It defies any logic that Daszak still hasn't shared them with the scientific community. This does a lot more than raise questions about Daszak's integrity.
To quote a zoonotic-origin proponent, who told me in private: "People are taking this grant proposal very seriously. It changes the equation...This is not something they should have kept hidden...This is something they need to provide immediate clear and direct answers on."
And the fact that they planned to spray bats in Yunnan with this stuff. Makes for a bad sci-fi movie all told.
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Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, co-authors of the Proximal Origins paper had testified that they had met with CIA agents. science.org/content/articl…
Just came across something striking: Wuchun Cao, a serving Colonel in the Chinese PLA, was a key presenter in the China Virome Project (part of the Global Virome Project).
This is really interesting. 🧵
If you've been following this story, the 'China Virome Project (CVP)' might ring a bell. For those who haven’t, here’s some background from @mattwridley and me: unherd.com/2022/04/did-vi…
So, what’s a PLA scientist like Wuchun Cao doing here?
For context, he was involved in a 'major project' with Shi Zhengli and now serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee at WIV.
The project was focused on identifying the next pandemic pathogen.
Interestingly, all the three unpublished ACE2 sequences (likely from Mojiang) are from R. pusillus.
According to EHA's R01 renewal, R. pusillus (Rpu) was among the most sampled species of bats. Yet, WIV has published next to nothing on Rpu's so far. ecohealthalliance.org/wp-content/upl…
Of note: R. pusillus has been proposed as a likely host of SARS2’s progenitor.
1/ Just musing here, but when the Mojiang miners died clearing bat droppings, it stands to reason that WIV would have left no stone unturned to investigate the cause, especially after they made advancements in NGS, genetically engineered cell lines and reverse genetics in 2017-18
2/ Li Xu, 2013: “the analysis of these 6 cases of unknown pneumonia..may be considered as follows: caused by "SARS-like CoV"
Wang, 2014: “it is likely that the 6 miners were infected with the pathogen carried by bats”
Canping, 2016: “4 people carried SARS virus IgG antibodies”
3/ WIV, 2017: “establish genetically engineered cell lines dedicated for virus isolation which will provide significant improvement over current cell lines..without having to relying on cytopathic effect (CPE) as all current methods do.” web.archive.org/web/2021081821…
Theory: In 2017, US lifted the #GoF moratorium. Subsequently, EcoHealth, through their DEFUSE proposal provided the WIV and parts of Chinese military with the necessary action plans and work protocols to create enhanced viruses. One of these enhanced viruses escaped the Wuhan lab
I'm not implying anything insidious here. My proposition is: WIV conducted the DEFUSE work using their own funding, with the involvement of Chinese military.
Did NIH fund this research? No.
Did NIH funding support the research? Likely, yes.
Did NIH know about it at the time? Idk
EHA/NIH funded research at WIV, which successfully modified bat coronaviruses previously unable to infect humans, and successfully modifed them to make them even more infectious in human-like cells.