Shortly before the disastrous outbreak of Covid in Wuhan, the Chinese scientist who oversaw the controversial virus research at the nearby laboratory attended a secret meeting with the US government to seek support for a project that would increase the number of coronaviruses.
Zhengli, known as “Batwoman” for her work on sampling and sequencing viruses in animals, has become the missing link in understanding how the United States and China co-managed the fall of Covid. Shi Zhengli's June 2017 meeting at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now fueling fears of Western collusion with a Chinese communist cover-up after it is widely believed that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 be caused by a careless laboratory experiment at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A new batch of data acquired by Freedom of Information campaigners and examined by The Daily Mail on Sunday reveals the extent to which America supported and frequently sponsored controversial work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
They say that to boost their chances of winning funding, US researchers seeking funding for studies to engineer “spike proteins” that make it easier for bat viruses to infect human cells misled authorities about the dangers of essays.
Documents obtained by US Right To Know, a non-profit public health research organization, include a directive issued by Chinese intelligence on January 3, 2020, two days after the world first learned about Covid , which demands that its scientists share their samples with the government or destroy them “on site.”
Western intelligence services now see a lab breach in Wuhan as the most plausible explanation for Covid, rather than the initial idea that it originated in the city's wildlife market. The explosive documents include emails written by officials at the EcoHealth Alliance, a now-infamous health organization that has used US government funds to fund research into the bat virus, before Professor Zhengli's arrival.
“Zhengli and I will be doing a double act, covering the work we're doing … as well as the large-scale surveillance of bats for new viruses,” says Peter Daszak, the $460,000-a-year head of EcoHealth.
Professor Zhengli earned the nickname “Batwoman” for her virus-hunting treks to bat caves in southern China, hundreds of kilometers from Wuhan, where her team collected more than 10,000 samples of animals.
The sequencing of Covid-19 closely matched the discovery in these caves. Peng Zhou, an associate professor at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was also invited to the conference.
Daszak thanked the hosts in an email after the meeting, saying it was “a pleasure to have the opportunity to personally introduce our contributors.”
EcoHealth also lobbied the Pentagon for Zhengli's funding to design high-risk coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute in December 2018, a year before the emergence of the Covid-19 virus, by synthesizing cutting-edge proteins with furin cleavage sites designed to bind more closely to human receptors. easily
Dr. Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert at the center of concerns about the gain-of-function studies, acknowledged in an email that U.S. researchers would be upset if they discovered that coronavirus testing and engineering was being done in low security Chinese labs. , but disguised it to make the US government more “comfortable” with the plan, which researchers say was intended to help prevent pandemics.
This proposal was rejected by the US government, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a “blueprint” for how to create Covid. Professor Zhengli has denounced the idea of a lab leak as unfounded, including US intelligence claims that several of her colleagues at the institute were infected before the outbreak emerged.
When challenged on the allegations, she said: “How on earth can I offer evidence for something where there is no evidence? I don't know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring dirt on an innocent scientist.”
The US government rejected the proposal, but opponents say the targets included serve as a “blueprint” for how to build Covid. Professor Zhengli has rejected the notion of a lab breach, as well as US intelligence reports that many of her co-workers at the institution were infected before the outbreak occurred.
When challenged on the revealing documents, she responded: “How on earth can I offer evidence for something where there is no evidence? I don't know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring dirt on an innocent scientist.”
It should be noted that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held a hearing in March 2023 that showed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had poor safety protocols.
“We have learned that the Wuhan Institute has poor biosecurity and was conducting this research only at biosecurity level two, described as 'the wild west' by UK virologist Dr Jeremy Farrar, now chief scientist at the 'WHO,” the subcommittee chairman, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), noted.
However, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, former NIAID director Dr. Fauci and former NIH head Dr. Francis Collins were highly visible public advocates of laboratory experiments involving “generate a potentially dangerous virus in a laboratory,” legal documents showed.
This research to “generate a potentially dangerous virus in a laboratory” is commonly called “gain of function” research, the exhibit notes. Dr. Fauci stated that “[g]one of the functions is a very potentially misleading terminology, and that was one of the reasons that a few years ago the outside groups, not the NIH…they removed the “gain of function” terminology because it can often be very confusing and misleading.” However, Dr. Fauci confirms that “the NIH” is not “d[o] away” with that terminology, and Dr. Fauci's internal email used the phrase “SARS gain of function” to describe the bat coronavirus research that was conducted by Dr. Shi Zhengli and others at the Institute of Virology of Wuhan, partly funded by Dr. Fauci's NIAID through EcoHealth Alliance grants, the lawyers continued.
The legal briefing then turns to Fauci funding this risky gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“On June 1, 2014, the NIAID of Dr. Fauci funded a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance for the five-year period from June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2019. Fauci Ex. 2, at 2. The title of the project was “Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence.” The project abstract stated: “This project will examine the risk of future emergence of coronavirus (CoV) from wildlife through in-depth field research across the human-wildlife interface in China, molecular characterization of novel CoV and host receptor binding domain genes, mathematical models of transmission. and evolution, and in vitro and in vivo laboratory studies of host range.”
The brief noted that one of the “three specific objectives” of the project would be “[t]predictions of cross-species transmission of CoV” by conducting two forms of research to improve the transmissibility of bat coronaviruses to humans: “reverse genetics”, meaning genetic manipulation of viruses to make them more transmissible; and “virus infection experiments” with “humanized mice,” meaning repeatedly infecting humanized mice with bat coronaviruses to induce mutations that make them more infectious to human cells (a process known as “stepping series”). Specifically, the abstract read: “Predictive models of host range (i.e.[,] emergence potential) will be experimentally tested using reverse genetics assays, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments in a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.”
Dr. Fauci tried to argue that “reverse genetics” is so vague that it may not refer to gain-of-function research, the lawyers noted. (“I'm not quite sure what they are
referring to Reverse genetics can mean many things.”) But Dr. Fauci admits that “reverse genetics” means “[m]anipulation of a virus, recombination, things like that.” In 2015, in a paper reporting on research conducted under this grant, Dr. Ralph Baric and Dr. Shi Zhengli wrote that they used “reverse genetics to “generate and characterize a chimeric virus” that was more infectious and more virulent in humans.. Dr. Fauci's own internal email describes this article as a “SARS gain of function,” the lawyers added.
Dr. Anthony Fauci will appear before the 118th Congress for the first time for a two-day transcribed interview on January 8, 2024 and January 9, 2024, according to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
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