U.S. Government Had Hired Wuhan Laboratory to Create SARS-CoV-2 Virus, Which Causes COVID-19 Disease

U.S. Government Had Hired Wuhan Laboratory to Create SARS-CoV-2 Virus, Which Causes COVID-19 Disease

Eric Zuesse

CORRECTION (dated 27 October 2021): My looking further into the matter here has found an error in this article: I (and many other journalists — such as this) had missed the study in a scientific journal in April 2020 titled “Bioinformatic analysis indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is unrelated to known artificial coronaviruses”, which found that the virus called SHC014 was not a precursor to SARS-CoV-2. However, as is shown in a link linked to in the present article, the research that the NIH funded, and which was carried out under Peter Daszak, specified that it was seeking to find (p. 133) “SARS-CoV caused outbreaks with significant case fatality rates, and there are no vaccines available for this agent.” Though this U.S. Government-funded research failed to produce the SARS-CoV-2 virus, this means only that nature or other causes beat them to the punch. The headline here still seems to be accurate, and the news-report also is. However, the U.S. Government-funded research failed.

On October 21st, the Zero Hedge news site broke to the public direct evidence, from an anonymous leaker, showing that the U.S. Government has been lying to say that it had not been funding research to find, in animal populations, viruses that could then be manipulated in laboratories to a “gain of [viral] function” (unnaturally increased communicability, and deadliness, to humans).

Back on 21 September 2021, a pro-imperialist (war-loving — especially against China) UK newspaper, The Telegraph, had headlined “Wuhan scientists planned to release coronavirus particles into cave bats, leaked papers reveal: Documents reveal researchers applied for $14m to fund controversial project in 2018”, but provided no useful links to any relevant evidence, and offered only few details. However, the 21 October 2021 Zero Hedge blockbuster news-report, headlined “NIH Admits Funding Gain-Of-Function COVID Experiments; Gives EcoHealth Five Days To Report Data”, was far more detailed, and included links to all of its evidence, and is therefore the big breakthrough on this enormous news-story. Unlike the Telegraph’s headline, which misleadingly pretends that this is solely a matter of culpability by China’s Government, and which made no reference to the research’s foreign funding (by the U.S. Government), the Zero Hedge news-report makes very clear that this research had been funded by the U.S. Government. Those funds, and U.S. Government intentions, were paying the Wuhan China biological laboratory to do this research, to find whether and how animal viruses in nature could be manipulated in a laboratory to become communicable to, and deadly to, humans (“gain of function”). Zero Hedge also provided, by way of links, the direct evidence that the U.S. Government has been lying, all along, to deny that they had had anything to do with any such “gain of [viral] function” research.

Back on 3 February 2020, the anti-imperialist magazine in India, Great Game India, headlined “Dr. Francis Boyle Creator Of BioWeapons Act Says Coronavirus Is Biological Warfare Weapon”, and opened: “In an explosive interview Dr. Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Act has given a detailed statement admitting that the 2019 Wuhan Coronavirus is an offensive Biological Warfare Weapon and that the World Health Organization (WHO) already knows about it.”

Five years earlier, on 12 November 2015, Nature journal had bannered “Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research: Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.” They reported summarizing that journal’s technical article, three days prior, which had been authored by 15 researchers: 10 at UNC Chapel Hill; 2 at the Wuhan lab; and 1 each at FDA, Harvard Medical School, and the Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology, Zurich, Switzerland:

In an article published in Nature Medicine¹ on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.

Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so. In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population².

The Nature article also noted that, “The study findings ‘move this virus from a candidate emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger’, says Peter Daszak, who co-authored the 2013 paper. Daszak is president of the EcoHealth Alliance, an international network of scientists, headquartered in New York City, that samples viruses from animals and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe.”

The documentation provided by Zero Hedge focuses especially upon that British Ph.D in parasitic infectious diseases, Peter Daszak, who led the U.S. Government’s operation, to create a virus such as the one that causes COVID-19 disease. The Zero Hedge news-report opens:

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A top NIH official admitted in a Wednesday letter that the US-funded so-called “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, China – and that the US nonprofit which conducted it, EcoHealth Alliance – led by the controversial Peter Daszak, “failed to report” that they had created a chimeric bat coronavirus which could infect humans.

In a letter addressed to Rep. James Comer (R-KY), NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak cites a “limited experiment” to determine whether “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.” According to the letter, humanized mice infected with the modified bat virus “became sicker” than those exposed to an unmodified version of the same bat coronavirus.

Daszak failed to report this finding, and has been given five days to submit “any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted” under the NIH grant.

Rutgers University Board of Governors Chemistry Professor Richard H. Ebright sums it up:

NIH corrects untruthful assertions by NIH Director Collins and NIAID Director Fauci that NIH had not funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

NIH states that EcoHealth Alliance violated Terms and Conditions of NIH grant AI110964.

The NIH received the relevant documents in 2018 and reviewed the documents in 2020 and again in 2021. 

The NIH–specifically, Collins, Fauci, and Tabak–lied to Congress, lied to the press, and lied to the public. Knowingly. Willfully. Brazenly.

How many times can one grantee violate the Terms and Conditions of one NIH grant without being penalized?

(Apparently, if the grantee is EcoHealth Alliance, the number is at least four.)

Violation 1:

“No funds are provided and no funds can be used to support gain-of-function research covered under the October 17, 2014 White House Announcement (NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-15-011).”

Violation 2:

“[S]hould any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must stop all experiments with

these viruses”

Violation 3:

“[S]hould any of the MERS-like or SARS-like chimeras generated under this grant show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than 1 log over the parental backbone strain you must..provide..NIAID Program Officer and Grants Management Specialist..with..data”

Violation 4:

‘Progress reports document grantee recipient accomplishments and compliance with terms of award.  Progress reports…are due the 15th of the month preceding the month in which the budget period ends” (e.g., if the budget period ends 11/30, the due date is 10/15).”

Violation 5:

“Effective February 9, 2017, if the recipient organization has submitted a renewal application on or before the date by which a..Final-RPPR..would be required for the current competitive segment, then submission of an ‘Interim-RPPR’ via eRA Commons is now required.”

Violation 6:

“NIAID defines a Highly Pathogenic Agent as an infectious Agent or Toxin that may warrant a

biocontainment safety level of BSL3 or higher..When submitting future Progress Reports indicate at the beginning of the report….

“….If your IBC or equivalent body or official has determined, for example, by conducting a risk assessment, that the work being planned or performed under this grant may be conducted at a..safety level that is lower than BSL3.”

Violation 7:

“When submitting future Progress Reports indicate at the beginning of the report:

Any changes in the use of the Agent(s)..including its restricted experiments that have resulted in a change in the required biocontainment level, and any..change in location”

Violation 8:

“When submitting future Progress Reports indicate at the beginning of the report:

If work with a new or additional Agent(s)..is proposed in the upcoming project period, provide..list of the new and/or additional Agent(s) that will be studied”

…

——

Daszak’s excuse was the normal one for such research: to develop a vaccine to protect the public (against a disease that didn’t yet exist, but that this research would create). It was anticipatory of a problem, which it might successfully have created; but, actually, Daszak (and people like him) have never produced any vaccines. Their excuse presumes that the public are astoundingly credulous and trusting even of excuses that are so blatantly incredible.

The DARPA, Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, was the first U.S. Government agency that Daszak’s team sought to fund this research, but turned down the proposal. Instead, NIH, the National Institutes of Health, took it up and backed it. The subcontracting of this research to a Chinese Government biological laboratory, in Wuhan, doesn’t seem to make sense in the context of the U.S. Government’s increasing hostility, during the Obama and subsequent Administrations, toward China. However, if the intent was to have China be blamed for the coming plague, then the intentions of Daszak, and of his funders, have turned out to be exactly what was intended — they have been stunningly successful.

On 28 My 2020, I headlined “The Stupid Insanity of Biological-Warfare R&D”, and documented that the U.S. Government pioneered bio-warfare in 1952 trying to use it against North Korea, and has led the world in this research ever since. However, perhaps the first successful use of biowarfare (actually, as a propaganda-weapon) has turned out to have been its extremely successful usage as a false-flag weapon against the reputation of China, which country might have created the SARS-CoV-2 Virus, under a contract in service to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). (However, regardless of what reason might have motivated the Chinese Government’s acceptance of — or maybe even participation in — such research, it wouldn’t have done anything but harm to China, and to the world-at-large. After all: biological ‘weapons’ can’t be targeted; they are contagious. They can’t be controlled. They are useless in any real war. Doing “gain-of-function” research is stupid, if the goal is to discover a bioweapon, because it cannot produce any actual — meaning targetable, usable — weapon. No government’s funding of this research is justifiable.)

Whomever the anonymous leaker of these data in Zero Hedge might have been, that person (as such leakers usually do) was probably doing this as the only available means of exposing a scandal within the U.S. Government itself. History has shown that such leakers generally become severely punished for their patriotic action. Traitorism is rewarded, but patriotism is usually severely punished, by the U.S. Government.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.