Tag: biological warfare

Now It’s UK: Why Are Labs Racing To See Who Can Create The Most Deadly Virus?

A potentially deadly new strain of COVID has been created in a University lab in London, according to a report.

The Daily Mail reports that researchers at Imperial College London have hybridised the original Wuhan strain of the disease with both the Omicron or Delta variants separately.

The College is yet to reveal how effective the strain they have created is, and has denied that the work constitutes gain of function, the process now widely believed to have been responsible for the original strain in Wuhan.

Molecular biology expert Dr. Richard Ebright warned that the new mutant strain, which was injected into hamsters in London, “is insanity, both in terms of the redundancy and waste,” and that it has zero “foreseeable practical applications.”

Dr. Ebright further warned that the development is huge “especially, in terms of the risk of triggering a new pandemic wave upon accidental or deliberate release of the laboratory-generated viruses.”

“This should be a wake-up call,” the biologist urged, adding “If the world wishes to avoid new pandemic waves and pandemics caused by lab-generated enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, then it is urgently necessary to restrict senseless high-risk, low-benefit research that creates enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to implement effective national oversight, with force of law, on such research.”

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Russia calls for UN Security Council probe of alleged biological labs in Ukraine

Russia has drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution that would investigate Moscow’s claims that the U.S. and Ukraine are violating prohibitions on biological weapons through work at Ukrainian biological laboratories, The Associated Press reported.

Moscow for months has levied the allegations, which were previously condemned as “classic” Russian propaganda by U.S. intelligence officials, who say Ukraine operates just over a dozen biolabs for public health and biodefense purposes with U.S. assistance.

The Associated Press, citing a copy it obtained of the draft resolution, reported that Russia is filing a complaint under the Biological Weapons Convention, which was signed in 1972 to ban the development and use of biological and toxin weapons.

The resolution would create a 15-member commission authorized by the Security Council to investigate the claims, the outlet reported.

The Associated Press reported that the commission would report to the Security Council by Nov. 30 and establish a review conference in Geneva, Switzerland from Nov. 28 through Dec. 16.

The U.S. publicly acknowledges its support for Ukrainian biolabs but notes that they were developed as part of the biological threat reduction program, which seeks to improve abilities to detect and report outbreaks of dangerous pathogens before they cause major threats.

Russia, however, began accusing the two countries of developing biological weapons in the early days of Russia’s invasion.

U.S. and Western officials have long accused Russia of making false accusations and staging “false flag” operations to justify its invasion of Ukraine.

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The United States is moving to tighten oversight of studies that could make viruses more dangerous. But how far should it go?

In a U.S. government lab in Bethesda, Maryland, virologists plan to equip the strain of the monkeypox virus that spread globally this year, causing mostly rash and flulike symptoms, with genes from a second monkeypox strain that causes more serious illness. Then they’ll see whether any of the changes make the virus more lethal to mice. The researchers hope that unraveling how specific genes make monkeypox more deadly will lead to better drugs and vaccines.

Some scientists are alarmed by the planned experiments, which were first reported by Science. If a more potent version of the outbreak strain accidentally escaped the high-containment, high-security lab at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), it could spark an “epidemic with substantially more lethality,” fears epidemiologist Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. That’s why he and others argue the experiments should undergo a special review required for especially risky U.S.-funded studies that might create a pathogen that could launch a catastrophic pandemic.

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‘Gearing Up To Fight Biological Weapons?’ White House Launches $88 Billion National Biodefense Strategy

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new $88 billion national biodefense strategy that outlines the government’s plans for how to respond to future pandemics, public health emergencies and biological threats.

The launch of the “National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan for Countering Biological Threats, Enhancing Pandemic Preparedness, and Achieving Global Health Security” included the signing of National Security Memorandum-15 (NSM-15).

Key elements of the new strategy include the rapid production and distribution of vaccines and diagnostic tests, and enhancing global health security.

The strategy also includes a new framework for the federal government’s role during a future crisis, which places the White House at the center of any such response, coordinating the actions of multiple federal agencies.

The White House said the new strategy adopts lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with The Defender, University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said:

“It appears that the enormous amount of money here, $88 billion over five years, when you add it on to well over, I would say, maybe $130 billion [in biodefense spending] since Sept. 11, 2001, means that they are gearing up to fight biological weapons warfare around the world.”

Boyle told The Defender that between October 2001 and October 2015, the federal government spent $100 billion “on biological warfare purposes.”

“To put that into perspective,” he said, “in constant dollars, the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb was $40 billion.”

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Boston University CREATES a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate — echoing dangerous experiments feared to have started pandemic

US researchers have developed a new lethal Covid strain in a laboratory  – echoing the type of experiments many fear started the pandemic. 

The mutant variant — which is a hybrid of Omicron and the original Wuhan virus — killed 80 percent of mice infected with it at Boston University.

When a similar group of rodents were exposed to the standard Omicron strain, however, they all survived and only experienced ‘mild’ symptoms.

The scientists also infected human cells with the hybrid variant and found it was five times more infectious than Omicron. This suggests the man-made virus might be the most contagious form yet.

It will no doubt surprise many Americans that such experiments continue to go on in the US despite concerns similar studies may have led to the global Covid outbreak.

Covid first began spreading from a wet market in Wuhan, China, about eight miles from a similar high-security virology laboratory that manipulated bat coronaviruses.

Chinese scientists were found to have wiped crucial databases and stifled independent investigations into the facility’s links to the pandemic.

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Danielle Anderson, ‘Expert’ Who Helped ‘Fact-Check’ Lab-Leak Theory, Was Secretly Part Of Dangerous Coronavirus Research

Danielle Anderson, a virologist often cited as a “biosafety expert” by journalists seeking to debunk the lab-leak theory, never disclosed she had worked on dangerous coronavirus research while fact-checking COVID-19 origin theories, resurfaced documents reveal.

Anderson played a key role in suppressing a New York Post story which posited that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, published in Feb. 2020, according to The Disinformation Chronicle. While she conducted that, and other, work, she failed to disclose she was involved in a grant for manipulating coronaviruses from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance.

A 2020 grant awarded to Daszak and EcoHealth, a group which funneled NIH money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to conduct gain-of-function (GOF) research, lists Anderson as a researcher. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is listed as another funding source for Anderson — an institution directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to The Disinformation Chronicle.

Anderson was also listed on a 2018 grant application by Daszak to DARPA, which proposed creating and studying genetically altered coronaviruses. DARPA denied the application, stating Daszak would need a GOF “risk-mitigation plan.”

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Body Found In Brooklyn Surrounded By Biohazard Canisters, ‘Weapons Of Mass Destruction Diagrams’

A decomposing body was found in a Brooklyn apartment surrounded by biohazard canisters and diagrams for creating weapons of mass destruction.

The man, identified only as a 75-year-old restaurant worker known as “Chef John,” was apparently dead for at least a week before he was found, the New York Post reported. His body was found during a welfare check this week.

FBI agents and members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force entered the apartment on Thursday, collecting bags of hazardous material from inside the apartment. A biohazard test of the air inside the apartment came back negative, but the lethal toxin ricin was found in the apartment, police sources told the Post.

Police are still investigating suspicious materials found in the home, including the canisters with biohazard labels and what the Post described as “weapons of mass destruction diagrams.”

Several people who knew John told the Post that he openly discussed using poison to keep intruders away, and regularly claimed the CIA was out to get him.

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Head Of The Lancet’s COVID-19 Investigation Is ‘Convinced’ It Came Out Of A Lab

The head of the preeminent scientific journal The Lancet’s COVID-19 origins Commission is ‘convinced’ that the virus came out of a lab and says that a real investigation is being blocked.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs told Current Affairs that he is “pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of US lab biotechnology” and has warned that ongoing research could lead to another pandemic outbreak.

Sachs notes that scientists who dismissed the lab leak theory did so “before they had done any research at all,” adding “they’re creating a narrative. And they’re denying the alternative hypothesis without looking closely at it.”

Sachs points to the ‘gain of function’ research and the genetic markers found in the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus that indicate it was manipulated to be more deadly.

“What’s interesting, and concerning if I may say so, is that the research that was underway very actively and being promoted, was to insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses to see what would happen. Oops!” Sachs states.

“They’re not looking,” Sachs says of scientists who dismiss the lab leak, adding “They just keep telling us, ‘Look at the market, look at the market, look at the market!’ But they don’t address this alternative. They don’t even look at the data. They don’t even ask questions. And the truth is from the beginning, they haven’t asked the real questions.”

Sachs further labels the efforts to distract from the lab research as “misdirection” and “sleight of hand”.

“There is a huge amount of reason to believe that that research was underway. Because there are published papers on this. There are interviews on this. There are research proposals. But NIH isn’t talking. It’s not asking. And these scientists have never asked either,” Sachs further asserts.

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Congress Is Not Allowed To Know About TOP SECRET Gain Of Function Research Committee

Appearing on Fox News to discuss the first ever Senate hearing on gain of function research, Rand Paul revealed that there is a committee that is supposed to oversee such experimentation with potentially lethal viruses, but that it is above the oversight of Congress.

Paul noted that according to scientists who testified on Capitol Hill yesterday, “the committee that is supposed to review these viruses is secret.”

“We don’t know the names. We don’t know that they ever meet, and we don’t have any records of their meetings,” the Senator reiterated, adding “It’s top-secret. Congress is not allowed to know. So whether the committee actually exists, we’re uncertain.”

“We do know that they’ve met three times and there are thousands of gain-of-function research proposals. They’ve only met three times, they’ve only reviewed three projects,” Paul continued.

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Rand Paul Demands Answers After NIH Admits Redacting COVID-19 Origins Emails ‘To Prevent Misinformation’

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is demanding answers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), after he says the agency “has repeatedly disregarded its responsibilities under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and the American people’s right to agency records,” according to a Wednesday letter from Paul to NIH Acting Director Lawrence A. Tabak.

“For almost two years, public interest groups and media organizations have been forced to engage in protracted litigation to obtain documents related to NIH’s involvement in COVID-19,” adding “The records NIH has produced have been heavily redacted.”

“This suggests NIH is censoring the information it releases to the public about the origins of the pandemic.“

Paul cites an article by journalist and former Chuck Grassley investigator Paul D. Thacker, which notes an egregious admission by the NIH in Court that the agency “is withholding portions of emails between employees because they “could be used out of context and serve to amplify the already prevalent misinformation regarding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.””

In an 18-page declaration to the court, NIH FOIA Officer Gorka Garcia-Malene detailed how the NIH redacts documents in compliance with the law. In the case of Exempt 6 privacy concerns, Garcia-Malene declared:

Exemption 6 mandates the withholding of information that if disclosed “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6). Exemption 6 was applied here due to the heightened public scrutiny with anything remotely related to COVID-19.

Mr. Garcia-Malene also claimed that information had be redacted “because of the amount of misinformation surrounding the pandemic and its origins.” Seriously, the NIH is now arguing in court that because there is so much misinformation about how the pandemic began, they can’t release facts that might clear up misinformation about how the pandemic began.

The NIH was responding to a case brought by US nonprofit Right to Know, after the NIH deleted coronavirus sequences that Chinese researchers added to the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive. As Thacker notes, “These datasets involved key studies that virologists were using at the time to promote the now discredited theory that the COVID-19 virus may have passed from pangolins to humans.“

In the case at hand, the NIH attempted (and succeeded) at sealing the name of a Chinese researcher which had already been made public.

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