"Wuhan scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show."
"They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the [US] Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work."
"The bid was submitted by British zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the US-based organisation, which has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researching bat coronaviruses. Team members included..Shi Zhengli, the WIV researcher dubbed 'bat woman'"
"Darpa refused to fund the work, saying: 'It is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk', and warned..the team had not properly considered..dangers of enhancing..virus (gain of function research) or releasing a vaccine by air."
"Viscount Ridley..called for..investigation..in..House of Lords..'For more than a year I tried..to ask questions of..Daszak with no response. Now it turns out he..authored this vital piece of information about..work in Wuhan but refused to share it with the world. I am furious.'"
"So should the world be."
* The proposal calls for aerosol delivery of recombinant SARSr CoV spike proteins in nanoparticles or in orthopoxviral vectors. Not aerosol delivery of SARSr CoVs.
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"The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s chief American collaborator leveraged connections in Anthony Fauci’s inner circle to survive federal scrutiny and keep millions in public funding flowing without turning over key data, new records show."
"Hundreds of documents—emails obtained under FOIA lawsuits or congressional subpoena, as well as congressional interview transcripts—show Fauci’s institute protected EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated on novel coronavirus discovery and engineering projects with the Wuhan lab"
"[O]fficials at the NIH’s central headquarters or “Building One”…had suspended EcoHealth’s…grant and sought lab notebooks and unpublished genomic data as a condition of getting its funding back. This information could have shed light on the coronavirus research in Wuhan"
Letter to Cell: "Crits-Christoph et al. 2024 has unsound premises, has unsound conclusions, and may be a product of scientific misconduct. We urge Cell to issue an Expression of Editorial Concern for this paper and to initiate…investigation of this paper for possible retraction"
""We may never know the full story of the pandemic's origin. But if this were a bureaucratic whodunit, the most likely suspect would be Fauci. COVID-19 was Fauci's pandemic."
"The evidence is not fully conclusive. But it seems…likely…Fauci pushed for what his peers repeatedly said was dangerous research, that some of that dangerous research produced a deadly viral pathogen that escaped the lab, and that Fauci helped cover up…its origins."
"Prior to COVID-19, Fauci had long supported funding pandemic research that other scientists found risky, if not downright dangerous."
"[W]hat happened in Wuhan, China was worse than a thousand Bhopals. It killed around 28million people – and was by far the most lethal industrial or scientific accident that has ever occurred."
"The outbreak began not just in one of the very few cities doing research on this kind of virus, but also in the city with the biggest SARS-like virus research programme on the planet"
WHO, 09/04/24: "Timely investigations into pathogen…origins are critical for preventing and containing global health crises. The…findings provide the basis for...halting transmission chains...They can also confirm…the possibility of a...breach in…biosafety and biosecurity."
"There are a number of tools available for investigating infectious disease outbreaks, but there is not a unified, structured approach to investigating the origins of a novel pathogen’s initial emergence or re-emergence."
"This World Health Organization (WHO) global framework - to define and guide studies into the origins of emerging and re-emerging pathogens of epidemic and pandemic potential - aims to fill that gap by providing a recommended set of investigations and studies"
"The pipeline of new antibiotics is insufficient to keep pace with the growing global burden of drug-resistant infections. Substantial economic challenges discourage private investment in antibiotic research and development"
"In 2019, there were 4.95 M deaths associated with drug-resistant infections, including 1.27 M directly attributable deaths. Data...indicate...life expectancy globally will be reduced by 1.8 years over the next decade without specific action to address antimicrobial resistance"
"The antibiotic pipeline remains insufficient for current and anticipated future needs; so there continues to be an urgent need to develop innovative antimicrobials"