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Biotech Dangers News Stories

Biotechnology is the use of living organisms, cells, or biological systems to develop technologies for purposes such as biowarfare, pandemic preparedness, disease prevention, vaccine development, GMOs, and more. This science may benefit mankind. Yet far too often, it's shrouded in secrecy, driven by profit motives, or misused in ways that pose serious risks to public health and safety.
Explore our comprehensive news index on a wide variety of fascinating topics.
Explore the top 20 most revealing news media articles we've summarized.
Check out 10 useful approaches for making sense of the media landscape.

Sort articles by: Article Date | Date Posted on WantToKnow.info | Importance

Can a 50-year-old treaty still keep the world safe from the changing threat of bioweapons?
2023-04-28, Vox
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:41:08
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23700801/bioweapons-biological-weapons-con...

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibits the production, use, development, stockpiling, or transfer of biological toxins or disease-causing organisms against humans, animals, or plants. More than 180 countries are party to the pact, which came into force in 1975 as the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapon. And in the years since, the taboo against state use of biological weapons has largely held. Yet a volatile geopolitical environment, combined with the rapid advance and increased access in the ability to edit and engineer pathogens, is straining and testing the nearly 50-year-old BWC as never before. From the BWC’s beginnings, critics have said it lacked vital elements, like a verification mechanism to make sure everyone is following it. Global tensions, scientific advances, and the ever-expanding repertoire of what is possible with both biology and chemistry are making those flaws and cracks ever more visible. Some high-profile mishaps linked to the US chemical and biological weapons programs ... along with public anger over the use of herbicides like Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, prompted Congress to pressure the Nixon administration to review the biological and chemical weapons programs. Contagions are hard to control and contain, and the same pathogens that can infect your target can also sicken you and your population. This is also why they tend to be used as a stealth agent of war. “The holy grail that we’ve struggled with with the Biological Weapons Convention is how do you verify that the countries that have signed up to the treaty are not making biological weapons?” said Kenneth Ward, US special representative to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.


Dangerous lab leaks happen far more often than the public is aware
2023-05-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2024-03-25 20:38:55
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/30/lab-leaks-shrouded-secrecy

Safety breaches happen every year at labs experimenting with dangerous pathogens. Scientists and other lab workers are bitten by infected animals, stuck by contaminated needles and splashed with infectious fluids. Yet the public rarely learns about these incidents, which tend to be shrouded in secrecy. For example, when a safety breach occurred in 2019 at a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab experimenting with a dangerous and highly controversial lab-created H5N1 avian influenza virus, the university never told the public – or local and state public health officials. In another incident, a pipe burst on a lab waste-holding tank in 2018 at a US army research facility at Fort Detrick, near Washington DC. Workers initially dismissed that any safety breach had occurred. Then army officials belatedly issued public statements that left out key details and created the misleading impression that no dangerous pathogens could have left the base. Yet my reporting has uncovered government documents and even a photo showing the giant tank spewing an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of unsterilized lab wastewater near an open storm drain that feeds into a popular public waterway. Regulation of lab safety in the US and around the world is fragmented and often relies heavily on scientific institutions policing themselves. There is no comprehensive tracking of which labs hold collections of the most dangerous viruses, bacteria and toxins.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community from reliable major media sources.


Pentagon Report Predicts New Age of COVID Bioweapons and Brain Chip Warfare
2024-01-25, Lee Fang on Substack
Posted: 2024-02-12 19:19:43
https://www.leefang.com/p/pentagon-report-predicts-new-age

Military strategists believe that a "coronavirus bioweapon" may lurk on the horizon. This possibility is one of several outlined in a new report sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The report “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War Research” delves into how CRISPR gene-editing technology, mRNA vaccines, brain networking, and other technological advancements could unleash new forms of military conflict. “We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts” and “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” that cripple the American military-industrial base,” the report warns. At the same time, authoritarian states might ... brutally suppress "anti-vaccine populists" and enforce compliance. The report claims this could hinder the U.S. due to its more relaxed regulatory environment that values individual liberties, where such crackdowns and forced vaccinations are more difficult to deploy. The report takes aim at Congress, criticizing the recent repeal of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members. It urges lawmakers to resist "anti-vaccine populism" to ensure military readiness. Simultaneously, the report urges the Pentagon to consider using genetic screening to find qualified military recruits and develop clear plans for integrating bioweapon warfare capabilities.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and microchip implants from reliable major media sources .


DOCUMENTS: Chinese Researcher Who Mapped COVID Virus Two Weeks Before China Released Sequence Was on Anthony Fauci’s Payroll
2024-01-19, The DisInformation Chronicle on Substack
Posted: 2024-02-04 21:14:59
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/documents-chinese-researcher-who

A Chinese researcher who first submitted the genetic sequence for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in late December 2019, around two weeks before China disclosed the deadly virus to outside scientists, was on the payroll of Anthony Fauci’s institute at the time, according to a grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit operated by Peter Daszak. The disclosures call into further question what officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) knew about research they were funding in China where the pandemic began. “The grant doesn't work on SARS-CoV-2,” Daszak [said], when the NIH was forced to review the grant in the summer of 2020. “Our organization has not actually published any data on SARS-CoV-2. We work on bat coronaviruses that are out there in the wild and trying to predict what the next one is.” NIH officials refused to respond to multiple requests to explain how much salary they provided to Dr. Lili Ren, a scientist at the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology, who wrote a letter in support of Daszak’s grant application to Fauci’s NIH institute. Ren first uploaded the COVID virus sequence to the NIH’s GenBank on December 28, 2019—two weeks before scientists celebrated China’s release of the genetic sequence on January 11, 2020. Fauci’s NIH grant also paid for Ren’s expenses, including travel to the United States to meet with Daszak as well as her collaborator Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina.

Note: The author of Disinformation Chronicle on Substack is Paul Thacker, an American investigative journalist who served as an investigator in the US Senate, focusing on financial ties between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 from reliable major media sources.


A scientist who helped Fauci discredit the lab leak theory is now speaking out
2023-12-04, Washington Examiner
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:54:30
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2780389/a-sci...

In March 2020, Dr. Robert Kadlec addressed a House committee to confirm his role and responsibilities as the federal government’s top preparedness official coordinating the government’s COVID-19 response. As assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Kadlec offered a lengthy statement to lawmakers on the “four principal functions” of his role. None of those functions involved downplaying without scientific evidence a theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But that’s what Kadlec now says he did by assisting Dr. Anthony Fauci ... in his effort to suppress the lab leak theory. Kadlec says it’s a decision that keeps him up at night. “I wake up at usually about 2 or 3 a.m. and think about it honestly, because it’s something that we all played a role in,” Kadlec [said]. For much of 2020 and 2021, anyone who brought up the possibility that COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan risked being labeled a conspiracy theorist by legacy media and “fact-checkers.” In September, the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that Fauci was secretly admitted to CIA headquarters while the agency conducted its analysis of the virus’s origins, allegedly to “‘influence’ the Agency’s review.” A ... CIA whistleblower claims the agency attempted to bribe six analysts tasked with assessing the origin of the virus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Scientists at the center of the ‘lab leak’ controversy met with NIH, Fauci
2024-01-06, U.S. Right to Know
Posted: 2024-01-15 18:44:03
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/daszak-shi-visits-nih-fauci/

Scientists at the center of the “lab leak” controversy visited Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research — just months before NIH lifted a pause on high-risk virology. Wuhan Institute of Virology Senior Scientist Shi Zhengli [visited] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, where she gave a presentation about novel coronaviruses. Shi is known internationally as the “Bat Lady” for her work with bats and their coronaviruses. Though ostensibly a civilian lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research projects “for defensive and biosecurity needs of the military” since at least 2017, according to U.S. intelligence. EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization, partnered closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, subcontracting NIAID funding to Shi’s lab, and arranged the meeting. Fauci himself met with [EcoHealth Alliance President Peter] Daszak four months later, in October 2017. By December 2017, NIH had resumed funding for gain-of-function research that generates new viruses in the lab following a three year pause and debate about the possibility that such research could cause a pandemic. A 2021 State Department fact sheet stated that “despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution,” it has conducted classified research on behalf of the Chinese military “since at least 2017.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.


CIA accused of hiding records that analysts took ‘monetary incentives’ to bury COVID lab leak finding
2023-12-26, New York Post
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:36:07
https://nypost.com/2023/12/26/news/cia-accused-of-hiding-payments-to-bury-cov...

An offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payoffs to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic. The think tank’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA Dec. 22, alleging the agency did not comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about analysts who allegedly “received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus,” according to a copy of the complaint. A senior-level CIA agent told House Republican committee chairmen in September that the agency offered payments to six analysts tasked with determining the origins of SARS-CoV-2 if they said that the virus jumped from animals to humans. The Sept. 12 letter from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to CIA Director William Burns also demanded documentation ... about the payments. “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the House panel chairmen wrote. In February, the FBI became the first US intelligence agency to conclude the coronavirus pandemic most likely began with a lab leak.

Note: Former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci will testify before Congress on COVID origins in early 2024. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


American scientists misled Pentagon on research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
2023-12-18, US Right to Know
Posted: 2024-01-02 14:14:21
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/american-scientists-misled-pentagon-on-wuh...

American researchers concealed their intention to conduct high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan under lax safety standards from the Pentagon the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know. A 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and American scientists, has stoked concern that the pandemic resulted from a lab accident. It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2. The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. These experiments were proposed to occur in part in Wuhan with fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S. — apparently to save on costs. American scientists at the center of the “lab leak theory” controversy appear to have concealed this from their desired funder — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — in order to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China. The documents call into question the credibility of these scientists’ assurances that the pandemic could not have sprung out of their collaboration ... with the lab in Wuhan. Conducting coronavirus engineering and testing work in Wuhan entailed greater biosafety risks, the American researchers privately acknowledged.

Note: Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about funding this risky research. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.


US apologizes for infecting Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s
2010-10-01, CNN News
Posted: 2023-12-27 18:47:21
https://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/01/us.guatemala.apology/index.html

The United States apologized Friday for a 1946-1948 research study in which people in Guatemala were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases. A statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the action "reprehensible." President Barack Obama called his Guatemalan counterpart Friday "offering profound apologies and asking pardon for the deeds of the 1940s," President Alvaro Colom told CNN. "Though it happened 64 years ago, it really is a profound violation of human rights," said Colom. The U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948 aimed at determining the effectiveness of penicillin in treating or preventing syphilis after subjects were exposed to the disease. Gonorrhea and chancres were also studied. The tests were carried out on female commercial sex workers, prisoners in the national penitentiary, patients in the national mental hospital and soldiers. According to the study, more than 1,600 people were infected: 696 with syphilis, 772 with gonorrhea and 142 with chancres. The published literature contains more than 40 other U.S.-based studies "where intentional infection was carried out with what we could now consider to be completely inadequate consent in the United States." Many of those studies were funded by the Public Health Service.

Note: Read about the long history of humans being used as guinea pigs in unethical experiments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


‘Very little yield’: has genetically targeted medicine really made us healthier?
2023-09-09, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
Posted: 2023-11-07 16:08:28
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/09/precision-medicine-targeted-p...

After spending 13 years and $2.7bn, the Human Genome Project announced in 2003 that it had successfully mapped our DNA, paving the way for a new era of medicine that would deliver “the right treatment, for the right patient, at the right time”. Twenty years later, some say the “era of precision medicine” has arrived. But others disagree. They argue that the gains have been small, and pursuing them may have diverted attention from the preventable causes of common diseases. Some doctors and academics say that too much emphasis is placed on our genes, and not enough on environment and lifestyle. “There’s this paradox where the more we learn about the human genome, the less we should expect it to actually have significant impacts for most patients,” [Prof. James] Tabery says. “There’s plenty of information to suggest that if we really wanted to combat common diseases, we should be focusing on environmental causes.” In countries with insurance-based healthcare systems such as the US, expensive drugs can take an enormous toll on individuals, leading some clinicians to identify a new side-effect: “financial toxicity”. “A new drug offers some health benefits to those patients that receive it,” explains Mark Sculpher ... at the University of York. “But depending on the cost of that drug, you may end up with other patients losing more health, because that’s resources taken from them. So you can have this negative overall population health effect if you pay too much for a drug.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.


Covid cover-up: how the science was silenced
2023-07-28, The Australian (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:48:50
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/covid-coverup-wu...

America's top infectious diseases adviser, Anthony Fauci, deliberately decided to downplay suspicions from scientists that Covid-19 came from a laboratory to protect his reputation and deflect from the risky coronavirus research his agency had funded, according to his boss, one of the most senior US health officials during the pandemic. In an exclusive interview, Robert Kadlec – former assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the US Department of Health – [said] that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins privately discussed how to "turn down the temperature" on accusations against China in the early days of the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health and other US agencies funded 65 scientific projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the past decade, many involving risky research on bat coronaviruses. "I think Tony Fauci was trying to protect his institution and his own reputation from the possibility that his agency was funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who, beyond the scope of the grants received from the National Institutes of Health, may have been working with People's Liberation Army researchers on defensive coronavirus vaccines," Dr Kadlec said. "We think vaccine research resulted in the pandemic – that vaccine research was the proximate cause." Dr Fauci has denied his agency funded gain-of-function research, but Dr Kadlec said this wasn't true.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


New Files Reveal MKUltra's Terrifying Reach: Ethnic Bioweapons, Mind Control and Disturbing Experiments
2023-07-26, ScheerPost
Posted: 2023-08-07 21:30:10
https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/26/new-files-reveal-mkultras-terrifying-reach-...

Anthropologist Orisanmi Burton has blown the lid off a dark chapter in CIA history. Classified Agency files, recently obtained through Freedom of Information laws, expose shocking ties between the infamous MKULTRA program and nightmarish experiments on prisoners of color within the United States. Burton's findings expose MKULTRA's sinister mission to develop psychological warfare and behavioral manipulation tactics specifically aimed at people of color under the guise of "counterinsurgency." [In] 1968, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders underwent an alarming update, adding "hostility" and "aggression" as prominent symptoms of schizophrenia. The implications were profound: civil rights activists daring to resist were at risk of being diagnosed and institutionalized. Prisoners refusing to bend to oppressive jail regimes could be conveniently labeled as "criminally insane." In August 2022, MintPress News revealed how Black Americans were disproportionately targeted by the CIA's monstrous mind control machinations. Many MKULTRA trials appeared to have been expressly conducted to gauge potentially varying reactions to psychedelic drugs in Black and White participants. The CIA had a specific – or greater – interest in the effect of certain substances on people of color, rather than the general civilian population. The CIA did indeed seek to determine optimal drugs for targeting Black Americans, if not other ethnic groups.

Note: The MKULTRA program was also used to create mind-controlled assassins. Government and business interests have a long history of experimenting on human beings. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.


Monsanto and the Merchants of Poison
2022-12-23, CounterPunch
Posted: 2023-06-04 18:51:49
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/23/monsanto-and-the-merchants-of-poison/

Last week, the report Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide was published by authors Stacy Malkan, Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé. [In 2012], pesticide and processed food companies spent $45 million to defeat a ballot initiative to label GMOs (genetically modified foods) in California. This campaign was led by Monsanto, one of the planet’s largest producers of GMOs. Monsanto created a PR storm through the mouths of so-called third-party “experts” from across the fields of academia and science. It was later revealed that these allegedly neutral voices were closely tied to Monsanto. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015 concluded that glyphosate—the chemical contained within herbicides that most GMO crops have been engineered to resist—is likely a human carcinogen. Thousands sued Monsanto claiming that their exposure of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based product, Roundup, caused their cancers. Monsanto employees ghostwrote scientific papers on the safety of glyphosate and strategized how to discredit journalists and scientists raising concerns about the pesticide. Major universities, including University of California Davis and University of Florida, played a significant role in legitimizing and amplifying pesticide industry product-defense efforts. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cornell University, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) ... also provided essential aid and cover for pesticide industry propaganda.

Note: A 2019 study found that glyphosate increases cancer risk by 41%. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on GMOs and science corruption from reliable major media sources.


Lab-created bird flu virus accident shows lax oversight of risky 'gain of function' research
2023-04-12, USA Today
Posted: 2023-05-08 12:12:26
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/04/11/lab-leak-accident-h-5-n-1-v...

Inside the high-security Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two experienced scientists were pulling ferrets out of their HEPA-filtered cages on a Monday in December 2019. Another researcher, still in training, was also in the room to watch and learn. This particular experiment involved exposing the animals to a highly controversial lab-engineered strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus. Scientists had taken an avian influenza virus that was mostly dangerous to birds and manipulated it in ways that potentially increased its threat to humans. The research was supported [by] Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. On that December day, two experienced researchers from Kawaoka’s team were helping train a colleague as they collected samples from ferrets. One of their most important pieces of personal protective equipment was the air-purifying respirator that each wore. As one of the senior researchers prepared to start collecting samples from the next round of ferrets, the trainee realized there was a problem with their respirator. The powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) hose had somehow disconnected from the unit. The detached hose dangled loose in the lab’s potentially contaminated air. In the end, the trainee apparently didn’t become infected. But how the university and the lab oversight system handled the incident should be cause for concern.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.


We Still Don’t Know the Truth About Covid
2023-02-08, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2023-02-13 14:08:56
https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-still-dont-know-the-truth-about-covid-wuhan-l...

Some believe the novel coronavirus probably escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. Others maintain the virus first jumped to people from caged animals at a Wuhan seafood market. Testing either hypothesis would require access to Wuhan lab records, biological samples, and personnel as well as frozen blood samples collected in 2019 by various Wuhan blood banks. The malfeasance of China’s rulers is the primary reason the international community doesn’t have access to these resources and data. But China hasn’t been the only problem. In the early days of the pandemic, a small group of Western virologists came together to consider the pandemic’s origin. Emails that eventually came to light revealed their plan to push the public conversation away from the lab-accident hypothesis and toward the natural-origins explanation. In a now infamous February 2020 letter in the Lancet, and in an equally problematic letter in Nature Medicine the next month, some of these scientists labeled any questions about a possible lab origin as “conspiracy theories.” Some of the same scientists had worked together, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on a 2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Their project? Genetically engineering rare gain-of-function features ... into SARS-like viruses. Scientists who had called the lab-leak hypothesis a conspiracy had failed to disclose that the lethal virus sweeping the world was eerily similar to the one they had wanted to create.

Note: A probing investigation of unredacted NIH emails further reveals how Anthony Fauci and other top scientists played an early role in shaping the debate about the origin of the virus, downplaying or dismissing any type of lab theory despite substantial evidence that favors the plausibility of a lab leak. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


A Plea for Making Virus Research Safer
2022-10-30, New York Times
Posted: 2022-11-14 23:45:21
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/opinion/virology-safety.html

New scientific breakthroughs make it increasingly easy to identify dangerous viruses in nature, manipulate them in the lab and synthetically create them from genetic sequences. But some scientists have taken it further, adding “gain of function” mutations that make potential pandemic viruses more transmissible. The National Institutes of Health funded two research groups to increase the transmissibility of an earlier strain of avian influenza that had killed hundreds of people but could not efficiently spread from person to person. Both groups created viral mutants that could transmit in ferrets. The Obama administration was so alarmed that it halted gain-of-function work on potential pandemic influenza viruses in 2014, but the N.I.H. allowed it to restart by 2019. In my view, there is no justification for intentionally making potential pandemic viruses more transmissible. The consequences of an accident could be too horrific, and such engineered viruses are not needed for vaccines anyway. Natural viruses that haven’t yet infected humans can also pose a risk if researchers try to find the most dangerous ones and bring them back to the lab for experiments. Suspicions about a lab-accident origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been fueled by the fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in Chinese and international efforts to find and experiment with new high-risk coronaviruses. A final category of pandemic risk involves viruses that used to transmit in humans but became extinct long ago — like the 1918 influenza virus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


The CIA Just Invested in Woolly Mammoth Resurrection Technology
2022-09-28, The Intercept
Posted: 2022-10-31 16:03:34
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/28/cia-extinction-woolly-mammoth-dna/

The Dallas-based biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences has a vision: “To see the Woolly Mammoth thunder upon the tundra once again.” Founders George Church and Ben Lamm have already racked up an impressive list of high-profile funders and investors, including Peter Thiel, Tony Robbins, Paris Hilton, Winklevoss Capital — and, according to the public portfolio its venture capital arm released this month, the CIA. Colossal says it hopes to use advanced genetic sequencing to resurrect two extinct mammals — not just the giant, ice age mammoth, but also a mid-sized marsupial known as the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, that died out less than a century ago. In-Q-Tel, its new investor, is registered as a nonprofit venture capital firm funded by the CIA. On its surface, the group funds technology startups with the potential to safeguard national security. In addition to its long-standing pursuit of intelligence and weapons technologies, the CIA outfit has lately displayed an increased interest in biotechnology and particularly DNA sequencing. “Biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy are critical for humanity to further develop. It is important for all facets of our government to develop them and have an understanding of what is possible,” Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm wrote. The embrace of this technology, according to In-Q-Tel’s blog post, will help allow U.S. government agencies to read, write, and edit genetic material, and, importantly, to steer global biological phenomena that impact “nation-to-nation competition.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


Syphilis Victims in U.S. Study Went Untreated for 40 Years
1972-07-26, New York Times
Posted: 2022-05-09 00:27:04
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/26/archives/syphilis-victims-in-us-study-went...

For 40 years the United States Public Health Service has conducted a study in which human beings with syphilis, who were induced to serve as guinea pigs, have gone without medical treatment for the disease and a few have died of its late effects, even though an effective therapy, was eventually discovered. The study was conducted to determine from autopsies what the disease does to the human body. It is too late to treat the syphilis in any surviving participants. The experiment, called the Tuskegee Study, began in 1932 with about 600 black men mostly poor and uneducated, from Tuskegee, Ala., an area that had the highest syphilis rate in the nation at the time. Four hundred of the group had syphilis and never received deliberate treatment for the Venereal Infection. A control group of 200 had no syphilis and did not receive any specific therapy. As Incentives to enter the Program, the men were promised free transportation to and from hospitals, free hot lunches, free medicine for any disease other than syphilis and free burial after autopsies were performed. The Tuskegee Study began 10 years before penicillin was found to be a cure for syphilis and 15 years before the drug became widely available. Yet, even after penicillin became common, and while its use probably could have helped or saved a number of the experiment subjects, the drug was denied them. Senator William Proxmire ... called the study “a moral and ethical nightmare.”

Note: Read more about the disturbing history of government and industry experiments on human guinea pigs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.


Arpad Pusztai obituary
2021-12-31, The Times (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: 2022-01-10 00:34:52
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/arpad-pusztai-obituary-0n89lplnx

Arpad Pusztai spoke for only two and a half minutes during his interview for ITN's World in Action in 1998, but it was enough to end his career. The Hungarian-born expert in lectins, a type of protein, had spent decades working at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen and had almost 300 scientific papers and three books to his name. In the mid-1990s, with big food manufacturers increasingly developing and promoting genetically modified crops, he had been asked to investigate the effect that their products, specifically GM potatoes, could have on rats. His data showed that those being fed GM potatoes experienced stunted organ and brain growth and disturbance to their immune systems. Pusztai ... agreed to discuss his research on television in the hope of attracting new funding. His comments, which were promoted by the programme in a press release headed "new health fears over 'Frankenstein' food", started a media frenzy. Pusztai was suspended and his raw data was seized. According to [author Andrew] Rowell: "All GM work was stopped immediately and Pusztai's team was dispersed. His three PhD students were moved to other areas. He was threatened with legal action if he spoke to anyone. His phone calls and emails were diverted. No one was allowed to speak to him either." In Pusztai's telling ... the Rowett Institute came under pressure from senior figures in the government and the food industry. Two employees told him that the institute had taken calls from the office of Tony Blair, the prime minister.

Note: Read more about this important scientist. And for more on the dangers of GM food, see this important book summary. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and GMOs from reliable major media sources.


Covid-19: Lancet investigation into origin of pandemic shuts down over bias risk
2021-10-01, The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)
Posted: 2021-10-24 18:27:48
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2414

The work of a task force commissioned by the Lancet into the origins of covid-19 has folded after concerns about the conflicts of interest of one its members and his ties through a non-profit organisation to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Task force chair Jeffrey Sachs ... told the Wall Street Journal that he had shut down the scientist led investigation into how the covid-19 pandemic started because of concerns about its links to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organisation run by task force member Peter Daszak. The decision came as evidence continued to accumulate that Daszak had not always been forthright about his research and his financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth Alliance has been given millions of dollars in grants by the US federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness. The alliance has subcontracted out its research ... to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shortly after the pandemic began Daszak led a February 2020 statement in the Lancet alleging that it was a “conspiracy theory” to argue that the pandemic could have started from a laboratory leak in Wuhan. “I have no conflicts of interest,” Daszak later told the Washington Post. But Daszak’s story began falling apart last November when the non-profit group US Right to Know published emails ... that showed he had orchestrated the Lancet statement without disclosing that he was funding Shi Zhengli through grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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