China ‘secretly conducted tests with deadly ‘Franken-viruses’ before Covid’ despite fears they could trigger pandemic
CHINESE labs were secretly carrying out extremely risky experiments— where viruses were made more infectious — before the Covid pandemic, it’s claimed. And US government sources were reported to have proof that worrying practices were still being carried out, raising the risk of another pandemic. The US government reportedly believes Chinese labs were likely conducting […]
CHINESE labs were secretly carrying out extremely risky experiments— where viruses were made more infectious — before the Covid pandemic, it’s claimed.
And US government sources were reported to have proof that worrying practices were still being carried out, raising the risk of another pandemic.
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The US government reportedly believes Chinese labs were likely conducting “gain-of-function” experiments in which scientists genetically tinker with viruses to see if they can infect or spread faster.
These types of “Franken-viruse” experiments were banned in the US and other countries in 2014 because of fears of a souped-up virus leaking from labs — and then causing lethal pandemics like the world is experiencing right now.
In the past year, Covid-19 has officially killed 2.6million people, although that number is thought to be the tip of the iceberg.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told Sun Online: “Gain-of-function research of concern — no matter where it is performed — risks creating new pandemic pathigens and of triggering new pandemics.”
In a January 15 statement, the US State Department alleged that although the Wuhan Institute of Virology disclosed some of its participation in gain-of-function research, it “has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017”.
This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs and military labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in mice in unsafe labs
US official
This telling comment indicated the US intelligence is now aware of a lot of risky coronavirus research going on in Chinese labs that the rest of the world did not know about.
In recent years China has been viewed as a dumping ground and giant test tube for all kinds of dangerous and ethically controversial research, which have been outlawed by Western countries.
One example was a little-noticed study which was released in early July 2020 — when the Covid catastrophe was in full-swing — by Chinese scientists, reports Politico.
They had created a new model for studying SARS-CoV-2 by creating mice with human-like lung characteristics by using gene-editing technology to give the mice lung cells with the human ACE2 receptor .
This is the cell receptor that allowed Covid to so easily infect human lungs.
‘UNSAFE LABS’
A senior administration official told Washington Post reporter John Rogin: “This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs and military labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in ACE2 mice in unsafe labs.”
Two years before the Covid outbreak diplomats warned Washington of risky coronavirus experiments in a Wuhan lab two years before the outbreak — but no one listened, leaked cables have revealed.
Officials at the US Embassy issued the alerts to Washington warning that a new virus had been discovered in a Chinese laboratory that was dangerously short-staffed and so unsafe.
One of the cable’s authors said: “We were trying to warn that that lab was a serious danger.”
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New docs have also revealed scientists in Wuhan fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in late 2019 — months before the pandemic began to ravage the world.
The lead investigator on the World Health Organisation team investigating the origins of the pandemic has admitted the lab leak theory is “definitely NOT off the table”.
Dr Peter Ben Embarek, who led the WHO team in Wuhan, said they didn’t get “hard facts or detailed data” from the Chinese lab at the centre of a storm over the origins of the coronavirus outbreak.
Embarek, an expert on animal diseases and food safety, stressed he was skeptical of the theory that the virus emerged from WIV — but admitted it was still a possibility.
