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Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
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25 Sep, 4 tweets, 1 min read
"Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said he has disbanded a task force of scientists probing..origins of Covid-19 in favor of wider biosafety research."

Lancet task force probing origins of Covid-19 disbanded in favor of wider biosafety research wsj.com/articles/covid…
"EcoHealth Alliance’s president, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recusing himself from that role in June. Some other members of the task force have collaborated with Dr. Daszak or EcoHealth Alliance on projects."
"Dr. Sachs said the Lancet Covid-19 Commission would continue studying the origins for a report to be published in mid-2022 but broaden its scope to include input from other experts on biosafety concerns including government oversight and transparency regarding risky..research."
"More labs have the technology to re-create or build new viruses, he said, yet regulation and standards on how to conduct these experiments safely aren’t keeping up."

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More from @R_H_Ebright

Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
24 Sep
"Some scientists and officials in the Biden administration are pushing for more oversight..of risky bioresearch. One focus is laboratory work that enhances a pathogen or endows it with new properties—sometimes called 'gain-of-function' research"

wsj.com/articles/since…
"The administration, looking for ways to better weigh the potential benefits of such research against the risks, is considering ideas that include forming a new entity to address global biosecurity."
"Another is to expand oversight of U.S.-funded research on pathogens beyond the current practice in which most projects are vetted by the same [conflict-of-interest-burdened ]agencies that fund or oversee them"
Read 4 tweets
Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
23 Sep
"Two new caches of documents have added considerable substance..to the idea that the SARS2 epidemic may have originated in a lab accident."

Nicolas Wade: New Routes to Making Covid-19 in the Lab
link.medium.com/O1xv2MomNjb
"One is a grant proposal written by EcoHealth in March 2018 to DARPA, a research agency in the Department of Defense."
"A prominent feature of the proposal is to 'introduce..human-specific cleavage sites' into SARS-like viruses. Such a procedure is eye-catching, if not jaw-dropping, because the distinctive feature of the SARS2 virus is a genetic element known as a furin cleavage site.
Read 10 tweets
Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
23 Sep
"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."
Read 9 tweets
Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
21 Sep
"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."

telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/2…
"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'"
Read 7 tweets
Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
21 Sep
EcoHealth: "We will analyze..SARSr-CoV..sequences for..proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and..potential Furin cleavage sites..[W]e will introduce..human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth..in Vero cells and HAE cultures."

(full proposal now up)
drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-d…
Read 4 tweets
Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
20 Sep
EcoHealth: "We will analyze all SARSr-CoV..sequences for..proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for..potential Furin cleavage sites..[W]e will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures."
drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/defuse…
DARPA:

"1. The proposal is considered to potentially involve GoF/DURC research because they propose to synthesize spike glycoproteins which bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSr-CoV backbones to assess whether they can cause SARS-like disease.
"2. However the proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research.

"3. Nor does the proposal mention or assess Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) issues, and thus fails to present a DURC risk mitigation plan.

(drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/defuse…)
Read 6 tweets

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