Gain-of-Function Ghouls: SARS-CoV-2 isn't the scariest thing that could leak from a lab.

With four separate infections within the last year at three different institutions in Beijing, Singapore, and Taipei, health experts fear that the next SARS epidemic may be more likely to emerge from a research lab than from the presumed animal reservoir.

Lab Accidents Prompt Calls for New Containment Program, Science, 28 May 2004 https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum-topic/on-the-lab-leak-impossible-bs/

As this quote from a 2004 issue of Science Magazine attests, after the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome pandemic (SARS-1) was declared over, lab accidents https://www.jstor.org/stable/3836788?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents were the main source of infection. In one case, a 26-year-old graduate student was exposed while working in a lab at the Institute of Viral Disease Control at the Chinese CDC.

Her mother caught the disease from her and died.

A year hasn't gone by yet since SARS-2 emerged and COVID-19 lab accidents are already being reported.

As Jonathan Latham reported (Engineered COVID-19-Infected Mouse Bites Researcher Amid Explosion™ Of Risky Coronavirus Research, Independent Science News, August 13, 2020), the lab of infamous gain-of-function scientist Ralph Baric https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/dr-coronavirus-hunter-ralph-baric-preparing-us-pandemic-or-putting-us-peril-one was the first to genetically engineer a synthetic version of the live virus completely from ordered DNA parts. And, then, it was the first to have an accident involving an infected animal (a mouse) biting a researcher.

The synthesis of a full length infectious clone of SARS-CoV-2 drew swift criticism from a group of Chinese scientists and legal experts who published a paper titled “Prudently conduct the engineering and synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405805X20300193 where they addressed the problem:

The so-called problem in biology denotes that “the techniques needed to engineer a bioweapon are the same as those needed to pursue legitimate research. For example, the pathogen synthesis technique can be used to rescue patients, as well as to possibly manufacture bioweapons. Even if the motivation for developing this type of technology is noble, any deviation, misuse, or abuse during the research may result in calamitous consequences; for instance, an accidental leak from the laboratory, or the purposeful misuse by others.

Meanwhile, on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the weight of the evidence has shifted from the natural origin theory to a lab leak.

Scientists https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420303287?via%3Dihub who support the natural origin theory of COVID-19 admit it has two major hurdles.

First, “the bat viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were sampled from animals in Yunnan province, over 1,500 km from Wuhan.”

Second, the genetic differences between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 “represents more than 20 years of sequence evolution.”

So far, there is no evidence bridging these gaps. Pangolins https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820303245 have been exonerated and the wet market https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-rules-out-animal-market-and-lab-as-coronavirus-origin-11590517508 theory has been debunked.

This, along with genetic evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was manipulated, is why attention is turning to a possible lab origin.

In an Economist/YouGov poll https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/63v1aj4q2a/econToplines.pdf from May, about half (49%) of Americans thought that a laboratory in China was definitely (18%) or probably (31%) the origin of the virus responsible for COVID- 19. Less than a third (28%) believe this is definitely (10%) or probably (18%) false, while more than one-fifth (22%) are not sure.

That was before scientist-turned-detective Alina Chan was profiled by Rowan Jacobsen in Boston Magazine (“Could COVID-19 Have Escaped from a Lab,  https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-broad-institute-coronavirus/ September 9, 2020.)

And, before Li-Ming Yan was on Fox News https://youtu.be/qFlqXPl_hZQ with Tucker Carlson to discuss her paper Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X3yu8y9h3fY (Zenodo, September 14, 2020).

As Yan et al. write, “The origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still the subject of much debate. A widely cited Nature Medicine publication has claimed that SARS-CoV-2 most likely came from nature. However, the article and its central conclusion are now being challenged by scientists from all over the world.

Their citation for that statement is a list of 11 papers, but that list isn't exhaustive.

It doesn't include Chan SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans. What does this mean for re-emergence?https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1.full (bioRxiv, May 02, 2020) where she and her colleagues conclude, “The lack of definitive evidence to verify or rule out adaptation in an intermediate host species, humans, or a laboratory, means that we need to take precautions against each scenario to prevent re-emergence.

Nor does it include the work of Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier, COVID-19, SARS and Bats Coronaviruses Genomes Peculiar Homologous RNA Sequence,” https://zenodo.org/record/3975589#.X3y9PC9h3fY (International Journal of Research, July 2020) where he and his colleague Jean-Claude Perez provide evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is partially manmade, probably created in gain-of-function laboratory experiments. 

Just to know that this is how SARS-CoV-2 could have been created, should be enough to launch a mass movement to put a stop to all experiments that could make pathogens more dangerous.

But, with the effort it takes to figure out what happened, we could miss what might happen next.

SARS-CoV-2 isn't the scariest thing that could leak from a lab.

The mad scientists genetically engineering pathogens to make them even more dangerous are out of control, concocting gain-of-function ghouls like coronathrax, airborne Ebola and undead viruses that could soon be leaking from a lab near you.

Coronathrax - https://twitter.com/pricklyresearch/status/1291126992960708610?s=20 The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Vaccine Research, is combining SARS-CoV-2 with anthrax. https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/engineered-covid-19-infected-mouse-bites-researcher-amid-explosion-of-risky-coronavirus-research/  completely unnecessary and frankly bizarre,” Edward Hammond http://strangecultur.es/about/ of Prickly Research http://pricklyresearch.com told Whitney Webb for her article, Engineering Contagion: UPMC, Corona-Thrax And The Darkest Winter https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/09/investigative-series/engineering-contagion-upmc-corona-thrax-and-the-darkest-winter/ No one would know about this coronavirus-anthrax chimera if Hammond hadn't been keeping tabs on recombinant DNA research by doggedly filing requests for information with the Institutional Biosafety Committees https://osp.od.nih.gov/biotechnology/institutional-biosafety-committees/ of U.S. research labs. It's terrifying but not surprising that Pitts Center for Vaccine Research would be doing such risky experiments. As Webb reports, its director W. Paul Duprex is a gain-of-function enthusiast who's received significant funding from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Airborne Ebola - Currently, Ebola only spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, and the scientific consensus is that it would be virtually impossible for Ebola to naturally https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-ebola-virus-will-go-airborne/ acquire aerogenic infection potential. Moreover, military experts have concluded that Ebola is not an effective biological weapon for terrorists. https://www.ctc.usma.edu/ebola-not-an-effective-biological-weapon-for-terrorists/ Nevertheless, the Pentagon continues to research airborne ebola. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) first published their Lethal experimental infections of rhesus monkeys by aerosolized Ebola virus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997182/ in 1995. (One author is Army Colonel Nancy Jaax https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/05/meet-nancy-jaax-scientist-who-took-on-first-us-ebola-scare-hot-zone/ of Hot Zone fame.) More recently, defense contractor Battelle Memorial Institute subcontracted part of a $5.6 million https://govtribe.com/award/federal-contract-award/delivery-order-hhsn272201200003i-hhsn27200015 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases award to the University Of Texas Medical Branch At Galveston for Evaluation of Ebolavirus in a Novel Ferret Model.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4957446/ This is concerning because respiratory droplet transmission among ferrets is a proxy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7119956/ for human-to-human transmission. As the Galveston researchers wrote in their 2016 paper, The Domestic Ferret as a Lethal Infection Model for 3 Species of Ebolavirus, their success in killing ferrets with Ebola demonstrates the utility of this intranasal infection model in potential mucosal-mediated transmission experiments or small-particle aerosol challenge, the latter being highly relevant for biodefense-related concerns.

Undead Viruses - In the 1990s, Jeffery K. Taubenberger https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/05/how-long-can-viruses-survive/ and a team at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology decided to go through the tissue archive and find preserved tissue samples from soldiers who died from pneumonia-like symptoms during the [1918] pandemic. Taubenberger and his colleagues developed methods for extracting RNA from these tissue samples (something people didn't think was possible at the time) and were able to pull out small bits and pieces of the influenza virus genome. Over several years, [using genetic engineering and synthetic biology] they were able to piece together the whole genome of the 1918 influenza virus  and they used that to resurrect this extinct virus [in 2005]. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16210530/ In 2014, another team of scientists led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka collected circulating avian influenza viruses from wild birds and used genetic engineering and synthetic biology to create a virus composed of avian influenza viral segments with high homology to the 1918 virus and then conferred respiratory droplet transmission to the 1918 like avian virus in ferret just to make sure it had the capacity to infect humans!