The chairman of the COVID-19 Origins Task Force, affiliated with the scientific journals Lancet, dismissed the commission due to its ties to controversial researcher Peter Dashak and his EcoHealth alliance, writes the Daily Mail.
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday that he is concerned about ties to Dashak, who led the task force until he stepped down from the position in June.
Peter Dashak, who lives in New York, has dedicated his career to advocating so-called “functionality enhancement” research to create a more dangerous coronavirus for humans, arguing that this is the best chance to detect and prevent a global pandemic.
Shocking documents released the other day reveal his 2018 proposal to help the Wuhan Institute of Virology create more deadly bat coronaviruses by adding genetic traits similar to those later found in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19 disease. …
There is still no conclusive evidence as to whether the bat-related coronavirus first passed on to humans from a wild animal or originated in laboratory conditions, writes the Daily Mail.
But since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Dashak has gone to great lengths to portray the laboratory-origin hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory,” including developing a letter to the Lancet that established the appearance of scientific consensus that natural origin was the only possibility of COVID-19 occurring.
If the virus really emerged from a Chinese laboratory conducting the experiments it championed, it would be a devastating blow to all of Dashak’s research. On the other hand, a natural origin would confirm his life’s work to prevent the next pandemic.
Several members of the disbanded Lancet working group in the past have collaborated with Dashak or the EcoHealth Alliance he leads on various projects.
“I just didn’t want the task force to be so clearly involved in one of the main problems of this whole search for roots, which was the EcoHealth Alliance,” Dr. Sachs said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Sachs said the new Lancet Commission to find the origins of Covid-19 will continue to investigate the origins of the expert report, which will be published in mid-2022, but will expand its reach to include contributions from other biosafety experts, including risky laboratory research.
The announcement came just days after the publication of sensational documents showing that Peter Dashak requested funding in 2018 from the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), demanding $ 14.2 million to fund research to increase the functionality of bat coronaviruses. in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The proposal, titled Project DEFUSE, was submitted to independent researchers from the DRASTIC research group.
Dashak has requested funding for an elaborate project to genetically amplify coronaviruses and inoculate bats in China’s Yunnan province in hopes of stopping the spread of new viruses from bats to humans.
The funding request was denied by DARPA, but the proposal reveals a shocking line of research that could have allegedly been independently conducted by Chinese members of Dashak’s team, which included the infamous “female bat” virologist Shi Zhengli from Wuhan.
A thorough investigation by The Atlantic could not question the authenticity of the documents. “This is a proposal that has not been funded,” a US Geological Survey official, who oversaw part of the proposal, told the publication.
The most troubling aspect of the research plan disclosed in the documents is the plan to search viral genetic databases for new types of “furin cleavage sites” that help the virus attack the host.
This discovery is alarming because SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has characteristics that increase its potency and lethality, but a similar feature has never been seen in other coronaviruses like SARS in nature.
Proponents of the theory of laboratory leakage of coronavirus have long pointed to this fact as evidence not only of the laboratory origin of COVID-19, but even of genetic engineering.
Dashak’s 2018 proposal calls for testing different strains of the created viruses in “humanized mice” to see which ones are the most lethal to humans. It is known that the laboratory in Wuhan used just such mice with humanized lungs for research.
After the most deadly viral strains were identified, Dashak suggested trying to graft them into bats in Yunnan province, which is about hundreds of kilometers southwest of Wuhan.
Peter Dashak believed his work would help prevent a global coronavirus pandemic like the one ongoing now by reducing the likelihood of the natural spread of dangerous coronaviruses like SARS from bats to humans.
“Our goal is to reduce the likelihood of the spread of new bat-related coronaviruses associated with SARS and SARS in Asia,” his proposal says.
Dr. Dashak was the lead investigator for this proposal, which also identified Shi Zhengli from Wuhan and the American virologist Ralph Barik, known for his research on increasing the function of the coronavirus in his laboratory.
In rejecting the DEFUSE project proposal, DARPA administrators noted that the plan “does not mention or assess the potential risks of research.” “The proposal barely addresses or discusses ethical, legal and social issues,” notes DARPA.
Although no US funding has been provided, this proposal shows for the first time that leading function enhancement researchers around the world, including in Wuhan, have studied furin cleavage sites, and raises questions about whether China has funded such research.
Beijing has repeatedly insisted that the virus naturally spread to humans from bats, denying the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Meanwhile, the total death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic is currently 4.55 million. In the United States alone, the virus has killed 688,000 people since March last year.
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