Thread by @nanogenomic

GAIN OF FUNCTION RESEARCH AND COVID ORIGINS

Unbelievable. 18 months to state the obvious, that the US and China jointly funded GOF research in China and the USA changed definition of Gain of Function Research to exclude SARS-related viruses. 18 months.

There were COVID-19 paper trails relating to SARS-related virus research and funding. It took over a year to have a mainstream discourse admitting to known information on potential viral origins. This has given China 18 months to obfuscate their work from 2011-2020 and beyond.

Why is the US not investigating and sanctioning the three active Chinese grants funding the EcoHealth Alliance through 2023? From a document I wrote last year, in May 2020. For some reason I cannot find these grants online anymore.

Next, Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance, told the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research that no funds from a single R01 grant went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This is disingenuous at best, and deliberate obfuscation at worst.

Of note China is still funding the EcoHealth Alliance to do this work! Why are we not putting together international reviews on all the data that goes in and out of their org, and the WIV?

The DoD also dedicated tens of millions of dollars to EcoHealth Alliance. How is this runaway research not a larger national and international security concern?

Where are the genomic sequences of the "SARS-related" viruses that infected miners in Yunnan province of China in 2015 or earlier? How was this data shared and exchanged internationally?

Why were the Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2 authors so adamant about condemning potential lab leak or bioengineered virus hypotheses as conspiracy theories, and now one of their lead authors has deleted his Twitter?

I condemn Kristian Anderson and the proximal origins Nature Paper authors for their roles in promoting propaganda and obfuscating investigation of SARS-CoV-2 origins.

nature.com/articles/s4159…

When I expressed that Nature should reconsider this publication as being something that promotes scientific misinformation, Kristian Anderson (@K_G_Anderson, who deleted his Twitter now) told me that he looks forward to seeing my peer reviewed publication countering the paper.

https://twitter.com/nanogenomic/status/1361030702381211649?s=20

I wrote a lot about this all last year, and decided to let things play out given many of us who spoke out about potential lab origins or origins of the virus being valid hypotheses were harassed, targeted and otherwise labeled as conspiracy theorists.

https://twitter.com/nanogenomic/status/1259590912096829442?s=20

And yet, a striking scientific and forensic question remains. How can we admit to 1) discovering higher human ACE2 binding spike proteins of SARS-related viruses, and 2) doing recombination work between spikes and the remainder of the virus — all while not publishing these seqs?

Clearly, there is a lot more going on.

https://twitter.com/nanogenomic/status/1259590912096829442?s=20

This, and the need for enhanced biosurveillance and also for tracing of how samples are exchanged who has custody — as well as the lag in creating medical countermeasures against new disease agents, is why I am starting the Biodefense Foundation. @BioDefenseFnd. More news soon.

I hope that the resurfacing, restatement and re-exposure of this information assists our US and global biosecurity efforts. Additionally, I hope that this thread can assist the @WhiteHouse and the @HouseIntel Committee in their continued vigilance and investigations of COVID.

More than ever, there is a need for us to plan for the worst and aim for the the best; to consider all hypotheses of not only viral origins, but also viral evolution, escape variants, and the next pandemic. In our current state we are not as prepared as we’d like to think we are.

@theintercept

@WSJscience @NYTScience

Read more about shifting Gain of Function (GoF) definitions and rules / funding allowances in USA:

USA initially banned SARS and MERS gain of function research (2014):

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/1…

Then NIH lifted the ban in 2017:

nih.gov/about-nih/who-…

And then HHS changed the definition of “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens” to not be considered “enhanced PPP” if, to “the extent that transmissibility and/or virulence of PPPs are modified in the following categories of studies, the resulting pathogens are not considered…”

“…to be enhanced PPPs for the purposes of this Framework:
1. Surveillance activities, including sampling and sequencing; and
2. Activities associated with developing and producing vaccines, such as generation of high growth strains.”

E.g. “not GoF”

phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Doc…

@Ayjchan put a great thread together on definitions of GoF research as well.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1392127958807162884

Also, the question that bears dissecting with nuance is whether funding a third party entity to do surveillance and vaccine or evolutionary work while the entity collaborates with one or more other entities doing true GoF work, falls under the definition of funding GoF work.

We’ve gotten so stuck on the definitions of GoF, that it distracts from the fact of the matter which is that we exposed pathogenic, novel viruses to poor biocontainment environments and had information asymmetry with a foreign government that has been far from accountable.

Also, most people do not know the difference between Gain of Function work and genetic engineering work on viruses. Without a shadow of a doubt, disease enhanced variants of SARS-related viruses were studied.

The specific aim, 3.2, was:

“using a panel of mAbs that neutralize SARS-CoV infection in vitro and in vivo, and vaccine against SARS-CoV S protein, we will examine the capacity of strains with divergent S protein sequences to evade therapeutics.”

Did they succeed in doing so before the COVID outbreak? Yes. See the second screenshot of one of the EcoHealth grant’s data submissions. Full document can be found here: documentcloud.org/documents/2105…

Above, they identified novel fusion viruses that had new spike proteins introduced onto them. This is genetic engineering work. These novel chimeric fusion viruses evaded vaccines and antibodies against SARS. They were optimized for expression in mice and binding to human cells.