2 ms·
How does this not mention project defuse, the NIAID funded EcoHealth Alliance research program taking place in wuhan which sought to: 1. Study immune boosting
by nullc 5y ago
How does this not mention project defuse, the NIAID funded EcoHealth Alliance research program taking place in wuhan which sought to:
1. Study immune boosting drugs in bats.
2. Take bat corona virus and 'predict' how it can become infectious to humans by incubating it in humanized tissues until it thrives in them, and if that is insufficient directly modifying it to insert a human-specific furin cleavage into the viruses genetic code for the spike protein (as this is an already known barrier to human infectiousness).
3. Inoculate wild bats against human infectious corona viruses by administering drugs to boost their immune system and exposing them to the viruses developed in the prior phase.
Sars-cov-2's primary functional difference from its nearest known wild ancestor is exactly the cleavage proposed in defuse. However, defuse proposed studying a different wild virus than the ancestor of sars-cov-2. The nearest known wild ancestor of sars-cov-2 is the virus the same researchers were working with immediately before the project proposal for defuse.
DARPA had declined to fund the project, with the view that it violated the US government moratorium on funding gain-of-function research ( https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3012?r=18 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/301... ). NIH has taken the view that this project was not gain-of-function research because the particular virus they were experimenting on could already infect humans (just not particularly well) and because they were directed to pause research and report if they found a ten fold increase in infectivity (the researchers seemingly failed to do so, but did eventually report when they hit a 10,000 fold increase in apparent viral load).
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...