Letters which have not been made public (why?) but for which HHS arranged an 'in camera' review of printed copies by a bipartisan Committee, at HHS headquarters on Oct 5 and monitored by HHS staff.
See particularly pages 6 and 7:
What they show is how easily EHA argued that their research objectives did not constitute GoF, against the initial concerns of the NIH.
They got way with it on rather specious grounds.
No proper risk evaluation, instead a focus on arbitrary definitions which used and abused give an easy free pass.
(Thanks God, nuclear power stations are not managed with such casuistic principles - or we would all be long gone).
Anyway EHA was able to proceed.
Just to be safe - or to sound like it at least - NIH added that 1 log clause.
Clause which was then just ignored.
Neither EHA nor the NIH paid attention to it when despite all the windy reassurances of EHA, spike experiments with SHC014 produced more than 3 logs of comparative growth (x1000, well beyond the limit of x10).
The whole thing then degenerated into a comedy, with EHA filling with 2 years of delay that year 5 report that briefly mentioned the 3 logs experiments.
And then adding that they had tried to report it on time in 2019 but that NIH systems did not work.
"the benefits of such experiments [--] outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky."
But it may be time to remind him of what he wrote next to that statement, because it seems that it has totally forgotten about it: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
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@CD57227 @JanKlimkowski @Florin_Uncovers @DavRoeck @R_H_Ebright @emilyakopp @zeynep Your link does not work unfortunately. Can you give one that works?
Quite a few foundations there (Stiftungen).
@CD57227 @JanKlimkowski @Florin_Uncovers @DavRoeck @R_H_Ebright @emilyakopp @zeynep - Schweizerische Eidgenossenschat, Bundesamt für Kultur (BAK) (some funding if 10% is shot in Switzerland)
- Zürcher Filmstiftung
- Stiftung Volkart
- UBS Kulturstiftung
- Stiftung Corymbo
- Ernst Göhner Stiftung
@CD57227 @JanKlimkowski @Florin_Uncovers @DavRoeck @R_H_Ebright @emilyakopp @zeynep Zürcher Filmstiftung
CHF 60,000 to develop the project, on 16Mar 2021: filmstiftung.ch/die-forderung/…
@CD57227 @DavRoeck @Florin_Uncovers More details. Daszak had a work/vacation at end Oct 2022 during which he went top What Khao Ching Pan, but that was before the filming.
The filming occurred during the first two weeks of December.
Note that Daszak went vi Zurich and shared the flight to Bangkok with Markolin.
He often does that for key people: Farrar from Geneva to London in Feb 2020, Koopmans from Wuhan to Amsterdam after the 2021 WHO mission, etc.
@ebright @JanKlimkowski @Tantalite
@CD57227 @DavRoeck @Florin_Uncovers One key point is that Daszak was taking some journalists in a SEA trip at that very time, to gather support (especially related to his poached Lao samples problems with Latinne et al).
1/12 Nice article by @stephaniebenz and @yohanblavignat summarizing the situation as to the origins debate.
It captures very well the absurd cheap certitudes of the 100% zoonosis fans, and the questions that such a rush to close an existential debate raises. lexpress.fr/sciences-sante…
2/12 If asked, I would say that after the wise 50/50 position that any scientist should have initially considered, most of the developments have been towards a research-related accident, with many predictions there coming true,
3/12 On the contrary, the ground has been weakening under the zoonotic side, with demolished market papers, no animal reservoir identified, and a lot of time wasted on candidate pangolins and racoon dogs.
Flo Debarre is mentioned here as someone jumping to conclusions that are in fact essentially speculations (the whole raccoon dog saga),