Thread by @R_H_Ebright

"A GRANT PROPOSAL written by the US-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance and submitted in 2018 to..DARPA, provides evidence that the group was working — or at least planning to work — on several risky areas of research."
theintercept.com/2021/09/23/cor…

"Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal..was the creation of full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and the insertion of a tiny part of the virus known as a “proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses."

"Of particular interest was a type of cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells."

"The relevance of this is that SARS Cov-2..is the only virus in its..genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a fully functional cleavage site at..S1-S2 junction..“And here is a proposal..to engineer that sequence at that position in chimeric lab-generated coronaviruses"

Alina Chan: "A novel SARS coronavirus emerges in Wuhan with a novel cleavage site in it. We now have evidence that, in early 2018, they had pitched inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-related viruses in their lab. This definitely tips the scales"

Martin Wikelski: "The information in the proposal certainly changes my thoughts about a possible origin of SARS-CoV-2. In fact, a possible transmission chain is now logically consistent — which it was not before I read the proposal."

Stuart Newman: "The people that are claiming natural emergence say that it begins with a bat virus that evolved to be compatible with humans. If you use that logic, then this virus could be a threat because it could also make that transition."

Jesse Bloom: "I find it really disappointing that two of the members of the joint WHO-China team..are actually on this proposal, knew that this line of research was at least under consideration, and didn’t mention it all"

Jesse Bloom: “I find it really disappointing that one of the members of the joint WHO-China team..[is] actually on this proposal, knew that this line of research was at least under consideration, and didn’t mention it all.”

(Reflecting correction by Intercept, 09/23 at 3:30 PM.)