Richard H. Ebright Profile picture
Sep 5, 2022 11 tweets 2 min read Read on X
COVID: summary of lab-origin hypothesis:

1) Pandemic caused by a bat SARS-like coronavirus emerged in Wuhan--a city 1,000 miles from nearest wild bats with SARS-like coronaviruses, but that contains labs conducting world's largest research program on bat SARS-like coronaviruses.
2) In 2015-2017, scientists and science-policy specialists expressed concern that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was conducting and contemplating research that posed an unacceptable risk of lab accident and pandemic (nature.com/articles/natur…;
nature.com/articles/natur…),
3) In 2017-2018, WIV constructed a novel chimeric SARS-like coronavirus that was able to infect and replicate in human airway cells and that had 10,000x enhanced viral growth and 4x enhanced lethality in mice engineered to display human receptors on cells.
4) In 2018, in an NIH grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct more novel chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses, targeting chimeras that replace natural spike gene with novel spike genes encoding spikes that have higher binding affinities to human cells.
5) Also in 2018, in a DARPA grant proposal, WIV and collaborators proposed to construct novel "consensus" bat SARS-like coronaviruses, and to insert furin cleavage site (FCS) sequences at the spike gene S1-S2 border of bat SARS-like coronaviruses,
6) In 2017-2019, WIV constructed and characterized novel SARS-like coronaviruses at biosafety level 2, a biosafety level patently inadequate for work with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and patently inadequate to contain a virus having transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2
7) In 2019 a novel SARS-like coronavirus having a spike with high binding affinity for human cells, and having an FCS at the spike S1-S2 border--a virus having the properties set forth in the 2018 WIV NIH and DARPA grant proposals--emerges on the doorstep of WIV.
8) SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of more than 100 known SARS-like coronaviruses that contains an FCS. This is a feature that does not rule out a natural origin, but that is more easily explained by a lab origin. Especially since insertion of FCS had been explicitly proposed in 2018.
9) The FCS of SARS-CoV-2 has codon usage unusual for bat SARS-related coronaviruses and has an 8-of-8 amino-acid-sequence identity to the FCS of human ENaCa. These are features that do not rule out a natural origin, but that are more--much more--easily explained by a lab origin.
10) In 2020-present, WIV and its funders/collaborators at EcoHealth Alliance have withheld information, misrepresented facts, and obstructed investigation...even though, if not connected to origin, they most easily could clear their name though cooperation with investigation.
*1,000 km

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More from @R_H_Ebright

Sep 14
""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."

reason.com/2024/09/14/fau…
"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."
Read 23 tweets
Sep 10
There is now no doubt that Covid leaked from a lab

spiked-online.com/2024/09/10/the…
"[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"
Read 17 tweets
Sep 6
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." Image
"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"
Read 11 tweets
Sep 4
"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"

nature.com/articles/s4159…
"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"
Read 10 tweets
Aug 20
"[R]esearchers have developed sophisticated understandings of…biology, allowing for…development of remarkably deadly…pathogens…They have learned how to evolve existing viruses to spread more easily…and…to engineer viruses to make them more deadly."
foreignaffairs.com/world/new-biow…
"It remains unclear whether COVID-19 arose from such activities or entered the human population via interaction with wildlife. Either way, it is clear that biological technology, now boosted by artificial intelligence, has made it simpler than ever to produce diseases."
"Should a human-made or human-improved pathogen escape or be released from a lab, the consequences could be catastrophic."
Read 7 tweets
Aug 8
Structural basis of RfaH-dependent transcription-translation coupling termination

(Collaboration between our laboratory and laboratories of Gregor Blaha and Chengyuan Wang.)

nature.com/articles/s4159…
"Here we report cryo-EM structures of transcription‑translation complexes (TTCs) containing RfaH. The results show that RfaH bridges RNAP and the ribosome, with the RfaH N-terminal domain interacting with RNAP, and with the RfaH C-terminal domain interacting with the ribosome." Image
"The results show that the distribution of translational and orientational positions of RNAP relative to the ribosome in RfaH-coupled TTCs is more restricted than in NusG-coupled TTCs, due to the more restricted flexibility of the RfaH interdomain linker." Image
Read 4 tweets

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