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The Baric lab developed 'no-see-um' technology for cutting and pasting sequences into bat coronaviruses, and the Wuhan lab scientists had been collaborating wit

The Baric lab developed 'no-see-um' technology for cutting and pasting sequences into bat coronaviruses, and the Wuhan lab scientists had been collaborating with them since about 2012 or so. There are a dozen or so papers detailing all this. Their gain-of-function research involved introducing sequences that would be targeted by the human version of the furin enzyme. This would have allowed wild-type bat coronaviruses to gain access to the interior of human cells, where the DNA-RNA machinery is more indistinguishable. The larger issue we need to think about is that there are hundreds of mammalian viruses out in natural systems that don't infect humans but which could all be altered to become human pathogens by this kind of technological approach. That's why so many people who have detailed knowledge of these systems (but who are not affiliated with the guilty parties in the Chinese and American virology funding system) want to see global agreements to ban this kind of research and institute significant penalties for those who pursue it.

notahacker 2y ago
You'll forgive me for sticking with my view that if the actual experts who had campaigned against certain types of gain of function research including SARS research for years generally don't attach any credibility to "COV-SARS-2 was obviously the product of gain of function research" arguments, so that domain was left to people unaware that furin cleavage sites were present in other coronaviruses and random politicos, people who raise it as established fact after making a series of largely unrelated antivax talking points might be considerably closer to Alex Jones than to people who have detailed knowledge of these systems....
- photochemsyn 2y ago
  Appeal to authority isn't a very good argument when so many of the experts who've gone on the record promoting the natural origin theory are weighed down with conflicts of interest due to the fact that the funding agencies they rely on have a lot to lose if it turns out the gain-of-function / lab-accident theory is correct (e.g. the authors and architects of the infamous 'Proximal Origin' paper). There are also many experts who are convinced the gain-of-function accident is the only plausible scenario at this point. Hopefully we'll have some comprehensive public hearings into the question in the coming year, at least in the United States, which I look forward to.

notahacker 2y ago

You'll forgive me for sticking with my view that if the actual experts who had campaigned against certain types of gain of function research including SARS research for years generally don't attach any credibility to "COV-SARS-2 was obviously the product of gain of function research" arguments, so that domain was left to people unaware that furin cleavage sites were present in other coronaviruses and random politicos, people who raise it as established fact after making a series of largely unrelated antivax talking points might be considerably closer to Alex Jones than to people who have detailed knowledge of these systems....

photochemsyn 2y ago
Appeal to authority isn't a very good argument when so many of the experts who've gone on the record promoting the natural origin theory are weighed down with conflicts of interest due to the fact that the funding agencies they rely on have a lot to lose if it turns out the gain-of-function / lab-accident theory is correct (e.g. the authors and architects of the infamous 'Proximal Origin' paper). There are also many experts who are convinced the gain-of-function accident is the only plausible scenario at this point. Hopefully we'll have some comprehensive public hearings into the question in the coming year, at least in the United States, which I look forward to.