Judicial Watch: Records Proving That the NIH Not Only Funded the Wuhan Lab, and Not Only Funded Bat Coronavirus Research at the Wuhan Lab, But Continued Doing So Into 2020, When the Virus Was Shutting Down the World
Much Updated

At PJ Media:

Nothing like rewarding scientists from a hostile foreign nation for creating catastrophe! According to documentation obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the U.S. government (NIH) didn't just fund bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab leading up to the leak of COVID-19. The government gave another grant for work with the Wuhan lab in July 2020, long after COVID-19 likely leaked from the lab where it was probably created.

There is a lot of significant and interesting information in the Judicial Watch press release about the documentation. This includes EcoHealth Alliance's initial "Application for Federal Assistance" submitted on June 5, 2013, which said it aimed to create mutant bat viruses and see how coronaviruses infect humans.

To understand the risk of zoonotic CoV [coronavirus] emergence, we propose to examine 1) the transmission dynamics of bat-CoVs across the human-wildlife interface; and 2) how this process is affected by CoV evolutionary potential, and how it might force CoV evolution. We will assess the nature and frequency of contact among animals and people in two critical human-animal interfaces: live animal markets in China and people who are highly exposed to bats in rural China.

I'm pretty sure that "CoV [Coronavirus] evolutionary potential" is a euphemism for coronovirus gain-of-function research -- we're going to serially run this virus through a bunch of hosts attempting to evolve it through mutations.

I believe this is called "serial passage."

By the way, I'm not sure of this, but I think the change Fauci made during the Trump transition to repeal Obama's ban on gain-of-function was to define "gain-of-function" as only direct manipulation of a virus' RNA through gene-splicing. This was done to permit gain-of-function through serially passing the virus through hosts to produce mutations, which accomplishes the same thing as direct RNA manipulation, only I imagine it takes more time.

And I'm pretty sure that when Fauci keeps denying he funded gain-of-function, he means he didn't fund "Gain-of-Function" as defined by the new, improved Fauci definition, which deliberately allowed one type of gain-of-function research, serial passage, and attempted to define gain-of-function as not including serial passage manipulation.

If anyone knows better, or can confirm that this is correct, I'd appreciate it if you Put Me Some Information.

The various parts of the projects examined by Judicial Watch include DNA sequencing, "testing predictions of CoV inter-species transmission," testing viruses of "varying pathogenicity" on "humanized mice," and "the infectious clone of WIV1 was successfully constructed using reverse genetic methods." Some scientists previously argued that COVID-19 was created in a lab and then reverse engineered to make the virus seem naturally evolved from bats.

No wonder Fauci and Collins were so determined to coerce scientists into denying it could have come from a lab.

More at the link, including a small grant to the Wuhan lab in 2020. It's only for $76,000 and change, but as PJ Media asks: "How can NIH possibly excuse this July 2020 grant?"

Flashback: Fauci overturned Obama's ban on gain-of-function without consulting White House.

He did this during the transition, when he knew that the entire government was in chaos with new people coming in and old people leaving.

"The Godfather of [gain-of-function virology research], the head of the pyramid, is a guy you may have heard of called Anthony Fauci," Rogin said. "So, Anthony Fauci, the hero of the pandemic, is the most important person in the world of gain-of-function research there is . . . Basically, he is the one disbursing all the grants for this, he is the one who pushed to turn it back on after Obama turned it off, that's another crazy story, he turned it back on without really consulting the White House."

"He consulted the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is part of the White House, but the White House put a pause on it and he undid the pause," Rogin continued. "The details are a little sketchy. I'm not saying he did anything necessarily wrong or illegal, but I'm saying that a lot of people that I know inside the Trump administration had no idea that he had turned this back on. He found a way to turn it back on in the mess of the Trump administration because the Trump administration is full of a bunch of clowns, so you could get things done if you knew how to work the system."

...

The Obama administration suspended gain-of-function research in 2014 after a series of lab accidents involving pathogens at CDC headquarters in Georgia.

A Nature article from October 2014 lays out the rationale for the suspension:

Critics of such work argue that it is unnecessarily dangerous and risks accidentally releasing viruses with pandemic potential -- such as an engineered H5N1 influenza virus that easily spreads between ferrets breathing the same air1, 2. In 2012, such concerns prompted a global group of flu researchers to halt gain-of-function experiments for a year (see Nature http://doi.org/wgx; 2012). The debate reignited in July, after a series of lab accidents involving mishandled pathogens at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

The White House's abrupt move seems to be a response to renewed lobbying by gain-of-function critics who wanted such work suspended and others who sought to evaluate its risks and benefits without disrupting existing research.

Thanks to rhennigantx.

Update: Charles Martel sends this Fox News article, which reports on Rand Paul charging Fauci with "changing the definition" of gain-of-function to "save your ass."

"Senator, with all due respect, I disagree with so many of the things that you've said," Fauci said to begin his response. He went on to say that "gain of function" is "a very nebulous term" that outside parties have worked on assigning "a more precise definition."

Up until recently, the NIH website had a section that discussed gain of function research, providing a broad definition of "a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent."

On Oct. 20, the NIH removed that section from its website, replacing it with one that discusses "enhanced potential pandemic pathogen" research, which it defined as "research that may be reasonably anticipated to create, transfer or use potential pandemic pathogens resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen's transmissibility and/or virulence in humans."

Paul accused Fauci and the NIH of "defining away gain of function ... saying it doesn't exist because you change the definition" on the site.

"There's the preponderance of evidence now points towards this coming from the lab and what you've done is change the definition on your website to try to cover your a--," Paul asserted.

According to that, Fauci didn't change gain-of-function research to only include genetic manipulation and not serial passage. Instead, he changed the definition to only include cases where the researchers expect that the manipulation will result in a deadlier bug.

That's absurd. You have no idea what a virus is going to do when you mutate it. This new "definition" effectively repeals the ban because any scientist can create a world-stopping pandemic and just say, "Well, I didn't think that would happen. That was just a little bonus to what I was expecting to happen."

posted by Ace at 01:05 PM

| Access Comments