A newly-uncovered collection of documents detailing plans by U.S. researchers to create a Covid-like virus in the U.S. and China months before the pandemic make a lab origin “almost certain”, experts say. The Mail has more.
The records – obtained now by FOIA requests – lay out a plan to “engineer spike proteins” to infect human cells that would then be “inserted into SARS-Covid backbones” at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018.
Just a year later, in late 2019, the COVID-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic.
The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels U.S. Government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.
Ultimately, the application was denied by the U.S. Department of Defence, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a ‘blueprint’ for how to create Covid, and inadvertently start a pandemic.
The documents also show how EcoHealth deliberately tried to mislead the Pentagon on how risky the experiments were to secure funding.
Sen Rand Paul – who has been a vocal supporter of the lab leak theory – added the documents further support the “deception” used by players tied to the Wuhan lab.
Matt Ridley, a biologist and science writer who has written extensively about the potential lab leak in the past, said: “This latest [document] leak makes the case for a lab leak almost certain.
“A reckless experiment, known at the time to be reckless, probably caused the death of millions of people.
“Scientists and the media conspired to conceal the evidence. Let that sink in.”
The documents were obtained by nonprofit public health research group U.S. Right to Know, which has previously been accused of fueling anti-vaccine sentiments.
The grant proposal was entitled Project DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses.
It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as the original SARS to preempt a human spillover and develop vaccine technology and strategies.
The team sought to synthesise spike proteins with furin cleavage sites that had been designed to bind to human receptors more easily.
The furin has been one of the focal points of debate about COVID-19’s origin, with some experts claiming it could only have been acquired through lab experiments.
The grant then proposed attaching the furin to coronavirus strains and infecting mice to see how ill it would make them.
The plan was then to use drugs and vaccines to treat the disease.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a chemical biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told DailyMail.com: “These revelations are important because the experiments in the grant proposal likely – indeed highly likely – led to the creation and release of SARS-CoV-2.”
The grant proposal has raised concerns and some say it serves as further support of the Covid lab leak theory – that the virus was borne out of gain-of-function research bankrolled by the U.S. taxpayer through Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former department, a theory the FBI and other Government agencies now subscribe to.
The principal investigator on the project is listed as Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth, a now-notorious health agency that uses US government money to sponsor there’s types of experiments abroad.
Other team members listed on the proposal include researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School, University of North Carolina, the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, Palo Alto Research Center and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab where Covid is believed to have originated from.
The proposal listed Professor Shi Zhengli – been dubbed the ‘bat lady’ for her extensive work on bat coronaviruses at the WIV – as the lead on the project in Wuhan.
Additionally, Dr. Ralph Baric was listed as a subcontractor on the project. Dr. Baric is a known expert in making recombinant coronaviruses.
The documents show the experiments were proposed to take place at the WIV, which has fewer safety precautions for working with pandemic-potential specimens than the U.S., which was advertised to the DoD as cost-saving.
The American scientists concealed the lack of safety precautions from DARP in order to avoid national security concerns about conducting high-level biosafety research in China.
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