Theories of a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 have largely focused on the presence in the genome of the famous furin cleavage site. Less attention has been paid to other anomalies and, in particular, the presence of the so-called HIV inserts first flagged by the Indian research team Pradhan et al. in late January 2020 and quickly dismissed as untenable conspiracy mongering. Thus, when an Anglosphere group of scientists around Kristian Andersen came to Anthony Fauci at almost exactly the same time with their concerns that the virus had been engineered, their focus was on the furin cleavage site and they took great pains to distance themselves from Pradhan et al. and the HIV inserts.
But is that because they did not view them as anomalous or rather because they were worried that the implications of the anomaly were too shocking to be pursued? The content of their FOIA’d e-mails and Slack messages makes clear that it is the latter. They too saw the anomaly, but they did not want to talk about it, since, as Edward Holmes put it, in both a February 4th 2020 e-mail to Jeremy Farrar and a Slack group message on the same day, “this will make us look like loons”. (More fully, Holmes wrote to his colleagues, referring to the first sketch of what would become their infamous ‘Proximal Origins’ paper, “Good idea not to mention all the other anomalies as this will make us look like loons”.)
As the Slack messages likewise make abundantly and sometimes embarrassingly clear, questions of expediency and even career considerations were never far from the minds of Andersen and his colleagues.
But someone who was too old to care about such matters was the late French virologist Luc Montagnier: none other than the man who is credited with having discovered HIV or the AIDS virus. Montagnier took the findings of Pradhan et al. very seriously, reproduced them independently with the help of the bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez and concluded that SAR-CoV-2 must have been created in a lab. He would indeed be widely treated as a “loon” for his troubles – and this despite the fact that the supposed “loon” had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine barely 10 years earlier for his discovery of HIV.
In an April 16th 2020 interview with the French health news site Pourquoi Docteur? (Why Doctor?), Montagnier dismissed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 had emerged from a wet market as “a nice story” and insisted that, in light of the HIV inserts, the more likely scenario was that it had been engineered in an effort to create an HIV vaccine using a coronavirus as vector. (Although the accompanying article is still online, the audio of Luc Montagnier’s interview with Pourquoi Docteur? is no longer available on the website or the podcast platform. Fortunately, a recording of it has been preserved on Facebook here.)
It is well-known, after all, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had been conducting experiments with bat-borne coronaviruses. This is precisely why Kristian Andersen was convinced that a lab escape of the virus was far more probable than a natural origin. “I think the main thing still in my mind,” he wrote in a Slack message, “is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”
Andersen wrote this to his colleagues just before getting on the famous February 1st 2020 conference call during which the German coronavirus specialist Christian Drosten and the Dutch gain-of-function researcher Ron Fouchier are known to have harshly upbraided them for entertaining the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis.
But surely no one in Wuhan was trying to create an HIV vaccine, and that is presumably why Andersen and his colleagues thought Montagnier’s theory was ‘friggin’’ unlikely and felt comfortable making lame attempts to diss the Nobel Prize laureate (“Nobel Prize Disease is a known thing”) in their conversations.
But the fact of the matter is that someone was trying to create an HIV vaccine in Wuhan.
For this was precisely the aim of the longstanding German-Chinese cooperative virology project about which I have written here, here and here and which gave rise to a full-fledged joint German-Chinese virology lab right in Wuhan. Indeed, as I have shown, the joint German-Chinese lab, located at Union Hospital on the left bank of the Yangtze River, is not just in Wuhan, but is also – unlike the Wuhan Institute of Virology – right in the area of the initial outbreak of COVID-19 cases in the city.
Furthermore, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is itself an official partner in the German-Chinese virology network – and, as will be seen momentarily, key members of the network who were conducting experiments meant to facilitate the development of an HIV vaccine are based at none other than the WIV.
When he first stumbled upon the HIV inserts, Luc Montagnier could not have known all this. All he had to go on was the molecular data. But it is true.
The very title of the publicly-funded “transregional” collaborative research centre (TRR60) which gave rise to the joint German-Chinese lab is “Mutual interaction of chronic viruses with cells of the immune system: from fundamental research to immunotherapy and vaccination”.
The chronic viruses for which a vaccine was being sought were hepatitis-C and HIV. A mission statement is available in English here. The centrality of developing a “safe and effective” HIV vaccine is clear. Yes, the now infamous “safe and effective” formula is in the mission statement (as can be seen below).
As can be seen in the description below, sub-project B6 of TRR60, under the direction of Professors Rongge Yang and Binlian Sun of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was dedicated to studying “genetically engineered HIV gp120 V1/V2 glycosylation variants” for the purpose of facilitating “HIV vaccine development”.
Well, this is very interesting, since three of the four inserts identified by Pradhan et al. correspond precisely to “to short segments of amino acid residues in HIV-1 gp120”: i.e., the HIV envelope protein “glycoprotein 120”. More specifically, the residues “were a part of the V4, V5 and V1 domains respectively” (emphasis added).
As “Seven of Nine MD” noted when this passage in Pradhan et al. was brought to her attention on X, “This does not look good for Rongge Yang and Ulf Dittmer”. (As touched upon here, the pseudonymous “Seven of Nine MD” X-account has taken up many of the topics of the German physician and virologist Johanna Deinert: a long-time proponent of the “lab leak” hypothesis who was exiled from Twitter under the old regime and whose @DeinertDoc account has never been restored under the new.)
Professor Ulf Dittmer of University Hospital Essen was the coordinator of the “transregional” research centre, and he is the Co-Director of the German-Chinese lab at Union Hospital in Wuhan. (I have discussed his links to Christian Drosten here.)
Dittmer is in fact himself the co-author with no fewer than five members of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including Rongge Yang and Binlian Sun, of a 2016 paper on none other than the V1 region of the HIV envelope protein gp120.
The paper identifies the region as being “indispensable for… virus infection”, and the authors argue that their joint research “may facilitate the development of novel HIV vaccines”.
Dittmer can be seen with Rongge Yang below in a photo taken at University Hospital Essen in 2015. Another of the distinguished guests from China (scroll down) is none other than George F. Gao, who would soon become the director of the Chinese CDC.
There has, of course, been much excitement about an alleged ‘smoking gun’ in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which is supposed to prove the lab origins of SARS-CoV-2. Never mind that Chapel Hill is some 7,000 miles or so from Wuhan. But this ‘smoking gun’ – one with German, not American, fingerprints on it – is right in Wuhan. There is no need for the virus to have somehow got to the city in China prior to escape. The HIV work was being done right at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with its famous repository of coronaviruses.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.
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Restaurant/stadium/etc asks potential customers to present a “vaccine passport” before entry. As a potential customer I would first demand to see the vaccine passports of all the workers in that facility. Only fair, right?
Liberal Democrats it is then.
I have never voted for the Liberals, Lib Dems or whatever believing them to be a cowardly safe haven for those who cannot decide between Conservative and Socialist.
New, one issue, parties will achieve nothing except to waste money and split the anti authoritarian vote.
With a voice already in Parliament and the media and with their current 100% record why vote for anyone else, except those honorable notable Labour, Conservative and Other MPs that just outed themselves as champions of liberty ?
Yes Ben Bradshaw, that includes you, surprisingly.
76 is a good number to start with three years to build up the anti momentum.
Makes sense, if only because it is the only way to obtain Proportional Representation; and PR is the only way forward for small new parties to grow.
We need new parties in order to protect minorities from the ‘tyranny of the majority’.
PR is a disaster. It guarantees nothing will ever get done. That’s why ZZ Top run Israel. Strangely enough the most effective is a three party where the opposition plus the ‘third’ can stop the worst excessives of government.
The Liberal Democrats have always been a bit weak on actual liberalism. But to judge by their actions they are right on this and will get my vote unless there is an even more explicitly anti-lockdown party on offer.
Does anybody know how they voted for the 3 lockdowns and the previous covid bill?
The Liberal Democrats are not anti-lockdown; they are not opposed to the non-pharmaceutical interventions.
I suspected that. It’s just this specific extension they are against
Yup, I got a bit excited at that too, then I saw this https://www.libdems.org.uk/s21-covid-motion – they are firmly part of the ‘lockdown earlier and harder’ and ‘close the borders’ brigade. And it seems some of the labour MPs didn’t think the bill went ‘far enough’ in supporting people to self-isolate. So sadly this is not really coming about as a result of these people looking at the scientific evidence which says that quarantining the healthy is pointless, in the case of the lib-dems it’s probably a desperate grab for attention prior to the local elections, after which their local councillors will be pressing at every stage for ‘local powers’ – it never ends….
Ben Bradshaw seems to have made the transition so why not the Lib Dems, even if only for short term electoral advantage (which Ben does not require).
Doesn’t look like Bradshaw has made that much of a transition – only last week he was pushing for hotel quarantine to be replaced by a GPS tracking system. Replacing prison with house arrest enforced by electronic tag for the crime of going on holiday doesn’t cut it with me I’m afraid. I would be more convinced if he was asking when we are going to have an international tourist industry again….
Point taken, his main interest seems to be the resurrection of the local tourist industry which would, of course, benefit from the destruction of overseas travel.
my MP is firmly against all restrictions (as he emails me) and is in the CRG. Then he votes for everything going
And that only because they know that they’ll never be in a position to exploit it.
Sir Forensic fancies his chances at taking the helm of HMS Despotic if they can make this temporary emergency permanent.
Why are you simping for a party?
We don’t vote for parties, and we certainly don’t vote for leaders. We get one vote, in our constituency, and we vote for the actual candidates who are standing there. Please, please, try to get that through your skull.
Look at the individuals actually standing. Find out what they believe, and vote for the individual who best represents your beliefs, or for none of the above.
Sure, most low-information voters are just going to scrawl their X by the picture of the rosette that they’ve always voted for, but perhaps informed voter might try to be better than that. If we don’t, then all we’re ensuring is that the second-worst Party of Davos candidate will get in, time after time after time.
I have never voted for Ben Bradshaw precisely because he is of the Labour party (not that any other party has ever put up a candidate of merit against him).
Despite my now advocating voting Lib Dem on the basis of their new stand re Coronovirus legislation in Ben’s case I would now vote for him for that same reason and because he is the sitting MP.
I made that proviso in my initial post.
This from a conservative who never forgave them for getting rid of Enoch Powell because he was anti Common Market and never voted for them since they got rid of Mrs Thatcher for similar reasons.
Wonderland. Simply not where we live. I lived for a while in Andorra. Got to vote. You actually wrote the name on the ballot. That’s Democracy. In the UK it’s very simple. The only workable is a single issue anti lockdown. The rest will be fixed.
Regarding lockdowns being “electoral gold” in Australia and NZ, I wonder why in those countries the bottom-up popular will to stop Covid is so much stronger than in the Americas or Europe?
From an Australian poster on a (members-only) forum which I frequent:
Wow, is there no opposition to this? It’s so brutal, just for a mild respiratory illness.
In an extension of the orientalist attitudes that many Westerners have shown regarding East Asian responses to Covid, some argue that what has happened in Australia is that the country has gone back to its penal colony roots.
Repressive regime seems like repressive regime wherever it happens. Don’t see how that’s ‘orientalist’ or any other ‘ist’.
I can’t help but see regret in Aus/NZ future if this continues; this from someone who lives in a small, repressive, ‘let’s do zero-covid’ island which is in the same uncomfortable position.
Isle of Man?
Yup, the home of terrifying motorbike road racing, now run by bedwetters for bedwetters and going down the shitter with nary a peep.
See Paula’s excellent comment below.
Was the Isle of Man capable of following a zero covid plan in the way that the UK wasn’t simply because its much smaller size means it’s far more difficult for someone to reach it illegally?
If you head out to sea from the northern coast of France in a vaguely northwesterly direction you’re almost assured of making landfall in Great Britain, but reaching the Isle of Man would likely require far greater navigational skills.
I don’t think so, it’s fairly visible; I can see England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from our coasts.
There’s just no pull factor to reach it illegally as benefits and housing are dependent on residency for five years at least.
I’m sure that there are other European countries that are far more attractive to benefit scroungers, and that most illegal immigrants to the UK come here not to scrounge but to work.
Although the real issue isn’t illegal immigrants per se, but about British citizens returning illegally if they’d ended up stranded abroad by an Australian-style border policy.
In Victoria it was highly publicized when an illegal gathering in a garden shed was discovered after someone at the local KFC drive-thru made a suspiciously large order, which alerted the manager to call in the licence plate to the police.
The problem is you can have ‘popular will to stop Covid’ until you are blue in the face – it’s a waste of time if the methods you are using are ineffective. If I was going to be very unkind I would say Europe and especially those parts of the US that are opening up are more alert to the follies of thinking you can ‘control a virus’ The UK had a carefully thought-through pandemic plan which it threw out of the window in favour of measures that had no evidence base. But at least in some quarters we seem to be very slowly realising our mistakes.
Surely the point is that if people have a strong will to stop Covid then they will accept the methods that are effective, such as sealed borders and highly intrusive surveillance: like the universal QR code checking mentioned above, which in NZ also applies to buses, shopping malls (both the mall as a whole and the individual shops within) and each building within university campuses.
It’s interesting that Americans are typically appalled by the harsh lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand, while Europeans are more likely to be appalled by their sealed borders.
I live in Auckland, NZ and have used the bus twice lately. There is no pressure to use the QR code and I have not worn a mask either, I now have an exemption but have not shown it.
I didn’t see anyone using a QR code at a mall entrance the other day, though I did see some using individual shop’s ones.
Recently there has been more PR about using them as compliance has fallen considerably, which pleases me!
You’re joking of course? If not you need professional help.
What did I say in my message above that implies that I “need professional help”?
Just reading about antibody-dependent-enhancement and I came across the following meeting “Consensus summary report for CEPI/BC March 12–13, 2020 meeting: Assessment of risk of disease enhancement with COVID-19 vaccines”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7247514/
Part of the conclusions are
“Data are needed on whether antibody waning could increase the risk of enhanced disease on exposure to virus in the long term”
I don’t suppose they have that data yet do they? Hasn’t really been enough time
IT GETS BETTER!!!
BLOOD TESTS TO ENTER A PUB???????
Apparently supported by the Damm man.
‘In March 19th the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a press release detailing changes to its operational strategy for K-12 students. It stated that among other things, students may now reduce their social distancing from 6 feet to 3 feet.’
https://www.aier.org/article/the-6-foot-mandate-was-bad-science/
Europe, and this country, begin to look embarrassingly backward, even stupid/dumb.
The case of Holmseley Care Home in Devon is very puzzling. The police have arrested two care workers on the basis of “wilful neglect”. The Home has had an outbreak of Covid 19. Nine residents are reported as having died of the disease. Yet the residents and most of the staff had been vaccinated. None of this makes sense. If the residents were vaccinated – and the vaccines are safe and effective, as we are constantly told by the authorities – how could the residents die of Covid 19? What did they die of? Surely the deaths would be vaccine adverse reactions? Why have two of the workers been accused of wilful neglect? What is it that they allegedly did not do? Why is there a police investigation?
“As part of their enquiries, officers are speaking to staff and conducted a search of the home. Post-mortems have been conducted on three of the deceased residents.”
maybe just trying to look like they are doing something?
Very odd report indeed (Local Live), it implies both that the deaths are Covid related and that the Staff are at fault.
Normalising Police involvement in cases of Staff non- compliance ?
Don’t understand how they could have an outbreak with vaccinated residents unless either the outbreak began too soon after vaccination for immunity to take effect, or at least half of the residents had such weak immune systems in the first place that the vaccine didn’t work.
I fear for the upcoming Panorama ‘Covid’ documentary. Glimpsing the trailers it looks like they’ll try to trash Sweden and extol Boris. Maybe with a ‘not soon enough, not hard enough, not long enough’ flavour. (I really hope I’m wrong). Of course the Sheeple will gobble it all up. Panorama used to be a strong investigative program. Hope lives eternal!
Outside of the metropolitan bubble it will reach those ten viewers who can’t be bothered to switch it off.