The following is from Judicial Watch.
Watchdog group Judicial Watch announced it received 552 pages of records from the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) showing that US taxpayer money funded virus-altering experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The documents include grant applications and annual reports submitted by EcoHealth Alliance to the NIH. They describe efforts to genetically alter bat coronaviruses to “better predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect people.”
EcoHealth’s proposal involved sequencing spike proteins from bat viruses and “creating mutants to identify how significantly each would need to evolve to use ACE2,” the receptor that allows viruses to enter human cells.
The initial “Application for Federal Assistance” outlined testing predictions of cross-species virus transmission using “reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in cell culture and humanized mice.”
The first “Project/Performance Site Location” listed was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, followed by three other Chinese institutions. Among the “Senior/Key Personnel” were EcoHealth CEO Peter Daszak and Wuhan lab scientist Shi Zhengli.
A budget justification section showed funds for Chinese CDC officials to perform human sampling and transport lab specimens, along with costs for RNA extractions, DNA sequencing, and in vitro infection experiments using pseudoviruses and live viruses.
In the Year 2 annual report, humanized mice were infected with two chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses. The experiments showed those viruses had strong potential for human infection. By Year 3, EcoHealth reported isolating another bat virus and constructing new chimeras to test infectivity in cells expressing human ACE2 receptors.
The Year 4 report noted that chimeric viruses caused weight loss and high viral loads in infected mice, confirming varying levels of pathogenicity. Some findings were reportedly shared with agencies including DARPA and Chinese government institutions.
A 2020 renewal application claimed EcoHealth would not genetically manipulate SARS-CoV itself, but would work on WIV1, a related virus not designated as a “select agent.” EcoHealth listed its partners as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the Institute of Pathogen Biology in China.
“This gain-of-function scandal should be the subject of criminal investigations.”
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Other related FOIA disclosures highlighted by Judicial Watch include:
- NIH emails about Ivermectin.
- FDA discussions on Pfizer’s Covid-19 shot and anaphylaxis.
- Moderna data showing skeletal deformations in rats.
- Internal HHS emails showing vaccine promotion strategies.
- NIH concerns over gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
- Emails citing ties between the Wuhan lab and EcoHealth Alliance.
- Fauci-approved messaging supporting China’s Covid response
For more information, read the full article here.
Thanks Sharyl, I would think its common knowledge at this point that the US played a major role in the Wuhan flu pandemic. One of the few countries that didn’t sign the ban on gain of function research was China, only stands to reason that would be the place to go to do the research. The naive part of me would excuse this as simply the intelligence community trying to keep tabs on what the Chinese were doing with respect to our own best interests, but I have come to the conclusion that our intelligence community has, at best, lost it’s moral compass. Whoever thought it was a good idea to share gain of function research technology with the Chinese, or anybody for that matter, should seek help. Unconstrained scientific research is what led to Josef Mengele and the lessor known but even more abhorrent Y. Hisato of the Japanese unit 731. Terrifying part is the research continues. Mankind never learns.