.S. government funding of gain-of-function experimentation. Fauci claims, with little or no justification, that risky gain-of-function research can help develop new vaccines for pandemics, despite the fact that 30 years of these dangerous experiments have not delivered any tangible benefits, such as cures or safe vaccines.
In 2014 the Obama administration, following a series of lab accidents, and responding to a petition signed by more than 300 global scientists, declared a temporary, albeit partial “pause” on funding gain-of-function experiments in the U.S. Exemptions to this “pause,” eventually reviewed by a secret government panel, were nonetheless allowed to go forward.
The Obama administration’s ban was lifted in 2017, under Trump. Yet between 2014 – 2016, the NIH and Fauci-led NIAID, first under Obama and later under Trump, continued funding gain-of-function research, overseas at the Wuhan lab, via Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.
Not surprisingly both Fauchi and Daszak have been staunch defenders of the official Chinese government story that the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) “naturally” evolved from bats and/or other host species to infect humans.
While Trump has at times attempted to fire up his xenophobic base by talking about the “Chinese Virus” or “Kung Flu,” he hasn’t uttered a word about how his administration (as Obama before him) has been funding and participating in gain-of-function experiments. Not surprising, given Trump’s ongoing collaboration with Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator, who just happens to control not only trillions of dollars in U.S. Treasury Bonds and exports, but the medical equipment, Pharma drugs and lab chemicals that are in such short supply in the U.S. Trump also has millions of dollars in real estate loans coming due from Chinese banks next year.
In 2017, the Trump administration officially reversed Obama’s “funding pause” on risky gain-of-function projects. A government panel was instituted to review each research project. Only those lab experiments that were supposedly 1) scientifically sound; 2) conducted in a high-security lab; 3) intended to produce knowledge that benefits humans; and 4) without a safer alternative, would be funded.
As the New York Times reported, many scientists protested the decision, correctly pointing out that gain-of-function researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic.
Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University, told the Times that he applauded the requirement for review panels. However, he said the NIH should have created clearer minimum safety standards and a mandate that the benefits “outweigh” the risks instead of merely “justifying” them.
Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, told the Times that recent disease-enhancing experiments “have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.” Lipsitch said hoped the panels would turn down such work.
Though the ban was overturned in December 2017, it wasn’t until February 2019, when news of the first approved studies was leaked to Science Magazine, that the public learned that the reviews of grant proposals involving gain-of-function research—funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars—were to be conducted in secret. Names of the expert-panel members have been kept secret, along with the panels reviews of gain-of-function and other virus and pathogen experiment proposals.
The idea of the U.S. government, under any administration, funding dangerous experiments it doesn’t want you to know about became a literal public relations time bomb in January 2020, when the emergence of a new, highly contagious virus in China hit the news.
For damage control, the White House and the NIH convened a meeting of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), the panel that had previously written the rules for reviewing gain-of-function research, in with the intent of getting the NSABB on board with keeping everything secret.
At that meeting, the man who chairs the committee that decides which gain-of-function research can be funded by the government revealed himself.
Christian Hassell, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense, Senior Science Adviser to the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response—and chair of the secret NSABB gain-of-function risk review committee—acted as one of the spokespersons for the Trump Administration. Hassell cautioned that disclosing the names of the government (likely including military) scientists who sat on his committee could “chill” people from serving. He claimed that the administration was “committed to enhancing transparency,” but warned that this would probably require new action by Congress.
Clearly the Trump administration, just like the Obama administration and those before it, isn’t going to do the right thing, and ban dangerous gain-of-function experiments unless we the people force them to.
It’s time for a permanent ban on the lab creation of deadly viruses.
Newsweek recently reported some of the details relating to the Trump administration funding scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses:
“In 2019, with the backing of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.”
In April 2020, Trump finally cut off NIH aid to Wuhan for gain-of-function research as COVID-19 ravaged the globe. EcoHealth Alliance President Pete Daszak said that he and his team were merely studying how coronaviruses spread from bats to humans and claimed not to understand the rationale behind the decision to yank his grant.
But Daszak and his collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology weren’t just studying how coronavirus spread from bats to humans, they were actually making coronavirus capable of spreading from bats to humans. They were the first to create a bat coronavirus capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host).
EcoHealth Alliance has since funded additional gain-of-function research that Daszak has championed—without acknowledging his connection. Gain-of-function research funded by EcoHealth Alliance included the 2015 coronavirus-SARS chimaera, created by a team that included the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This research has been widely criticized by fellow scientists.
In 2015, a team of researchers, including scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus from a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China, and a virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). Their chimaera infected human airway cells, proving that the surface protein of SHC014 had the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them.
Concerned scientists sounded the alarms.
In 2015, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature magazine that researchers had created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.”
Wain-Hobson disapproved of the study because it provided little benefit, and revealed little about the risk that the wild SHC014 virus in bats posed to humans.
Richard Ebright, a biodefense expert from Rutgers University, spoke out about the same research, saying, “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk.”
But Daszak spoke out in favor of the research, saying the study’s findings “move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger.” Daszak’s statement is odd, as it seems obvious that it was the research itself that made the virus a clear and present danger, and that couldn’t be what he meant. Nature failed to mention that EcoHealth Alliance had funded the research with a U.S. grant.
Even the creators of the coronavirus-SARS chimaera questioned the wisdom of tinkering with viruses to make them more dangerous to humans. As Nature reported, in their paper, the study authors conceded that funders may think twice about allowing such experiments in the future. “Scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue,” they write, adding that discussion is needed as to “whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved.”
It’s time for the U.S. government, and all the governments of the world to demonstrate their compliance with a global ban on chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, dropping the dangerous pretense that lab-created viruses and microorganisms constitute valid biomedical and biodefense research.
We need a total U.S. and global ban on dangerous gain-of-function experimentation, and we need it now, before the next pandemic escapes or is deliberately released.
Fauci has denied that such funding occurred. Regarding gain-of-function (GOF) research, which refers to studies that have the potential to enhance the ability of pathogens to cause disease, including enhancing either their pathogenicity or transmissibility, Fauci said, “That categorically was not done.” However, Fauci has long supported controversial GOF research, which you can hear him speak about in this video, which features a hearing before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at the U.S. Senate, held April 26, 2012.1
Dual Use Research Is Inherently Risky
Dual use research is so named because it involves research on select agents and toxins that could either benefit society or destroy it, depending on whether or not it falls into the wrong hands. Fauci specifically speaks about dual use research of concern, or DURC, which involves 15 potentially deadly pathogens, including:5
| Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses | Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) | Botulinum neurotoxin |
| Burkholderia mallei | Burkholderia pseudomallei | Ebola virus |
| Foot-and-mouth disease virus | Francisella tularensis | Marburg virus |
| Reconstructed 1918 influenza virus | Rinderpest virus | Toxin-producing strains of clostridium botulinum |
| Smallpox (Variola major) | Smallpox (Variola minor viruses) | Yersinia pestis |
DURC involves seven categories of research experiments, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes GOF and may:6
| Enhance the harmful consequences of the agent or toxin |
| Disrupt immunity or the effectiveness of an immunization against the agent or toxin without clinical and/or agricultural justification |
| Confer to the agent or toxin resistance to clinically and/or agricultural useful preventative or treatment interventions against that agent or toxin or facilitates their ability to evade methods of detection |
| Increase the stability, transmissibility or the ability to disseminate the agent or toxin |
| Alter the host range or tropism of the agent or toxin |
| Enhance the susceptibility of a host population to the agent or toxin |
| Generate or reconstitute an eradicated or extinct agent or one of the 15 DURC toxins or agents |
Controversy Over H5N1 GOF Research Began in 2012
Because GOF, or DURC, can be used to make pathogens more readily able to infect humans, it poses major biosecurity risks, which makes publication of such data almost as controversial as the research itself.
Two studies on highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza ignited the debate in 2012. One, led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Madison‐Wisconsin, identified molecular changes in H5N1 that would allow it to transmit among mammals.7
The other, led by Ron Fouchier at Rotterdam University in The Netherlands, genetically modified H5N1 virus, making it airborne transmissible in ferrets.8 As written in EMBO Reports in 2015:9
“Both groups introduced mutations into highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI) that could potentially increase human-to-human transmission of the virus. These mutations are classified as GOF because they increase airborne transmissibility in ferrets — a good model for human transmission.
Some in the research and biosecurity communities are concerned that these experiments could result in accidental or intentional releases of the mutated pathogen, or that the now publicly available information about how to increase the human-to-human transmissibility of H5N1 influenza could be abused for developing biological weapons.”
Interestingly, the EMBO report actually was written to protest classifying Fouchier’s work as gain-of-function. However, in January 2012, six months before Fouchier’s article was published, 39 international flu researchers announced a voluntary moratorium on research related to H5N1, which was expected to last 60 days but continued until January 23, 2013, due to the highly controversial nature of the studies.
This prompted the U.S. to develop a DURC policy, which was released in March 2012; Fauci references it in the video above.10
Fauci speaks favorably of DURC, despite its potential for grave danger. First, he instills fear in the naturally mutating viruses found in nature, noting, “Indeed, nature itself is the most dangerous bioterrorist, and even as we meet today, H5N1 and other influenza viruses are naturally mutating and changing with the potential of a catastrophic pandemic. This is not a theoretical danger. It is a real danger.”
He later makes it clear that dual use research, including that which explicitly falls under the DURC label, should be allowed to continue:12
“If a particular research experiment is identified as DURC, that designation does not necessarily mean that such research should not be published, nor that it should even be prohibited in the first place.
However, it does call for us, as you mentioned, to balance carefully the benefit of the research to public health, the biosafety and biosecurity conditions under which the research is conducted and the potential risk that the knowledge gained from such research might fall into the hands of those with ill intent.”
Even in light of the controversy, Fauci is steadfast in his support of DURC and GOF research, citing its “clear” benefit to society:13
“Importantly, the public attention and concern generated by this issue has triggered a voluntary moratorium or pause on this type of research on the part of the influenza research community as well as a fresh look at how the U.S. government handles DURC as manifested by a formalization of a government wide policy to address the issue.
This policy, which was released on March 29, strengthens and formalizes ongoing efforts in DURC oversight and is described in my written testimony.
The ultimate goal of the NIH in its embrace of this new policy is to ensure that the conduct and communication of research in this area will remain transparent and open at the same time as the risk-benefit ratio of such research clearly tips towards benefiting society.”
Controversy Due to ‘Public Misunderstanding’
During the hearing, Fauci downplayed the public controversy over the two H5N1 DURC studies, calling it a public misunderstanding:
“I might point out that one of the causes of the public misunderstanding was the widespread belief that the virus that was transmitted by aerosol from one ferret to another actually killed the ferrets when, in fact, that was not the case.”14
So, by Fauci’s logic, the fact that the virus was genetically modified into a form that made it capable of being transmitted via the air to mammals is inconsequential because it didn’t kill the ferrets during the experiment, and the public uproar that ensued was all a misunderstanding. In lending his further support, he stated:15
“We feel that these studies provide critical information and it was important to determine if H5N1 virus that has this enhanced transmissibility would remain sensitive to existing anti-influenza drugs and vaccines. In addition, and importantly, knowledge of the genetic mutations that facilitate transmission may be critical for global surveillance of emerging influenza viruses.”
Another moratorium was placed on U.S.-funded GOF research in October 2014, after a string of concerning events, including publication of controversial GOF studies and high-profile “incidents” at U.S. biocontainment laboratories, led to more than 300 scientists launching a petition calling for an end to gain-of-function research.16 That moratorium was lifted in December 2017.17
However, according to Ronnie Cummins, co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Alexis Baden-Mayer, OCA’s political director (as mentioned earlier in the Mercola link on GOF experiments):
“Exemptions to this ‘pause,’ eventually reviewed by a secret government panel, were nonetheless allowed to go forward. The ban was lifted in 2017. Yet between 2014 and 2016, the NIH and Fauci-led NIAID continued funding gain-of-function research overseas at the Wuhan lab, via [Peter] Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.
Not surprisingly both Fauci and Daszak have been staunch defenders of the official Chinese government story that the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) ‘naturally’ evolved from bats and/or other host species to infect humans.”
Clear Links Show NIAID Funded GOF Research
In a May 11, 2021, Senate hearing, Sen. Rand Paul questioned Fauci on the NIAID’s funding of GOF research on bat coronaviruses, some of which was conducted at the WIV. Fauci denied the charge, saying, “The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute.”18 However, NIH’s funding of such research can be easily double-checked.
In a Truth in Media report,19 investigative journalist Ben Swann reviews documents proving Fauci lied to Congress, including a paper titled “SARS-Like WIV1-CoV Poised for Human Emergence,”20 submitted to PNAS in 2015 and subsequently published in 2016. In this paper, the authors state:
“Overall, the results from these studies highlight the utility of a platform that leverages metagenomics findings and reverse genetics to identify prepandemic threats. For SARS-like WIV1-CoV, the data can inform surveillance programs, improve diagnostic reagents, and facilitate effective treatments to mitigate future emergence events.
However, building new and chimeric reagents must be carefully weighed against potential gain-of-function (GoF) concerns.”
At the end of that paper, the authors thank “Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for access to bat CoV sequences and plasmid of WIV1-CoV spike protein.” They also specify that the research was supported by the NIAID under the grant awards U19AI109761 and U19AI107810, which together total $41.7 million.
As noted by Swann, this paper clearly spells out that the NIAID spent $41.7 million on GOF research, with the aim of determining how bat coronaviruses can be made more pathogenic to humans, and that this research continued after the 2014 moratorium on such funding was implemented.
Shortly after the March 2021 Senate hearing, WIV deleted mentions of its collaboration with Fauci’s NIAID, NIH and other U.S. research partners from its website.21 It also deleted descriptions of GOF research on the SARS virus. This appears to be an attempted cover-up, not only of their own involvement but also American government involvement.
Several members of the U.S. Congress, however, have now vowed to launch their own investigation to explore the lab accident theory. The Energy and Commerce Committee has also requested extensive records from both the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance detailing research and collaborations with WIV.22 As George Washington famously said, “Truth will ultimately prevail where there are plans taken to bring it to light.”23
Please join thousands of other concerned citizens and sign the Organic Consumers petition here.
Sources:
Chronological History of Events Related to Gain-of-Function Research
Project Veritas Exposes Pfizer R&D Director: Pfizer plans to Mutate Covid for “Directed Evolution” and Profiteer from Vaccines
The Fauci Deposition: AG from MO and LA Depose Dr. Fauci, Prove He Was Not Honest with the American Public
Boston Lab Scientists create a New Deadly Covid Strain with an 80% Kill Rate
“Thought Police” at YouTube REMOVE *Congressional Debate* Video From Platform for Discussing Election Integrity
EcoHealth Alliance Whistleblower Exposes Corruption
Zelensky Sends Out Government Decree to Destroy All Info on Hunter Biden’s Metabiota Company
Dr. Andrew Huff, an EcoHealth Alliance Associate, Claims Peter Daszak told him he was Working with the CIA
NIH Letter Shows Fauci Lied To Congress About Funding For Gain Of Function Research
Richard Ebright and 15 Top Scientists Eviscerate Fauci and Daszak in Lancet Medical Journal
