Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 22, 2024 3 tweets 6 min read Read on X
The idea that bioweapons research caused Covid was debunked, people say. But it wasn't. New documents show scientists sought to insert a furin cleavage site right where it exists on SARS-CoV-2, and they'd been funded in the past by Anthony Fauci, who oversaw bioweapons research. Image
US And Chinese Scientists Made Plans To Engineer Coronaviruses Like SARS-CoV-2, New Documents Show

Was EcoHealth Alliance’s 2018 DEFUSE proposal a blueprint for bioweapons-related experiments that led to the Covid-19 lab leak?
Shi Zhengli, “the bat woman of China,” who oversaw Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus research and engineering; Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, arriving at the U.S Capitol for the first of two days of interviews before of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on January 8, 2024 ; Dr. Ralph Baric, University of North Carolina (Getty Images)

Last year Public and Racket reported that sources in the US government were “100%” confident that Covid-19’s patients zero worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and conducted risky gain-of-function experiments there. This lab received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based nonprofit. In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance applied for a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called “DEFUSE” that would involve Shi Zhengli’s lab group at WIV and Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC).

Now, US Right to Know has obtained a full cache of notes and drafts from the DEFUSE grant proposal through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. These documents reveal that the features of SARS-CoV-2 closely resemble the work described in EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal. SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site primed the virus for easy transmissibility among humans and is absent from the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2.

The DEFUSE records show that UNC and WIV scientists wanted to insert a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein. What’s more, a 2022 preprint analysis determined that SARS-CoV-2 was assembled in six fragments with the restriction enzyme BsmBI. The new documents show that the DEFUSE team planned to use six segments to make synthetic viruses and ordered BSmBI from New England Biolabs.

In response to the release, Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, wrote that his group “had the misfortune of predicting” that a SARS-like virus with features of SARS-CoV-2 “had the potential to emerge in China & become pandemic. It did. Rather than taking these prescient ideas seriously, we’ve had 4 [years] of attacks.”

Image from DEFUSE grant proposal.

It’s true that the UNC-WIV collaboration was “predicting” the emergence of a virus in their proposal, and it’s true that the proposal is not an explicit plan to engineer SARS-CoV-2.

But the purpose of the DEFUSE group’s work was to create chimeric viruses, which are viruses with genetic material from two or more different viruses, with the same “predicted” features in order to develop protections against its “predictions.” A specific proposal of the DEFUSE grant was to use its engineering research to make an inoculating aerosol that could be sprayed into bat caves in China.

Proponents of the natural origin theory have argued that the DEFUSE grant is irrelevant to the origins debate because DARPA did not approve it, but it is often the case that scientists apply for grants to fund work they are already doing or projects that resemble experiments they have already started.

And the DEFUSE documents reveal specific work that one would expect, if not properly contained, could result in a biological accident. The group wanted to find receptor-binding domains (RBD) with the potential to infect human cells. Baric was going to engineer five full-length SARS-related viruses and 20 chimeric SARS-related viral spike proteins per year and test their ability to infect human cells.

Notes suggest that Baric had already covertly engineered SARS-related spike proteins and chimeras, but this work is not published in scientific journals. Baric, the notes say, “has already generated SARS-like chimeras w/ RBD from group of bat viruses called 293 (for S1) which is 20% different than epidemic strains.”

The scientists knew this work was risky. As US Right to Know reported in December after releasing a limited set of DEFUSE documents, Baric left a comment on the grant proposal stating, “In the US, these recombinant SARS-CoV are studied under BSL3 [Biosafety Level 3], not BSL2 [Biosafety Level 2], especially important for those that are able to bind and replicate in primary human cells.” In China, he wrote, these experiments could be done under BSL2, but “US researchers will likely freak out.” Indeed, some of Shi’s NIH-funded work engineering viruses was carried out under BSL-2 conditions in Wuhan.

Despite this risk, the DARPA project manager reviewing the proposal was not initially concerned about the group’s work in China and indicated that DARPA did not view the research as too risky.

Although many virologists insist that this gain-of-function research is not connected to Covid-19, there is good reason to be skeptical of their claims. Last year Public and Racket released a trove of documents showing that a group of scientists who publicly promoted the natural origin theory of Covid-19 privately believed that a lab leak was the virus’ probable origin. These scientists wrote a highly influential paper in March 2020, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which purported to debunk the lab leak hypothesis, and they briefed intelligence agencies about their paper.

Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), held financial power over some of these scientists, and private communications show that Fauci and other “higher ups” in government pressured the papers’ authors. A whistleblower has alleged that Fauci influenced the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s origins investigation, and that CIA officials changed their own analysts’ conclusions to favor natural origin.

Why were Baric and Shi conducting risky experiments to engineer virus features that could infect humans? What was the purpose of this research? And why would federal government agencies potentially want to fund it?Image
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In parts 2 and 3 of this major new piece by @galexybrane learn how:

— Bioweapons research, including for ethnic targeting, has been a focus of intense interest by the US and Chinese militaries for decades;

— Fauci quietly oversaw bioweapons research since 2003;

— Research to make viruses more contagious continues today with grossly insufficient regulation and outsized arrogance by scientists.

"This historical evidence, as well as the scientific record, suggests that individuals involved in biodefense and pandemic preparedness may have been responsible for engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus," writes @galexybrane.

"The defense and preparedness push that gained funding and momentum after 9/11 appears to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In attempting to stop pathogens from transmitting to humans, scientists appear to have achieved the opposite."

Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning reporting and to read the rest of this major piece!

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More from @shellenberger

Jun 29
The website of NYC mayoral frontrunner says he'll "shift the tax burden" to "whiter neighborhoods." When asked about his openly racist agenda, @ZohranKMamdani insists it's not a proposal at all but rather "a description of what we see right now." That's next-level gaslighting.😬
This guy's ability to lie so calmly while smiling should send chills up the spines of every New Yorker.

He could have taken it down and said, "You know, I regret that the website said that and so I deleted it, because it doesn't express what I believe."

Instead, he's just asked millions of New Yorkers to believe his own obviously flagrant lie rather than their own eyes. That's creepy and wrong.

Everyone can see for themselves that he used a gratuitous racial reference regarding a tax proposal. We don't tax people on race. So why use it? Because he and his campaign wanted to introduce race.

And it's not the first time. @ZohranKMamdani should delete his flagrantly racist tweets and web site language, apologize, and promise to never invoke racism in these ways again.Image
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The audacity of @ZohranKMamdani to cite Dr. Martin Luther King should make your skin crawl. King adamantly rejected anti-white racism.

Mamdani’s call for higher taxes on white neighborhoods should shock New Yorkers. If they elect him as Mayor then they will have no excuses. He’s made clear that he will advance a racist agenda and then demand that people believe his lies.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 28
The idea that former Intelligence Community officials are working with European leaders to censor the Internet sounds like a conspiracy theory, but over the last two days, Obama’s CIA Director plotted with UK, EU, and Irish officials in Dublin to do precisely that. Image
These people are a direct and imminent threat to free speech and democracy worldwide. They are dangerous and out of control:

Former CIA Director John Brennan helped initiate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He used foreign spies to help trigger the FBI investigation of of the Trump campaign. And he manipulated the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to falsely claim the Russians favored Trump over Clinton.

Niamh Hodnett, Ireland’s “Online Safety Commissioner,” leads Ireland’s censorship regime under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, which mirrors EU and U.S.-backed models shaped by intelligence-linked NGOs.

Aine Kerr, a Former Facebook Policy Manager, helped manage Facebook’s public policy as it partnered with U.S. intelligence agencies post-2016, then co-founded Kinzen, which received support from EU and transatlantic institutions focused on content surveillance. Her work connects platform moderation with state-funded narrative monitoring.

Nóirín O’Sullivan, a Former Garda (Irish police) Commissioner and EUROPOL Official, who went from leading Ireland’s national police to a senior role at EUROPOL, which works closely with intelligence and security services across Europe. She advocates for integrating security principles into online content governance.

Claire Loftus, Ireland’s Former Director of Public Prosecutions, oversaw prosecutions during a period of expanding legal efforts to criminalize online expression and misinformation. Her presence signals an effort to align the judiciary with state-backed censorship.

Robyn Simcox, the UK Commissioner for Countering Extremism,
operates within the UK Home Office, a department with direct ties to MI5 and GCHQ. She frames conspiracy theories and misinformation as forms of radicalization and demands surveillance and preemptive regulation. Her office channels intelligence priorities into speech policing under the banner of counter-extremism.Image
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Brennan triggered the Trump-Russia collusion hoax
Read 10 tweets
Jun 27
Brazil has been banning and censoring journalists and politicians for years. But now it is taking steps to ban X entirely. It’s time for @SecRubio to block President Lula, Justice Moraes, and their criminal accomplices from entering the US. Image
President Trump and Secretary Rubio must not let these tin pot dictators censor speech and ban the world’s most important social media company.
The sinister Lula and creepy Moraes are trying to intimidate my colleagues and me. We won’t back down.
Read 7 tweets
Jun 10
They're launching mortar rounds, @GavinNewsom
video credit: @alexdatig
Stay safe out there, @alexdatig Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 9
Everybody in L.A. knows there aren't enough police officers. It has little more than half as many per capita as Chicago. And yet @GavinNewsom @MayorOfLA @KamalaHarris and *every single* Democratic governor opposed calling out the National Guard. Image
California has half the population as Germany and a bigger economy. We pay the highest taxes by far. And yet, not only does LA have nearly half the police per capita as Chicago, Mayor @KarenBassLA wants to lay-off 400 police officers. Image
@KarenBassLA They're not going to be satisfied until the rest of LA burns down.

Read 6 tweets
Jun 8
There's no shortage of police in L.A., said @GavinNewsom a few hours ago. In fact, L.A. has far fewer police per capita than other big cities. And now, the protesters have overrun the police and blocked the highway. Video: @AnthonyCabassa_
L.A.'s lack of police has been one of the biggest crime stories in California for a decade. As such, @GavinNewsom is either lying or even more in a bubble than we knew. And now, naturally, LA's radical-Left mayor and city council want to cut 400 more police officers. Image
@GavinNewsom Kamala Harris did more than anyone to pass the initiative that decriminalized open air drug dealing and shoplifting. She’s pro-crime because she’s against civilization — at least for poor and working class people, not her and her neighbors.

x.com/kamalaharris/s… x.com/kamalaharris/s…
Read 19 tweets

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