New documents appear to link the U.S. government to controversial coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the run-up to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This comes after Congress demanded that information related to the origins of the pandemic and the Wuhan lab be declassified by Sunday, June 18.
Document obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by a transparency advocacy group white coat waste projectBen Hu, one of the first Wuhan researchers reported to have contracted COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, is receiving financial support from the United States for research into the risks of coronavirus gain-of-function.
The funding totaled $41 million, with grants from USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), then led by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hu is listed as an investigator on those grants, according to the White Coat Waste Project.
News of three laboratory workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology being hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms prior to an outbreak at the city’s seafood market in November 2019 was first reported by wall street journal May 2021. But the information has had little impact on the broader debate about the origins of the pandemic.
Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi obtained information from three government sources familiar with the State Department investigation and identified the three laboratory workers who were first infected with SARS-CoV-2 as Ben Hu, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu. They are reportedly conducting “gain-of-function” experiments to enhance the virus’s infectivity and better understand its risks, as several U.S. government officials have revealed.
The NIAID and USAID grants confirm Hu’s involvement as an investigator in the funded project. Hu is Shi Zhengli’s second-in-command, known as “Batwoman” for extracting virus samples from bats in Chinese caves. FOIA documents obtained by the White Coat Waste Project in 2021 have new ties to reports of Hu’s involvement.
this london times New details have also recently been reported from three U.S. State Department investigators about the activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic. The outlet detailed allegations of collaboration between the Wuhan lab and Chinese military scientists, supporting a previously dismissed theory that the virus was linked to biological weapons research.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology often collaborates with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, a research arm of the People’s Liberation Army, and military scientists are listed as working for the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology.
The Times investigation focused on a virus found in a mine where workers fell ill in 2012, leading to hospitalizations and deaths. Another key issue in the State Department’s investigation relates to a project proposed to the Pentagon by Zhengli Shi, Ralph Barrick of the University of North Carolina and Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance.
The proposal, which involved inserting a furin cleavage site into the coronavirus, was reportedly rejected.
However, U.S. scientists who allegedly collaborated with colleagues at the Wuhan lab acknowledged that a “furin cleavage site” was inserted into the SARS-like virus in 2019, which is believed to contribute to the increased transmissibility of COVID-19.
The implication of Ben Hu’s US funding from NIH and USAID in 2018-2019 is that it may directly fund the insertion of furin cleavage site sequences into SARS-like coronaviruses, as proposed in EcoHealth/WIV’s unsuccessful 2018 DARPA grant application .Molecular biologist and laboratory director Richard Ebright, Ph.D., emphasized the importance of this discovery by to intercept.
Published by Medicaldaily.com