Masked in Plain View: The Novel Coronaviruses Papers

The US Disclosed “Lab-Made”, “Engineered” “Novel” SARS Coronaviruses in 2015 and 2016; Permitted Funding to “Create, Transfer, and Use” Deadlier and More Highly Transmissible Genetically-Engineered Potential Pandemic Strains of Coronaviruses in Laboratory Experiments Beginning in 2017 — But the US Government, the US/Western News Media and Scientists Remain Silent about this Truth and Open Secret in the Current Pandemic

For B. G. S., and Humanity.

PART I

By Jita Merle Huangur

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” — Attributed to Abraham Lincoln

Introduction

It is over a year now since the novel coronavirus appeared in the city of Wuhan in China where the first cases were officially reported in December 2019. (That the virus could have emerged in other counties before it appeared in China will be discussed in Part III.) Since its appearance, the pathogen has spread to many other countries, infecting and killing millions of people along its path. The novel coronavirus outbreak is still raging relentlessly, with extremely serious occurrences in Iran, Italy, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, India, Russia and the United States — among the worst-hit countries outside of China, which, until it was surpassed by the US on March 26, 2020, had recorded the highest number of infections and, for some time, the largest number of deaths. In some of these countries, the pandemic already has gone through what has been called a “second wave.” In fact, the first “new variant”, said to have “mutated” from the original novel coronavirus [1], was identified in England in December 2020; this species subsequently spread into other countries. This variant was described to “’may be more deadly’” and “spread[s] more quickly” than the older version of the virus” [1b]. Other mutations or variants have been reported in South Africa, Brazil, India, the US and other nations. The latest mutation is the “Delta” variant.

According to the global tracker run by Johns Hopkins University, as of August 11, 2021, there have been over 204.7 million confirmed cases in almost all the world’s countries, with the virus now having reached all seven continents, with Antarctica the last to report its first outbreak on December 2020, almost a year after the virus emerged in China. Worldwide, over 4.3 million people have died from the disease [2]. Undeniably, these numbers will grow as the virus continues to spread uncontrollably globally. This rapid spread and the uncertainty to contain the virus prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) on February 28, 2020 to raise its assessment of the global risk of the outbreak from a “high” to “very high” [3]. On January 30, the WHO labeled the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) [4]. Then on March 11, the WHO declared the outbreak a global pandemic [5]. On March 22, the health agency warned that the “Pandemic is accelerating” [6]. The healthy agency on April 20 also alerted the world that the “worst of the virus could be yet to come” [7].

The US currently continues to lead the world in registering the highest infections and fatalities from the virus. US deaths from the coronavirus reached the symbolic 500,000 mark, that is a half million people, on February 22, 2021. According to the tracker, as of August 11, 2021, over 36.1 million cases (and counting) of novel coronavirus infections have been confirmed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as all repatriated cases. About 618,479 Americans have died from the virus as of the same date. These numbers will also continue to rise as the disease spreads.

As the virus is hurtling worldwide, and as this spread is now a global pandemic, what has been blatantly absent in statements made by the US Government (USG) and other governments in the West about, and in Western (especially US) news media coverage of, the novel coronavirus outbreak are these six key and incontrovertible truths:

(1) For about five and four years before the current pandemic, two lab-made novel coronaviruses, created through genetic engineering experiments in a US laboratory, were disclosed by US scientists. Indisputable details about the invention and existence of these synthetically mutated novel coronaviruses are documented in a medical journal, a science journal and a science magazine, all highly reputable scientific publications, and in a lifestyle magazine for the first, and in a science journal, for the second.

(2) For almost four years or earlier before the pandemic, international organizations, such as the WHO, and US agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Western nations, primarily the US and the European Union (EU) countries, and many universities, pharmaceutical companies, science organizations and numerous other entities in these countries participated in deliberations that were based on this central fact: The genetic engineering of dangerous viruses in labs through emerging technologies was a reality and therefore risks and benefits, threats and dangers, etc. of their manufacture must be addressed.

(3) For about two years before the current plague, the USG resumed funding some of its agencies to undertake experiments with coronaviruses (and other extremely virulent microbes) to invent even deadlier and more highly transmissible variants in US laboratories. And the toxins that are being created in such research are specifically to be manmade, mutated to create a potential pandemic. Funding and other information about these experiments are in the public domain, including in multiple USG reports, statements and documents, with some thoroughly also reported in many US/Western news media and other publication outlets.

(4) For over six years before the current plague, the nations of the European Union (EU) were using advanced genetic engineering biotechnology to manufacture potentially pandemic novel viruses and other microbes and vaccinations for them in labs.

(5) Just two weeks before SARS-CoV-2 emerged in China, and almost eight weeks before a US biotechnology/pharmaceutical firm said it developed a vaccine for the virus, a USG health agency, pharmaceutical company and university signed an agreement in December 16, 2019, to trial a vaccine candidate for coronavirus.

(6) In 2019, and before SARS-CoV-2 erupted in China, the US conducted human trials with a vaccine for a SARS-based coronavirus. The data for those trials exist but are not public. (These trials could be different from those conducted for the vaccine candidate in 5, which do not disclose that its inoculation was used in humans or for human trials.)

While there is much talk (or propaganda) in the Western media about the novel coronavirus that is claimed to have emerged in China in December 31, 2019, there has been absolutely no coverage of these six facts, leading to the singular narrative that dominates the outbreak. This narrative, created by the West and uncritically disseminated by its media obviously, focuses entirely (and initially) on this core claim: Although it is not clear where it came from exactly, this species of novel coronavirus is believed to have originated in bats, before jumping to humans, possibly via another animal in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China. This is what has been dubbed the natural origins theory.

However, as facts 1, 2, 3 5 and 6 aforementioned will primarily show in this investigation, there is another narrative that is missing and has not appeared in the pages (or screens or tweets) of the “mainstream” or corporate media (MSM) and even the “alternative” media (AM). One component of this other narrative is the existence, pre-pandemic, of lab-created novel coronaviruses which can infect humans directly without an animal intermediary, with one of them having “possible pandemic potentials.” The slightest intimations that have been raised about this other narrative have been “debunked” and labeled as “conspiracy theories” by the West and its willing scientists and pliant media. This is what has been called the lab-leak theory, which hypothesizes that the virus could possibly have been made in a lab from where it leaked. However, as this investigation will show, the evidence and existence of a lab-made coronavirus, in fact two such variants, is neither a theory or conspiracy theory nor a possibility. It is a fact. Whether such a variant leaked from a lab and caused the pandemic is beyond the focus of this probe. Moreover, this probe is not claiming that these two pathogens are what caused/are causing the current pandemic. An article by the US/British investigative journalist Nicholas Wade that appeared in Medium on May 2, 2021, “revealed” possibilities that it claims could support the lab-leak theory, with the article suggesting that if the virus was created in and did leak from a lab, it could have done so only at a lab in Wuhan, China. (Wade’s article will be dealt with in depth in Part III.)

However, it is the point of this investigation to explain this other, neglected story, whose merits should be compared and weighed with respect to the main, official narrative that has been uncritically fed to the public. This is an extensive and fact-based, pull-no-punches investigation that goes beyond and behind the headlines and exposes the focus and propaganda of the official narrative. The probe is divided into five parts. Part I focuses on US permission to grant refunding some of its agencies to “create, transfer and use” potential pandemic coronaviruses and other deadly pathogens in experiments in US laboratories beginning in December 2017. Part II discloses the existence of multiple novel coronaviruses, including some from nature, and others lab-created variants that were invented by US scientists and announced in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Part III engages the “origins” stories or theories and “science” that have been advanced by scientists about the novel coronavirus but that have totally ignored the actuality of the aforementioned lab-created pathogens. Part IV discloses details about a patent owned by a US scientist and the USG containing particulars about an invention that is based on genetic engineering technology that facilitates the manufacturing of vaccines for lab-made coronaviruses; the section also reveals information about the vaccines US scientists invented in the process of inventing the two man-made novel coronaviruses, as well as trials, including human, conducted with vaccines for SARS-based coronavirus before SARS-CoV-2 erupted in China. Part V revolves around the Western media’s failure to report this other narrative in the ongoing outbreak, notwithstanding the press’s robust coverage of the US’s announcement in December 2017 to use tax dollars to invent in labs microbes that could cause potential pandemic and that are not from nature.

All materials dubbed “The Novel Coronaviruses Papers” referenced in this inquiry are from publicly available sources on the Internet, which means they do not fall under “confidential” or “national security” categorization. They also are neither hacked from governments or agencies’ websites nor obtained by leak from a whistleblower. What this investigation has done is to connect the dots that these openly attainable documents reveal about pre-pandemic coronavirus research in Western countries.

In that sense, the probe is the unmediated interpretation of such materials and documents, which also signifies that no “experts” or government officials and their “interpretation” or “insights” are consulted in this endeavor. Had they been, this entire work will not see the light of day. There is not a single claim in this entire investigation that is not supported by documented facts. Which means there are no false, unfounded or disproven proclamations in this inquiry. In fact, all materials used in this inquiry are already published in some form in Medium, other news outlets, government notices, bulletins or releases and scholarly/scientific publications. Additionally, this inquiry focuses roughly on the period when the pandemic first officially appeared and was reported in China — December 31, 2019 — to when it landed in the US — January/February 2020. However, crucial developments after the latter date, including infection and death rates caused by the disease, the Wade article and the Dr. Anthony Fauci emails, are mentioned for reasons that will eventually become self-explanatory.

Because various governments and their agencies will not want to see what this probe reveals to be in the public domain, attempts by them to stifle this disclosure will emerge after its publication. So, download and save the entire series before they are “disappeared.”

For the most part, this probe will be repetitive, reading at times like a broken record. This methodology is by design because the intricacies of the subject matter (countering the propaganda of Western governments, their media and scientists with regards to the current pandemic is no mean feat) and the documentation required to narrate it elicits, and in fact depends on, reiteration for proof, clarification, emphasis and argument.

It is essential to reveal at this early stage this fact about this probe: At different stages of its evolution, it or a portion of the entire probe was sent, beginning in April 2020, to multiple media outlets, both MSM and AM, for consideration for publication. They refused to publish it.

A 2014 US Ban on Research on Genetically Mutating Influenza and Coronaviruses in Labs Via Gain-of-Function

In October 2014, just as the Ebola (EBOV) outbreak, the deadliest in history, in West Africa was starting to intensify, the administration of then-US President Barack Obama announced that it was placing a moratorium on then-ongoing US research into some of the world’s extremely virulent influenza and other viruses in experiments to make them more lethal and easily transmissible [8]. (The document announcing the ban was also posted on other federal government websites [9,10]). The Obama White House notice was also subsequently reported in some US news media outlets, including the New York Times (NYT) which did so a day after the release of the moratorium.

The White House bulletin was preceded, and in fact strongly influenced if not driven, by a “Statement” released by the “Cambridge Working Group Consensus on the Creation of Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs)” on July 14, 2014 [11]. The Statement was signed by hundreds of scientists in almost every major US and European university and other research institution. Scientists from other parts of the world also signed the petition. The Statement was issued primarily to call on the USG to cease the funding of the creation of “’potential pandemic pathogens’” via “gain-of-function” experiments in laboratories. The signees warned: “Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses substantially increased risks.” (Another group of scientists opposing the Cambridge Working Group’s position and supporting gain-of-function experiments released its own statement soon after [12]).

Taking its cue from the Cambridge Statement, the Obama White House announcement disclosed that because of accidents that had occurred in labs where such experiments were taking place, the USG was suspending them in order “to assess the potential risks and benefits associated with a subset of life sciences research known as ‘gain-of-function’ studies.” The notice added: “With an ultimate goal of better understanding disease pathways, gain-of-function studies aim to increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility.” Towards that goal, the bulletin stated that “the [USG] will institute a pause on funding for any new studies that include gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses.” Both SARS (acronym for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) are coronaviruses. According to the WHO, “Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans” [13]. SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are the rarer and most lethal forms of coronaviruses. The novel coronavirus, which the WHO later labeled SARS-CoV-2 or SARS2, now joins this rare and lethal species of germs. (This numerary distinction differentiates this new variant from the original SARS that appeared in 2003 which is categorized as SARS-CoV-1 or SARS1.) The disease SARS-CoV-2 causes and which is responsible for the pandemic has been named COVID-19 (abbreviation for “coronavirus disease 2019”) also by the WHO.

The White House bulletin emphatically announced that “During this pause, the U.S. Government will not fund any new projects involving these experiments and encourages those currently conducting this type of work — whether federally funded or not — to voluntarily pause their research while risks and benefits are being reassessed.” (As details in Part II will show, federal funding for research relating to the genetic engineering of SARS-CoV and other microbes was not paused, despite the admonition from the Obama White House. In fact, that funding directly led to the creation of two invented novel coronaviruses through research that had been ongoing before the ban was announced.)

Key to the White House notice (and the Cambridge Working Group Statement) is this concept: Gain-of-function (GOF). What does it mean and entail? GOF is the laboratory genetic engineering, manipulation, alteration, change in and mutation of the genome of a pathogen (a virus, for example) such that its effect gets stronger (or “enhanced”), resulting in or conferring a “new function” to the mutated variant. Thus, GOF simply means the enhancement of a virus or an organism’s pathogenicity and transmissibility, exponentially increasing the invented variant’s capabilities to cause disease that is more contagious and/or deadly. Put in another way, GOF is the “genetic engineering of transforming viruses into more deadly versions of themselves.”

Although it has its benefits and positive uses (developing therapies, vaccines, etc. to cure or prevent diseases for example), the greatest risk of GOF experiments is that the new germs manufactured by the process can result in what the Cambridge Group Statement calls “potential pandemic pathogens.” Consequently, any GOF studies entail biosafety, biosecurity and biodefense risks to the biological agents being genetically altered. As a result, GOF research is extremely sensitive because of its potential of developing bioweapon pandemic pathogens of mass destruction — a fact critics of such research in the US and Europe have consistently pointed out.

As aptly summarized by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which was overseeing the experiments the Obama moratorium was suspending, in a “Statement” released confirming the White House ban [14], “’GOF studies’ refers to scientific research that increases the ability of any of these infectious agents [MERS, SARS, influenza, etc.] to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility among mammals by respiratory droplets” (emphasis added). The Statement further asserted unambiguously that the ban was being placed by the White House, specifically “The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)”, and that the “NIH will be adhering to this funding pause until the robust and broad deliberative process described by the White House . . . is completed.” According to its website, the OSTP was constituted in 1976 by Congress “to provide the President and others within the Executive Office of the President with advice on scientific, engineering, and technological aspects of the economy, national security, homeland security . . ., among other topics.” Additionally, OSTP “serves as source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the president with respect to major policies, plans, and programs of the Federal Government” [15]. The Obama moratorium was an outcome of this process — and the reason the funding ban was imposed by former President Obama.

Thus, the White House dispatch and the NIH Statement explicitly stated that the USG, prior to the 2014 moratorium, was engaged in funding GOF experiments that were specifically meant to genetically mutate and alter the genomes of certain virulent agents (SARS, MERS, for example) in order to invent more infectious and lethal variants — or “potential pandemic pathogens.” And as the NIH Statement further clarified, the GOF experiments were particularly aimed at creating pandemic species of these germs that are pathogenic and transmissible by “respiratory droplets” and especially invented to infect mammals. This revelation simply indicates that the experiments were genetically mutating virulent viruses so that they can be transmitted through the air, or by aerosol, to directly infect humans.

This is how the NYT titled its report of the ban: “White House to Cut Funding for Risky Biological Study” [16], stating that the Obama administration was cutting “funding for risky biological study” of very highly infectious viruses.” For the NYT, the president’s action was a “moratorium” on “research on influenza virus and coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS. It made no mention of Ebola or any related filovirus. Ebola is already extremely lethal, but it is not easily transmissible.” Other publication outlets that reported the moratorium include The Scientist Magazine, which captioned its story “Moratorium on Gain-of-Function Research” and appeared in the October 21, 2014 edition [17]; Science magazine, which titled its report “Researchers rail against moratorium on risky virus experiments” on October 22, 2014 [18]; and The Kennedy Institute of Ethics of Georgetown University, which captioned its report in its Bioethics Blog thus: “White House Suspends enhanced pathogen research” [19].

Neither the White House statement nor the NYT report of it made any connection in the moratorium to the then-unfolding Ebola epidemic in West Africa. However, what the 2014 moratorium explicitly acknowledged is that the USG was funding studies, according to the White House notice, to “enhance” viruses’ “pathogenicity or by increasing [their] transmissibility”, and what the NYT report called making “certain infectious agents more dangerous” in “risky biological” experiments — acts that are in possible contravention of international statutes (under the Biological Weapons Convention [BWC] which came into effect in 1975) and US federal laws. What is also worthy of note is that the GOF experiments that the ban was specifically addressing were those being conducted in US labs, and not in China.

The 2014 Ban Suspended in December 2017, Permitting US Funding “to Create, Transfer, or Use Enhanced Pathogens with Pandemic Potential”

The 2014 moratorium lasted for three years until it was lifted in 2017 by President Donald Trump, the Trump White House, or the Trump administration’s OSTP. However, the suspension was communicated not by the White House but by the NIH in a bulletin titled “Notice Announcing the Removal of the Funding Pause for Gain-of-Function Research Projects” [20], which was released and placed on the federal health agency’s website, and in statements made to the press by senior NIH officials, including the agency’s director Dr. Francis S. Collins, on December 19, 2017. Significantly, the Notice contains critical information from another document that preceded it entitled “Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight (P3CO)” [21] that had been released and posted on the NIH’s website on January 9, 2017 (P3CO Guidance, from now on).

According to the first sentence in the Notice, P3CO Guidance was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NIH’s home department. These guidelines were the outcome of the deliberative process the Obama moratorium had required before federal financing of such experiments were to be resumed. However, the HHS recommendations were culled from the more extensive ones presented to the USG by one of the agencies, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), that had been tasked to investigate the evaluation and oversight of GOF research into extremely dangerous toxins. As the P3CO Guidance reveals, these stipulations “aligned with the approach recommended by the” NSABB. The NSABB recommendations are contained in a document entitled A Report of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity: Recommendations for the Evaluation and Oversight of Proposed Gain-of-Function Research and was released in May 2016 (NSAAB Report, hereafter). Curiously, the NIH link to the NSABB Report [22] has been removed. However, a version of it is available on the Internet [23]. The Report contains expansive details on GOF experiments not mentioned in the P3CO Guidance, with the latter reproducing the core recommendations from the former.

Using some of those proposals, the P3CO Guidance specifically refers to the NIH’s decision to recommence “federally funded research that is anticipated to create, transfer, or use enhanced pathogens with pandemic potential.” However, the NSABB Report made no such categorical recommendation. In fact, as will be revealed shortly, the Report actually warned the USG against funding GOF laboratory experiments that manufacture “enhanced pathogens.” Using the definition provided by the NSABB, the P3CO Guidance defines “A Potential pandemic pathogen (PPP) is one that satisfies both of the following” attributes (emphasis in original):

(1) “It is likely highly transmissible and likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations.”

(2) “It is likely highly virulent and likely to cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans.”

The guidelines further make this clear and extremely critical distinction between: (a) “An enhanced PPP is a PPP resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen’s transmissibility and/or virulence” achievable in a lab via GOF experiments, versus (b) “Wild-type pathogens that are circulating or have been recovered from nature are not enhanced PPPs, regardless of their pandemic potential” (emphasis in original). In short, an “enhanced” pandemic pathogen is manmade (and genetically engineered) in a lab, unlike “wild-type pathogens” (zoonotic) which are the products of nature.

So, there it is in black and white: In 2017, the USG (re)started funding GOF experiments that will combine to “create, transfer, or use” genetically enhanced PPPs that are highly transmissible and capable of uncontrollable spread in human populations as well as highly virulent and can cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans. (For extensive details on these two attributes, see the NSABB recommendations: pp. 41–42).

It is to be noted, however, that GOF experiments integrating the two attributes of enhanced PPPs that the NIH lifted funding for are what the NSABB Report refers to as “GOF research of concern” or GOFROC (2), which “represents the small subset of studies that result in the generation of a pathogen with pandemic potential — that is, a pathogen that is highly virulent and highly transmissible, as judged by its likely ability to spread among human populations” (35). The document adds: “GOFROC entails the generation of pathogens — perhaps novel pathogens — with anticipated pandemic potential. The risks associated with such studies are uncertain but potentially significant” (41). The NSABB Report further writes: “Any study involving the generation of a pathogen exhibiting the two attributes above would be considered GOFROC” (42). It further warns: “Any route of experimentation that is anticipated to ultimately generate a pathogen that exhibits both of the characteristics above would be considered GOFROC and should be reviewed carefully before it can be funded” (42). The NSABB Report then states without ambiguity: “Importantly, a proposed experiment need not involve the simultaneous enhancement of both phenotypes” (42; emphasis in original).

In fact, the NSABB recommended against combining the two attributes specifically for GOF experiments pertaining to coronaviruses. Highlighting the “Risks and Benefits Assessment” for such pathogens, the Report declares: “For coronaviruses, GOF studies that would create strains with increased transmissibility among mammals may entail significant risks if they also increase human transmission. The risks, were this combination to occur, would include increased probability of an outbreak escaping local control and increased likelihood of global consequences. In addition, experiments that enhance coronavirus growth in culture would likely increase the possibility of laboratory acquired infections” (14).

The NSABB Report further asserts: “Manipulations that increase transmissibility, increase pathogenicity, and enable a pathogen to more readily spread through the population have the greatest potential to increase risk; in some strains even a moderate increase might be a concern” (35). So, the NSABB had predicted the lab-leak possibility (not “theory”) of the bioengineering of such pathogens — a lab leak, the agency also rightly foresaw and foretold, that could result in an “increased likelihood of global consequences”, which is another definition of a pandemic.

Crucially, the NSABB recommendations were for permission of GOF experiments for “pathogens that can or will emerge in nature” (43), or what the P3CO Guidance calls “Wild-type pathogens” “recovered from nature.” The NSABB Report makes this important clarification: “GOFROC may be permissible if the study were to generate a pathogen that is anticipated to arise in nature or if the study were to provide insight into natural evolutionary processes” (43). As the Report makes abundantly clear, permitted GOFROC funding for a “pathogen that is anticipated to be generated must be judged, based on scientific evidence, to be able to arise by natural processes” (43; emphasis in original). But the HHS recommendations were not for these types of pathogens; rather, they were for “enhanced pathogens”, which are genetically engineered via GOF research in labs. And the NSABB’s opposition to such laboratory-created pathogens is crystal clear, as the Report declares: “GOFROC would not be permissible if it were to generate a laboratory pathogen that is highly unlikely to arise in nature” (43). Therefore, NIH funding beginning in December 2017 to create, transfer and use genetically mutated and enhanced “respiratory models” of PPPs apparently violated NSABB recommendations.

According to the P3CO Guidance, creating such highly virulent PPPs also requires developing medical countermeasures (test kits, vaccines, etc.) to diagnose, treat and/or combat them. Thus, under the “Risk Mitigation and Project Oversight” section, the recommendations require those conducting GOF experiments to create, transfer or use PPPs should also be in the position of “Evaluating existing evidence of medical countermeasures (MCM) efficacy, or conducting experiments to determine MCM efficacy resulting against agents or toxins resulting from the project.” In statements made to the press announcing the suspension, the director of the NIH stated the health agency was also developing effective medical countermeasures, including vaccines, “against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health.” (More on the director’s statement on the invention of PPPs and the creation of vaccines for them in Part IV.)

In terms of transparency, this is what the HHS recommendations state: “To the maximum extent possible, agencies’ enhanced PPP review mechanism should provide transparency to the public regarding funded projects involving the creation, transfer, or use of enhanced PPPs.” Although (as will be shown below), there is public information regarding where (including states or locations in the US) some of these experiments are being conducted, there is less so on where the invented PPPs are transferred to or being used. (The NSABB Report provides more extensive transparency measures for GOF experiments to create PPPs.) In fact, there was and has been hardly any public involvement and participation in the deliberations that allowed the refunding to manufacture these deadly PPPs. Rather, discussions and decisions to do so were and have been overwhelmingly left in the hands of select scientists and government officials.

The International Dimension of Using GOF Experiments to Create Potential Pandemic Pathogens for “Dual Use Research” Purposes

Additionally, these experiments are not limited to the US only. They are to be shared with its international partners. The HHS recommendations note this fact under the section “International Engagement”, stating, “the United States Government should engage with other countries about policies concerning creation, transfer and use of PPPs, encouraging the development of harmonized policy guidance.” Which means that the US and its international partners have been collaborating to employ GOF experiments to genetically alter and “create, transfer and use” “enhanced pathogens” by making them potentially highly transmissible and deadlier in human populations. And they have been doing so for “dual-use research”, “biodefense” and “biotechnology” purposes. (“Dual-use research” will be explained shortly. The other two concepts, which appear in NIH GOF research projects descriptions into PPPs, will be described in a sub-section below.) But there is also no public record regarding countries the US has been collaborating with to manufacture enhanced PPPs since the moratorium was lifted.

However, there is public documentation showing the US (as the 2014 moratorium testified) and other (mainly European) countries were already using GOF experiments with virulent viruses prior to the US lifting the ban. Some of these countries were doing so in collaboration with the US. The NSABB Report notes that “GOFROC is being conducted in a number of countries already” (38); “GOF research and GOFROC are being conducted in a number of countries” (39). The Report cites the following documents to support its claim: (1) European Commission (EC): Gain of Function: experimental applications relating to potentially pandemic pathogens. European Academies Science Advisory Council, EASAC Policy Report 27, October 2015 [24]; (2) France: France-US Bilateral Workshop on Dual Use Research Issues: Summary Report, February 11, 2016; and (3) Germany: Summary Report: Dual Use Research on Microbes: Biosafety, Biosecurity, Responsibility. December 10–12 2014 [25]. The France-US Bilateral Workshop on Dual Use Research Issues: Summary Report is not publicly available.

What is clear from those documents that are in the public domain is that the US and its EU partners have been using GOF genetic engineering technology for “Dual Use Research” (DUR) experimentation with and creation of “enhanced” PPPs. What is “dual use”? According to Cornell University Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), a “’dual use’ item is one that has civil applications as well as terrorism and military or weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related applications” [26]. The EU also defines dual use as “goods, software and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications” [27]. For its part, the EC document mentioned above defines “dual-use” as follows: “Initially used to refer to the aspects of certain materials, information and techniques that are useful in both military and civilian spheres. The expression is increasingly used to refer also to harmful misuse and peaceful activities” (6).

The NSABB Report mentions GOF DUR and GOF DURC (Dual Use Research of Concern) numerous times. In fact, as documented in its Report (pp. 96–100), part of the charge given to the NSABB by the HHS was to provide to the USG “advice, guidance and leadership regarding biosecurity oversight of dual use research” into enhanced PPPs using GOF. Additionally, the NSABB will “provide advice and recommend specific strategies for the efficient and effective oversight of federally conducted or supported dual use biological research” (96, emphasis added).

What is evident, then, is that the US and its European partners have been using GOF research with PPPs for dual use — civilian and military — intentions and applications years before COVID-19 emerged. In fact, it is worthwhile to recall that the Obama moratorium was placed in government archives titled “dual use”, an ascription that reveals that US-financed GOF research with SARS, MERS and influenza before the ban was for both civilian and military purposes. Clearly, therefore, the GOF experiments the US and EU partners are performing with PPPs, in addition to civil uses, involve what the Cornell LII refers to as WMD-related applications.

In addition to the EU nations, the NSABB Report commends “the extensive input into its deliberations by experts representing foreign governments, international organizations, academia, the scientific publishing industry and others during presentations and comments” at its meetings, etc. (51). Included on its list of “Invited speakers, presenters, and panelists” are those from: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; the WHO; the European Commission; Novartis Vaccines; The Woodrow Wilson Center; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories; BioCryst Pharmaceuticals; European Academies of Sciences; EpiVax Inc.; Seqirus; Gryphon Scientific; Foundation for Vaccine Research; Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation; and Battelle.

Harvard University; Stanford University; Duke University; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Vanderbilt University; Erasmus Medical Center (Netherlands); Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University; Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford; Johns Hopkins University; Columbia University; McGill University; University of Cambridge; Oxford University; Monash University (Australia); National Defense Medical College (Japan); University of Hong Kong; University of Freiburg (Germany); and Imperial College (London).

Canada; Royal Scientific Society of Jordan; Embassy of The Netherlands, Washington, D.C.; Harvard School of Public Health; the US Food and Drug Administration; the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the European Commission; The Hague, Netherlands; the US National Institutes of Health; and the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification, among many others (pp. 68–73).

Part of the deliberations also involved academic freedom, for example as to how medical and scientific journals share and communicate to the public scientific findings and research products emanating from such experiments (p. 64). For instance, Nature Publishing Group, an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in science and medicine, participated in the discussions. (Some of the Group’s publications, Nature and Nature Medicine for instance, will feature prominently in this investigation.)

The NSABB Report does not provide the positions these “speakers, presenters and panelists” took regarding GOF experiments to genetically engineer enhanced PPPs in labs. (Minutes and/or notes from the deliberations, attainable via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), could possibly make positions taken by such entities public.) What is indisputable, however, is that US agencies (such as the NIH, the CDC, the FDA, etc.) and international health agencies (such as the WHO), countries (China, the EU, Australia, Japan, for example), universities (Oxford, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Pittsburgh, Columbia, Stanford, Imperial College, etc.), and pharmaceutical companies (Novartis Vaccines, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, etc.), among others, were and are aware, before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, of the fact that coronaviruses and other virulent pathogens can be genetically engineered and manufactured in labs via GOF experiments for DUR purposes.

For their part, as the EC Policy Report (hereafter, Policy Report) discloses, EU countries were already by 2015 funding GOF “experiments on novel potential pandemic pathogens” (12), adding that member states were involved in “the manipulation of potential pathogens” (17) or “laboratory-modified viruses” (28) that have bioethical, biosafety, biosecurity and even biodefense implications. The Policy Report’s Foreword states unequivocally: “In Gain of function (GoF) studies, genes are experimentally modified to study determinants of biological function” (v). (Although the document asserts that member states were involved in the genetic engineering experiments to create PPPs, not all member EU nations were. In fact, some of those states were never aware of such experiments and their DUR intentions.)

The Policy Report does not name the PPPs, other than the use of GOF in “recent experimental manipulations of the influenza virus, particularly the H5N1, to affect its transmission potential” (1). As the document asserts, GOF “work can provide insight on the fundamental biology of the influenza virus, including virulence, immunogenicity, host range and transmissibility, and might help to drive health benefits, including the prioritization and development of pre-pandemic vaccines” (5). Additionally, “Research, including the study of transmissibility, host range, resistance, immunogenicity, pathogenicity and virulence is critical to improving awareness of public health threats from pandemic influenza” (5). But what is evident, as the title of the document makes clear, is that the EU was engaged in GOF studies on “potentially pandemic pathogens” — plural. The research being undertaken focused on how these viruses “might acquire airborne transmissibility between people” (5). Like their US counterpart, EU nations were using GOF technology in DUR experiments to create “laboratory-modified viruses” that could be transmitted via respiratory droplets (from human to human, and not animal to human) years before COVID-19, which, it has been determined is also spread by airborne particles, appeared in 2019 as a scourge.

For its part, the Summary Report: Dual Use Research on Microbes: Biosafety, Biosecurity, Responsibility of 2014 came out of a symposium held in Germany and “organized by the Volkswagen Foundation in conjunction with the Max Planck Society.” The “conference focused on research on microbes, particularly gain of function (GOF) research on human pathogenic viruses like influenza, SARS and MERS.” The Summary Report (SR) leaves no doubt that these viruses were being genetically modified via GOF. It makes clear that the discussions were focused on how to tweak viruses into “potentially pandemic pathogens.” Moreover, the SR states that part of the conference’s “discussion focused on whether microbes made through these experiments are a biosafety threat to humanity — so they shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.” The point here is inarguable: EU nations, clearly aware that their experiments with potential pandemic pathogens for DUR purposes posed a “biosafety threat to humanity”, allowed such research to be undertaken regardless.

Additionally, the SR reveals that sections of the discussion at the symposium also focused on the idea that “tweaked viruses could escape or be stolen from the laboratory and could cause a pandemic.” According to the document, “To judge arguments and give time for public debates, the [European] scientific community issued a one-year moratorium, lasting until January 2013. Fifteen agents or toxins and seven classes of research of special concerns were named and guidelines developed during the moratorium.” (The SR does not disclose these fifteen agents or toxins.) As the SR states, “there is still not a solution in sight as to how and by whom DURC should be governed, neither in the USA nor in Europe.” For example, that exemptions to making these viruses in labs are granted “without public input probably doesn’t raise public’s trust in the existing decision process.” The SR concludes, “Without doubt, the Volkswagen Foundation’s DURC conference with speaker and attendees from all parts of society and the world, was a trust building event and hopefully also one that will lead to the establishment of global regulatory structures that will help humankind to deal with DURC.” Unfortunately, there are still, even in 2021, no global regulatory structures that govern the GOF laboratory invention of PPPs for DURC.

One area of focus that has been entirely absent in the so-called lab origins theory is this EU GOF research to manufacture potential pandemic pathogens in labs for dual use purposes. No media outlets, scientific publications and/or “concerned” scientists in the West have brought up this dimension in the ongoing discourse on COVID-19.

What, therefore, is undeniable is that some countries, universities, agencies and companies and media and scientific publishing organizations have been cognizant that PPPs can be and are being genetically engineered in labs for DUR intentions. Additionally, EU nations were using GOF to prioritize and develop “pre-pandemic vaccines” for the lab-created PPPs. However, they have remained suspiciously silent about this fact during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, or have advanced (until the Wade piece appeared) only one theory of origins for the novel coronavirus — SARS-CoV-2 originated in animals (bats, pangolins, etc.) in China. For instance, some countries, including those in the EU, the US and Australia, and backed by the UN, have pushed for an international investigation on the source of the novel coronavirus that caused the current pandemic. This inquiry is mandated to focus only on the microbe’s supposed zoonotic origin. However, any probe that fails to consider the genetically engineered novel coronavirus that the EU, the US and their partners have been creating, transferring and using since December 2017 as well as the unnatural novel coronaviruses US researchers disclosed in 2015 and 2016 will be a sham and a façade and done to bolster the single narrative propagated by the West, its media and scientists. (There will be more on the inquiry in Part V.)

Any unbiased investigation must consider the genetically mutated novel coronavirus created by the US and announced in 2015 especially because it has since been revealed [28] during the ongoing pandemic that the NIH devoted $3.7 million to fund coronaviruses experiments on bats captured from caves in China in the Chinese laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has been at the center of speculations (amplified after the Wade article) surrounding the novel coronavirus outbreak. Such funding continued into 2019 (when the USG was already using GOF experiments to manufacture enhanced PPPs in US labs.) According to revelations made by US Republican Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) [29, 30], the USG knew that the WIV was conducting “dangerous research” in two labs via “U.S. Government … funding” that extended to “fiscal year 2019.” This US-funded research was focused on coronaviruses “from bats.” However, what is not known is whether this research was for DUR purposes; undeniably, it was being done via GOF. Cruz failed to reveal that US-funded GOF experiments with coronaviruses (and other pathogens) were taking place in US labs at the same time similar research were being funded in China.

Citing from official documents he said he obtained from the NIH, Cruz disclosed that the health agency’s funding was for various Asian countries (including China) for “studies” that focused on “viral diversity in animal [bats reservoirs], surveying people that lived in high-risk communities for evidence of bats coronavirus infection and conducting laboratory experiments to analyze and predict which newly-discovered viruses pose the greatest threats to human health.” With specific reference to the WIV, the NIH revealed that its funding was for supporting experiments for “coronavirus screening and serology of non-human samples; viral pathogenesis, serological testing, host receptor binding, spike S-protein sequencing, and in vitro and in vivo virus characterization.” However, the NIH clarified that its funding had not “supported the creation of recombinant viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” “Recombinant viruses” (which will be expansively explained in Part II) are created via nature or genetic engineering, for instance through GOF methods for the latter. This declaration by the NIH is false because, as will be shown in Part II, the health agency’s funding of experiments at the WIV laboratory involved recombinant viruses, including coronaviruses. (Part II will show that critical components of research fundamental to the GOF-based invention of the 2015 US lab-made novel coronavirus were done at the WIV.)

It is pivotal to also point out that one of the lab facilities at the WIV, the National High-Level Biosafety Laboratory, is the product of joint-collaboration between China and France. Collaborations between the two countries around the lab have been going on since 2015 [31]. As the NSABB Report also documents, France and the US had cooperated in PPPs “dual use” research. What is not in the public domain is whether the China-France joint project was also based on dual use research experiments with deadly pathogens.

Undoubtedly, the Obama moratorium was cancelled for this simple reason: To resume GOF experiments with extremely dangerous toxins and create, transfer or use variants of them that are deadlier and easily transmissible and cause significant disease/deaths among humans. Towards that end, the resumption was to continue experiments that were halted in 2014 into SARS, MERS and influenza. However, according to press reports of the NIH Notice, the new regulations that US-permitted and -funded GOF experiments will now add new PPPs that will be potentially transmitted via respiratory droplets. As the NYT stated in its story on the ban reversal, “But the new regulations apply to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic. For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus transmissible through the air, said [NIH Director] Dr. Collins.” Thus, by this admission an aerosol or manmade Ebola is also being (or has been) developed by the US and its agencies via GOF experiments in labs. So too are other aerosol-created pathogens via GOF research in labs. As revealed earlier, the NIH Statement that announced the 2014 Obama moratorium had also confirmed that “’GOF studies’ refers to scientific research that increases the ability of any of these infectious agents [MERS, SARS, etc.] to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility among mammals by respiratory droplets.”

Thus, even before the Obama moratorium was put in place, using GOF experiments to invent laboratory-created pathogens transmitted by respiratory droplets by the US and the EU was a scientific reality, and not a conspiracy theory. Referring specifically to coronaviruses, the NSABB Report states: “Given that most pandemics are associated with respiratory transmission, [laboratory-generated] pathogens capable of airborne transmission were considered to be of most acute concern” (52). As the Report further notes, “Opponents and critics of GOF research have generally focused their concern on a subset of GOF studies — those that involve enhancing the pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals (particularly by the respiratory route), which may result in the generation of novel pathogens with pandemic potential” (62). The USG ignored such concerns and in December 2017 restarted funding GOF experiments in US labs that will create such “enhanced pathogens.”

The US/Western Media Report of the Cancellation: The US “Will” Be Funding Experiments that “Will” Deliberately Genetically Engineer Enhanced PPPs in Labs Beginning in December 2017

The Trump administration’s cancellation of the Obama moratorium was widely reported by news media and other publication (magazines, journals, etc.) outlets in the US and other countries, especially in the United Kingdom. Although Part V will be devoted to show the media’s woeful failure to engage how its reports of the December 2017 suspension connect or do not connect to the ongoing pandemic, it is worthwhile to reproduce at this stage how the press (and other media) robustly covered the US reversal of the Obama ban.

Here is a broad sample of that coverage:

The NYT communicated the suspension in a story published on 12/19/2017 and headlined “A Federal Ban on Lethal Viruses is Lifted.” Its opening paragraph reveals that the reversal “ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal.” Moreover, the federal funding that was halted in 2014 was on “efforts to make three viruses more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing [MERS and [SARS].” It states that the “new regulations” that will be introduced following the reversal will “apply to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic”, adding further: “Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic.” According to the report, the scientific process that will be used in such research projects is “known as ‘gain of function’”, which makes “pathogens more deadly or more transmissible” [32].

The Washington Post (WaPo) reported the story on 12/19/2017 with the title: “U.S. Lifts research moratorium on enhancing germs’ danger.” The story discloses that the lifting of the ban will allow for a “new plan for assessing applications to study these and other dangerous pathogens” that will make them “more virulent and transmissible.” According to the newspaper, the “new policy” will apply to “pathogens capable of creating a pandemic.” Furthermore, the paper writes: “The end of the moratorium applies to research on SARS, MERS, influenza and other dangerous viruses.” Additionally, “This kind of research is known as ‘gain of function’ because it introduces new abilities into existing germs” [33].

NPR (National Public Radio) reported it on 12/19/2017 with the headline: “NIH Lifts Ban On Research That Could Make Deadly Viruses Even Worse.” Its story added the following: “The research involves three viruses — influenza, SARS, and MERS — that could kill millions if mutated in a way that let the germs spread quickly among people”; “Biologists say they may need to alter these viruses in the lab to understand what genetic changes matter in starting pandemics, so they can understand the risks and get ready. But some of their past efforts to tinker with viruses have made other scientists uneasy” [34].

CBS News did so on 12/20/2017 with the title: “U.S. officials lift ban on making lethal viruses in labs”; its story provided this vital information: “The decision lifts funding pause put into place in October 2014 on experiments involving influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) viruses” [35].

NBC News on 12/19/2017 headlined its coverage this way: “NIH lifts limits on making deadly new viruses in the lab.” Its lead paragraph stated: “The National Institutes of Health has lifted a moratorium on making flu and other viruses more deadly and easier to spread” [36].

Yahoo News on 12/19/2017 titled its report as follows: “U.S. Lifts ban on Studies that Enhance Dangerous Germs.” Its lead paragraph explained: “The U.S. government on Tuesday lifted a 2014 temporary ban on funding research involving the flu and other pathogens in which scientists deliberately make them more transmissible or more deadly” [37].

CNN on 12/19/2017 titled its story this way: “Why the [U.S.] government is creating lethal viruses.” The report then added: “The decision brings an end to a three-year moratorium on research involving the influenza virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (known as SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (or MERS).” It adds further: “Critics say the research could unleash a new germ that threatens millions if it is not properly stored or if it escapes from a lab” [38].

Reuters on December 19, 2017 headlined its report thus: “U.S. lifts funding ban on studies that enhance dangerous germs.” The story stated that the U.S. Government “lifted a 2014 temporary ban on funding research involving the flu and other pathogens in which scientists deliberately make them more transmissible or more deadly” [39].

Business Insider on 12/20/2017 titled its report this way: “The US government is lifting a ban on engineering deadly viruses to make them more dangerous.” Part of the story revealed: “The NIH’s policy shift will allow researchers to take already dangerous viruses and genetically engineer them to be more contagious or deadly. That could mean taking a flu strain or a virus like MERS or SARS and modifying them so they spread more easily or become more fatal” [40].

The New York Daily News on 12/19/2017 titled its report thus: “U.S. lifts ban on funding risky virus research” [41].

The San Francisco Chronicle (12/19/2007) titled its report: “Federal ban on making lethal viruses lifted.” The lead paragraph read: “Federal officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding that alters germs to make them lethal” [42]. (This was a relay of the NYT story.)

Reddit, the social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website, entitled its report of 12/19/2017 thus: “A Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted”, which also tagged the NYT story [43].

Buzzfeed, the Internet and digital news and entertainment website, on 12/20/2017 headlined its report: “The US Government Just Lifted a Ban on Making Deadly Viruses Even More Dangerous.” Its lead paragraph added: “A new policy from the federal government allows scientists to make viruses more deadly or dangerous. Critics say this research could inadvertently release the very threat the scientists are trying to counter” [44].

AlterNet on 12/20/2017 titled its report: “U.S. Government Lifts Ban on Making Viruses More Deadly and Transmissible” [45].

Salon magazine relayed the AlterNet story on 12/24/2017 with this headline: “U.S. lifts ban on making viruses more transmissible — Like a Horror Movie Prologue” [46].

Daily Kos on 12/19/2017 posted news of the repeal on its website under this title: “Government will once again pay for scientists to make deadly viruses even deadlier” [47].

Science magazine (12/19/2017) captioned its report: “NIH lifts 3-year ban on funding risky virus studies.” The funding will permit scientists to use “’gain-of-function’ (GOF) studies that make pathogens more potent” [48].

Scientific American magazine headlined its story of 12/10/2017: “U.S. Lifts Moratorium on Funding, Controversial, High-Risk Virus Research.” Its opening paragraph stated: “The federal government announced on Tuesday that it is lifting a three-year moratorium on funding on controversial research that involves genetically altering viruses in ways that could make them more contagious, more deadly, or both — and that critics say risks triggering a catastrophic pandemic.” It noted in the next section that GOF will be used in such studies which will “aim to understand genetic changes that can make viruses such as” SARS, MERS, etc. “more transmissible from person to person” [49].

Nature magazine titled its 12/19/2017 report thus: “US government lifts ban on risky pathogen research”, and subtitled it: “The National Institutes of Health will again fund research that makes viruses more dangerous” [50].

Smithsonian Magazine on 12/19/2017 communicated the suspension with this title: “NIH Lifts Ban on Funding High-Risk Virus Research”, and subtitle: “Manipulating viruses could help prepare the U.S. for future pandemics, but it could also risk starting the next outbreak.” The magazine’s lead paragraph noted: “The National Institutes of Health has lifted a three-year moratorium on controversial experiments that carry the risk of triggering a viral pandemic, but may also prepare the United States for a deadly outbreak” [51].

Popular Mechanics magazine on 12/20/2017 announced its coverage this way: “Feds Lift Ban on Making Viruses More Lethal.” Its subtitle read: “Now Scientists can perform experiments that were previously considered too dangerous” [52].

The Website ClinicalConnection on 12/19/2017 labeled its report thus: “U.S. Lifts Ban on Laboratory-Made Lethal Viruses.” Its story then stated: “The research in question would involve tweaking viruses to make them more lethal” [53].

AOL News on 12/19/2017 entitled its coverage: “US lifts ban on risky research to make viruses more deadly.” Its lead paragraph stated: “The National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday that it would allow the federal government to resume funding controversial research that makes viruses more contagious and deadly — despite scientists’ concern that the risks of such experiments outweigh potential advantages” [54].

ANONHQ.COM reported the cancellation on January 5, 2018 under the title: “Didn’t Have Enough To Worry About? Trump Quietly Lifts Obama Ban On Making Lethal Viruses” [55].

As already stated, newspapers and other publication outlets in the UK also covered the annulment as the following examples show:

The Daily Telegraph bannered its 12/20/2017 coverage this way: “US reverses ban on experimenting with deadly viruses despite warning it could cause ‘accidental pandemic’” [56].

The Daily Mail headlined its 12/19/2017 coverage thus: “Ban on funding for ‘super pathogen’ experiments lifted despite fears they could be used for bioterror attacks and accidentally cause a pandemic” [57].

The Independent on 12/20/2017 titled its coverage: “US lifts ban on deadly virus experiments despite security risks.” Its story added: “Development of three viruses — influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome ([SARS]), and Middle East respiratory syndrome ([MERS]) — will begin shortly.” The newspaper adjoined: “The previous Obama administration had halted the development of the diseases in 2014 primarily out of safety concerns” [58].

The BBC (12/20/2017) titled its report thus: “US lifts ban on lethal virus experiments despite security risks.” In its story, the BBC noted that the cancellation will allow for “making lethal viruses in the lab”, and further emphatically asserted: US “Labs will now be able to manufacture strains of influenza, [SARS] and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome ([MERS]).” The story further revealed that “Critics say such ‘gain-of-function’ research still risks creating an accidental pandemic” [59].

Metro newspaper captioned its coverage (12/19/2017) of the suspension thus: “US lifts ban on making lethal viruses ‘risking accidental pandemic’.” Its lead paragraph read: “US labs are now allowed to cook up lethal viruses after a ban was lifted” [60].

The Lancet, the British medical journal, titled its report: “Ban on Gain-of-function studies ends.” The report added: The NIH “would resume funding gain-of-function experiments” involving influenza, MERS and SARS. (Volume 18, Issue 2, P148–149, February 01, 2018.)

Select global publications that communicated the suspension include:

The Canadian English-language newspaper, National Post, announced the suspension on December 20, 2017 titled “U.S. lifts moratorium on studying pathogens capable of creating a viral pandemic” [61];

The European Union (EU) Times reported it on December 21, 2017 under the caption “US lifts ban on pandemic pathogen tweaks” [62]. Its lead paragraph stated: “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has lifted a three-year moratorium on civilian gain-of-function (GOF) research that enhances the potency of pandemic pathogens such as SARS, the flu and Ebola”;

The Australian news site news.com.au titled its coverage of December 21, 2017: “US lifts ban on genetically modifying viruses to make them more deadly”; its lead paragraph wrote: “Genetic engineers can now mutate viruses to make them even more dangerous after the United States scrapped laws banning such experiments.” The site also added: “President Trump’s Federal Government yesterday ended a three-year moratorium allowing such research to be funded” [63];

The Pakistani English-language daily newspaper, Pakistan Today, titled its coverage of December 20, 2017 as “US lifts funding ban on studies that enhance dangerous germs” [64].

All these reports communicated this absolutely indisputable fact: The Trump administration reversed the Obama moratorium and, in doing so, re-permitted US researchers, using tax dollars, to employ GOF experiments to genetically mutate and “create, transfer and use” enhanced pathogens such as the coronaviruses MERS and SARS, influenza, Ebola, etc. in labs. In fact, as many of the reports stated almost in unison, the reversal of the moratorium “will” allow US scientists to “deliberately make [virulent viruses] more transmissible or more deadly” by genetically engineering and altering their genomes. (That the news reports confirmed that the US “will” be making these pathogens in labs indicate the absolute certainty and inevitability that the pathogens will be created.) Such transmission, some of the reports made clear, “will” be directly from person to person, and not from animals to humans. And as the reports also unanimously agreed: The outcome of such experiments “will” invent “new” manmade or artificial strains of the viruses, which could have potential for creating pandemics — and the reason the NIH (and the Cambridge Working Group) called them Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs). Some of the news reports also claimed the GOF experiments “will” prepare the US for pandemics that such manufactured new PPPs might cause.

Some US GOF-Funded Research between 2017 and 2019 and Their “Biodefense” and “Biotechnology” Focus

Publicly available documented evidence reveal that once the ban was revoked in December 2017, the Trump administration restarted approving and financing GOF experiments to create, transfer and use enhanced PPPs [65]. Although the first two projects approved were for influenza viruses, the administration also in 2017 and in the years following approved to refund GOF research into coronaviruses, especially SARS and MERS in US labs. (Funding experiments with Ebola and other dangerous germs were also recommenced, although these were not stopped by the ban in the first place.) In fact, there was an incremental funding for such experiments between 2017 and 2019, years leading into the emergence of COVID-19.

Information about these projects is available on NIH Reporter [66, 67], a public and an electronic searchable repository and tool of NIH-funded research projects. (Here are the IDs or project numbers for some of the (re)approved experiments with coronaviruses in US labs: (1) 2612015000031–2–26100015–2; (2) 1K22AI134993–01; (3) 5U19AI107810–05; (4) 5R01AI132178–03; (5) 5R01AI137472–02; (6) 1R01AI127521–01A1; (7) 5R01AI104711–05; (8) 1Z1AAI005125–04; (9) 1R01AI139092–01; and (10) 5F30AI129229–03.) Some of them focus on: respiratory virus research on SARS and MERS; the characterization of novel genes encoded in the RNA and DNA of viruses such as SARS, MERS, etc.; mechanisms in coronavirus replication and pathogenesis; SARS-CoV-host-cell interactions and vaccine development; coronavirus vaccine development; coronavirus replication and pathogenesis; development of next-generation messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technologies against diverse viral pathogens, including coronaviruses; mRNA vaccines (or mRNA gene therapy inoculation) developed through biotechnology as a robust platform for inventing new vaccines in response to diverse viral pathogens with pandemic pathogens; rational design and evaluation of novel mRNA vaccines; gene manipulation and vaccine development; structure and function of coronavirus spike proteins; immunogenicity and mutations in coronavirus spike proteins; immunogenicity and designing vaccines for coronavirus; structure and mechanism of programmed ribosomal frameshifting in SARS coronavirus; engineer(ing) structure-guided mutants of SARS coronavirus via programmed frameshifting, among many others.

Additionally, the projects’ terms of research reference with coronaviruses (and other dangerous pathogens) include “virus replication”; “mutation”; “reverse genetics”; “RNA Interference”; “Recombinant Virus”; “Gene Targeting”; “Molecular Cloning”; “Synthetic Genes”; “Biochemical Genetics”; “Genetic Transcription”; “Novel” (as in Novel viruses or vaccines); “Viral Genome”; “Protein Engineering”; “Vaccine Design”; “Vaccine Development”, “Hybrids” (as in in the genetic engineering of a new virus produced from two prior species); “Pandemic Disease”; “Pandemic viruses”, etc. As will be explained in Part II, some of these concepts come right out of what GOF technology affords to the bioengineering of pathogens in labs. Take protein engineering, for instance, which is the process by which a researcher “modifies a protein sequence through substitution, insertion, or deletion of nucleotides in the encoding gene, with the goal of obtaining a modified protein that is more suitable for a particular application or purpose than the unmodified protein” [68].

What these projects show and confirm is the USG’s robust funding of and involvement in the making and mutation of synthetic, lab-engineered viruses and vaccinations to combat them. They also validate the media and other outlets’ disclosure of US plans to undertake these genetic engineering experiments with PPPs announced in 2017. As information on the website reveals, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Antonio Fauci approved the (re)funding for the majority of these GOF-based experiments in US labs.

What is especially important is that the majority of these US-funded GOF experiments with these dangerous microbes are for what the research projects clearly describe as “biodefense” and “biotechnology” purposes. In fact, a cursory look at most NIH- and NIAID-funded GOF-based SARS, MERS, Ebola, etc., research during these years confirm this focus. Simply defined, “biodefense” is “the means or methods of preventing, detecting, or managing an attack involving biological weapons” [69]. Additionally, biodefense is the development and use of and research into medical measures, technology, systems, and pathogens that protect against bioterrorism as well as preparations for biological attacks and any defensive measures taken against an attack using viruses, bacteria and toxins. Thus, while a biodefense research with pandemic pathogens is one way to invent medical measures to protect people against bioterrorism attacks with such germs, concurrent research would mean the existence or invention of such pathogens as biodefense germs in the first place.

Plainly, “biotechnology” is “the manipulation (as through genetic engineering) of living organisms or their components to produce useful usually commercial products” [70]. Although this definition focuses on the beneficial side of the practice, there is also a risky aspect to it, such as the purposeful manipulation of microbes to “enhance” them to cause harm or pandemics. As understood in the context of US-funded GOF experiments to create, transfer and use PPPs in labs, biotechnology refers to the genetic engineering to mutate and design new enhanced pathogens that can cause potential pandemics (or mass deaths).

More significantly, the “biodefense” and “biotechnology” aspects of US GOF laboratory experiments to create, transfer and use PPPs tie in with this other research purposes with the pathogens which were, as already stated multiple times in this investigation, for dual use — civilian and military — research purposes. But not a single US politician, scientist or journalist has brought this focus to the attention of the public in the context of the ongoing pandemic.

It is pivotal to reiterate that it has not been proven that COVID-19 has any connection to the enhanced pathogens created through such GOF research.

However, what is critical to note about some of the 2017–2019 NIH-funded coronavirus experiments is that, since the pandemic emerged, they have now, according to information on the NIH funding website, seamlessly merged with COVID-19 funding by the agency. In fact, some of them have been entirely transformed into COVID-19 “research”.

Obama or Trump: Who Cancelled the 2014 Ban?

Although news and other reports clearly disclosed that the 2017 reversal was for the lifting of the 2014 ban, none of them mentioned who in the Trump administration suspended the Obama moratorium. A moratorium is a mix between a presidential executive order and a presidential memorandum. An executive order can only be rescinded or amended by another executive order. A presidential memorandum can only be changed by another memorandum. Similarly, a presidential moratorium can only be reversed by another moratorium. However, in the US, Congress or a federal court can also cancel a president’s executive order, memorandum or moratorium. For instance, federal courts have overturned executive orders/moratoriums issued by presidents, including those by Trump. However, there are no public documents that testify that Congress or a federal court cancelled the 2014 Obama moratorium. There is also no public record that Obama overturned his 2014 ban. It is indisputable, then, that the Obama ban was overridden by another president.

Moreover, President Trump overturned many of the executive orders, memorandums and moratoriums that former President Obama put in place during his eight years in office. In fact, there are public documents and even White House photos showing President Trump signing their reversal. But there is not a single document or photo recording President Trump overturning the 2014 Obama moratorium. But as one of the press reports stated in 2017: “Trump Quietly Lifts Obama Ban On Making Lethal Viruses.”

In fact, the majority of the newspapers/magazines/journals, etc. reports did not even mention that it was Obama and his administration that had actually imposed the moratorium that the Trump administration was lifting. Which then would mean that it is President Trump (or whomever is it that suspended the 2014 moratorium) that officially sanctioned the creation, transfer and use of enhanced PPPs in GOF DUR, biodefense and biotechnology experiments in US labs — experiments the NSABB had strongly recommended against. (President Joseph Biden, from his very first day in office, has been overturning some of Trump’s executive orders, moratoriums, etc., but none has been on reversing the Trump-/Trump administration-approved, ongoing invention of enhanced PPPs for biodefense and biotechnology intentions in US labs. In fact, there are no indications that the Trump administration informed the new administration of these continuing research.)

There is no document, however, in the Trump White House/OSTP websites or in Federal Government archives, that communicate who authorized the suspension and thereby permitted the manufacture of enhanced PPPs using taxpayers’ dollars. (In contrast, the Obama ban was documented and archived in White House and other Federal Government websites.) The only document that reported the reversal is the Notice released by the NIH on December 19, 2017. And that NIH Report was supplemented by a statement released by the agency’s director, Dr. Collins. In it, Dr. Collins stated authoritatively: “Today, the National Institutes of Health announced that it is lifting the funding pause dating back to October 2014 on gain-of-function (GOF) experiments involving influenza, SARS and MERS” [71].

But does the NIH have (the) authority to reverse a presidential executive order, moratorium or memorandum, notwithstanding the health agency stating that it did so exactly? More to the point: Does the NIH have (the) powers to approve of the invention of extremely deadly viruses for biodefense and biotechnology and DUR purposes? Here is the concluding clause in the opening paragraph/sentence in the Notice: “the National Institutes of Health is removing the funding pause on the provision of new or continuation funding for gain-of-function research projects.” The NIH cannot unilaterally lift a presidential moratorium that it did not authorize in the first place. And as the NIH Statement that was released to confirm the 2014 ban clearly expressed, the “NIH will be adhering to this funding pause until the robust and broad deliberative process described by the White House … is completed.” Additionally, the title of the NYT article reporting the 2014 moratorium wrote: “White House to Cut Funding for Risky Biological Study.” The clear meaning? It was the White House that “cut [the] funding” that ordered the moratorium; therefore, it was only the White House that must have restored the banned “funding for Risky Biological Study” of enhanced PPPs.

However, the bold claim by the NIH that it removed the funding pause is seriously undercut by statements in a document released by the HHS. In announcing two projects that were reviewed and approved in 2018 by the Trump administration to commence GOF research after the ban was suspended in 2017, the HHS asserts (in an undated announcement) that it was the White House OSTP that had lifted the ban following the submission of the P3CO Guidance in January 9, 2017 [72]. Yet, the HHS claims that the OSTP “Adoption of this framework [P3CO Guidance] removed the funding research pause on HHS research that was set forth by” the Obama moratorium. Obama was still president (albeit a lame duck) on the date the HHS avers the OSTP lifted the funding to permit GOF research. Given this timeline, it was the Obama OTSP and administration, the HHS implies, that granted the HHS funding “decisions on proposed research that is reasonably anticipated to create, transfer, or use PPPs resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen’s transmissibility or virulence in humans (enhanced PPPs). Enhanced PPPs do not include naturally occurring pathogens that are circulating in or have been recovered in nature, regardless of their pandemic potential” (emphasis added). It is worthwhile to highlight the HHS’s reinforcement of US-funded GOF experiments after December 2017: Such experiments, the HHS reaffirms, are to be solely focused on manufacturing artificial pathogens in labs that have pandemic potential. The HHS also makes this point clear: The funded GOF research will allow for making genetic changes that can enable enhanced PPPs to be deadlier and more easily transmissible from person to person (and not from animals to persons).

But approving the P3CO Guidance did not translate into overturning the ban. And there are multiple contradictions and factual inaccuracies in the HHS declarations.

First, there are no contemporaneous reports (in the press and in public White House or Federal Government documents) confirming the HHS assertion that the funding ban to recommence GOF experiments with PPPs was lifted by the OTSP in January 9, 2017. The only media stories that announced the suspension were those, as already shown above, that reported the USG/NIH decision in December 19, 2017.

Second, the claim is that the document “reversing” the ban was “issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on January 9, 2017.” However, as previously stated, the NIH in the first sentence in the Notice unambiguously claimed that the January 9, 2017, P3CO Guidance was issued by the HHS. Part of that sentence reads: “The purpose of this Guide Notice is to notify applicants that in accordance with the December 2017 issuance” of the HHS framework/P3CO Guidance, the NIH is “removing the funding pause” that was imposed by the 2014 White House moratorium. (The HHS P3CO Guidance was dated January 9, 2017, and not a vague “December 2017” as the NIH Notice attributes. But the December 2017 date is significant: The NIH declares that it was on that date that the HHS P3CO Guidance was issued.)

Third, there are no reports or records, in the Obama administration archives for example, that confirm that the former president or his administration lifted the ban to approve of GOF biodefense and biotechnology experiments to manufacture enhanced PPPs in US labs prior to his leaving office.

Fourth, there is no categorical, clear-cut and conclusive assertion in the NSABB Report that granted the Federal Government (and by extension the White House or the HHS) permission to allow funding to create, transfer and use enhanced PPPs that have no origins in nature and that can infect humans from person to person.

Essentially, it is the Office of the President/the White House that has the statutory powers to suspend the ban — and not the NIH. But how could the HHS and the NIH’s accounts as to the date when the 2014 ban was lifted be so patently contradictory? Also, how could these accounts be at odds as to which White House administration or president actually lifted the moratorium?

Or are they?

In fact, that the December 2017 repeal must have been authorized by President Trump and/or his White House is evident in a prior news report about the deliberations that were being undertaken by US agencies, including the NSABB, leading to the annulment. The digital edition of the British newspaper the Guardian published an article on March 9, 2016, titled “’Ban’ on most hazardous virus experiments could be lifted after meeting this week” [73]. The focus of the story was this point: “an effective ban on experiments that make viruses more dangerous than natural strains could be lifted in the US if senior experts reach an agreement on strict new measures to oversee the work this week.” According to the Guardian, “the [banned] studies have the potential to make germs which are highly transmissible and virulent, and likely to be resistant to vaccines and other medicines.” The report continued: “The two-day meeting, convened by the US National Academy of Sciences, will be the last to feed into the final recommendations that the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity will submit to the White House for approval later this year [2016].” However, there is no public/press communication that an approval suspending the ban occurred at the end of 2016. The reversal of the 2014 ban was announced by the NIH on December 19, 2017, almost one year into the Trump presidency. As the Guardian report clearly stated, those required by the 2014 ban to come up with recommendations that will lead to the negation of the moratorium “will submit [their recommendations] to the White House for approval.” Thus, presidential/executive/White House (not NIH) authority (“approval”) was mandatory to lift the 2014 moratorium.

But since all documents relating to this matter (with the exception of that stating which president reversed the ban) are publicly available, there should be nothing holding back former President Obama or former President Trump (and now President Biden) to inform Americans who suspended the 2014 moratorium allowing the creation, transfer and use of PPPs in biodefense and biotechnology GOF-based experiments in US labs beginning in December 2017.

President Trump Tells Bob Woodward: “I Have Built a [New] Weapons System … that Nobody’s Ever Had in this Country before”

Notably, statements made by President Trump in interviews conducted with veteran journalist Bob Woodward reveal eerie similarities between the novel coronaviruses that scientists and virologists have claimed originated from nature (bats/animals) and causing the COVID-19 pandemic and the attributes describing the variant that the US has been (is) funding to be artificially created in labs via GOF that can cause infections from person to person. (The statements were made in taped audio recordings, excerpts of which were released on WaPo’s website on September 9 and widely circulated ahead of the publication of Woodward’s new book titled Rage on the Trump administration) [74].

Most central to this investigation is Trump’s admission to Woodward on February 7, 2020, about various matters related to the new coronavirus and its COVID-19 disease. According to the president: (1) “It [the novel coronavirus] goes through the air.” He continued: “That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Tight? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it is passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one”; (2) “It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus”; “This is deadly stuff”, Trump repeated, emphasizing the lethality of the virus; (3) on April 13, he told Woodward: “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.” (Earlier on April 5, Trump had told Woodward: “it’s a horrible thing. It’s unbelievable.”) In additional audio recording obtained by CNN, Woodward in an interview with the president on April 13 revealed that Trump told him that the virus “moves rapidly, Bob. It moves rapidly” [75]; and (4) Woodward revealed in a 60 Minutes interview that President Trump told him on January 28, 2020, that he “knew that the [novel coronavirus] was a pandemic coming” [76; emphasis added].

There is no doubt, then, that Trump is (was) very much aware of the two (and other) critical attributes the NIH identifies as fundamental to GOF-created enhanced coronaviruses and other PPPs in labs. To repeat, the core attributes are (a): “It is likely highly transmissible and likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations” (what the president means by “easily transmissible”, and “it moves rapidly”), and (b) “It is likely highly virulent and likely to cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans” (what the president means by “deadly”). The other features are, © that it should be a pandemic pathogen (evident in the president’s disclosure to Woodward in January that the virus “was a pandemic coming”, meaning Trump knew that the outbreak was going to result into a pandemic almost two months before the WHO declared the scourge as such); and (d) as revealed in its statement confirming the 2014 moratorium, the NIH had also said GOF experiments with PPPs were directed to creating species of viruses that “cause disease by enhancing [their] pathogenicity or by increasing [their] transmissibility among mammals by respiratory droplets” (what the president means by “it goes through the air”). The president’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told the American public on Sunday October 26 that “We [the Trump administration] are not going to control the pandemic” [77], meaning that COVID-19 is “uncontrollable”, and thereby also eerily echoing one of the attributes the NIH said in 2017 an enhanced GOF-created coronavirus must have.

Thus, Trump’s somber but very accurate description in no uncertain terms names the features of the coronavirus that the US disclosed it will (re)start making in labs via GOF in 2017. Importantly, Trump was aware in January 2020 of the coming global pandemic the virus will cause. And his in-depth knowledge, in the very early days of the pandemic when relatively little was known about the characteristics of the novel coronavirus that is said to have emerged from animals in China, provides absolute descriptions of the features of a lab-“enhanced” coronavirus detailed by multiple USG documents.

In their interview on July 21, Trump, ambiguously, vented to Woodward: “The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault.” The central follow-up question here would have been: “Did you suspend the 2014 ban, Mr. President?” (Woodward did not go there, despite the fact that his newspaper, the WaPo, had reported this incontrovertible fact in 2017.) The president’s final interview with Woodward recorded on August 14 is revealing: He states: “Nothing more could have been done.” He repeated it: “Nothing more could have been done.”

It is important to record here that, according to Woodward’s book, Trump revealed to him the following eye-catching statement (contained in the CNN story cited earlier) about a novel weapons system that he has built: “But I have built a nucle- a weap- I have built a weapons system-weapons system, that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin [Russian president] and Xi [Chinese president] have never heard about before. There’s nobody. What we have is incredible.” Obviously, the US has nuclear weapons system that almost somebody and everybody has seen or heard about. That is, knowledge about the US nuclear arsenal is not a secret. Additionally, when saying “nuclear” Trump halts mid-words, possibly correcting himself, and then changes to “a weapons system.” But he still fails to definitely give a name to this “weapons system.” What, however, is noteworthy in the president’s remarks is his disclosure of the existence of “a [new] weapons system that nobody’s had in this country before” in the context of an interview where he is talking about a novel pandemic virus that is easily transmissible via air droplets and extremely contagious and deadly.

It is worthwhile to repeat this point: President Trump clearly asserts that he has built a new weapon system. Thus, the critical part of the president’s revelation is that the US has weaponized “stuff” that Russia and China “have never heard about before.” Since China and Russia both have nuclear weapons, then the president is referring to “a weapons system” or “incredible” “stuff” that China and Russia do not apparently have. So, what exactly is this “stuff”, and how is it “a weapons system” that nobody has ever had and heard about before? To many, this was Trump disclosing top-secret US defense/military information. (Woodward, in various interviews afterwards, said he had ascertained separately with sources who confirmed that the US indeed has a new secret weapons system, but the veteran journalist did not say whether it was nuclear or not.)

It is vital to restate that US GOF experiments with PPPs are for “biotechnology, “biodefense” and DUR intentions, suggesting that research with the pathogens is for civilian and military reasons. Whether President Trump disclosed this “new weapons system” to President Biden when Biden became president is for both presidents, especially the latter, to tell the American people.

But do not hold your hopes high. As Politico reported when Biden was just President-elect, and Trump was lame-duck President, “Biden may have trouble unearthing Trump’s national security secrets.” In addition: “From tearing up documents and hiding transcripts of calls with foreign leaders to using encrypted messaging apps and personal email accounts for government business, the Trump White House’s skirting of records preservation rules could limit the incoming Biden administration’s visibility into highly sensitive foreign policy and national security secrets” [78]. But would such destruction of evidence include Trump’s public assertion of having created a new “weapons system” for the US arsenal, or who overturned a presidential moratorium ordering the use of GOF experiments in US labs to create, transfer and use PPPs for biodefense, biosecurity and dual use research?

Part I Conclusion

Notwithstanding who reversed the 2014 ban, what is undeniable is that the US, since 2017, has been re-financing GOF experiments to create deadlier and highly transmissible, genetically engineered, and therefore manmade and lab-made, species of SARS, MERS and Ebola among other extremely dangerous germs or PPPs for DUR purposes. What is also indisputable is that the US MSM, including the NYT, CNN, the WaPo among many others, and those from the UK including the Daily Mail, the BBC, etc., communicated and confirmed this unvarnished truth when the December 2017 suspension was announced by the NIH. However, as will be shown in Part V, what is also clear is that the same press has blatantly failed to bring up this significant aspect in its coverage of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak that started in China.

Since the pandemic began, governments, scientists and media outlets have been fooling all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time about many aspects of SARS-CoV-2. However, that the USG, since 2017 and years before COVID-19 emerged, has been re-funding some of its agencies to “create, transfer and use” more highly transmissible and deadly genetically engineered pandemic strain of coronaviruses, including SARS, in labs is never in doubt. And these are facts the USG, the media and the scientists can no longer fool all of the people about any longer.

Notes

[1a] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55308211

[1b] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55768627

[2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

[3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-coronavirus-outbreak-saps-financial-markets-as-nearly-60-countries/

[4] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen

[5] https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020

[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52010304

[7] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/who-chief-worst-of-coronavirus-pandemic-still-ahead/ar-BB12WaQ7

[8] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-diligence-assess-risks-and-benefits-life-sciences-gain-function-research

[9] http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf

[10] http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Pages/GainOfFunction.aspx

[11] http://www.cambridgeworkinggroup.org

[12] http://www.scientistsforscience.org/

[13] https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus

[14] https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/statement-funding-pause-certain-types-gain-function-research

[15] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/

[16] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-funding-for-risky-biological-study.html?_r=0

[17] https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/moratorium-on-gain-of-function-research-36564

[18] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/researchers-rail-against-moratorium-risky-virus-experiments

[19] https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/2014/10/white-house-suspends-enhanced-pathogen-research/

[20] https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-17-071.html

[21] https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/P3CO-FinalGuidanceStatement.pdf

[22] https://osp.od.nih.gov/sites/default/files/resources/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf

[23] https://www.aai.org/AAISite/media/Public_Affairs/Policy_Issues/Public_Health_and_Biosecurity/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf

[24] http://www.easac.eu/; https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Gain_of_Function/EASAC_GOF_Web_complete_centred.pdf

[25] http://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/dualresearch

https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/sites/default/files/downloads/Summary_Report_HS_Dual_Use_Research_on_Microbes.pdf

[26] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/15/730.3

[27] https://ec.europa.eu/trade/import-and-export-rules/export-from-eu/dual-use-controls/

[28] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211257/Wuhan-lab-performing-experiments-bats-coronavirus-caves.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top

[29] https://news.gr8britton.com/2020/04/19/ted-cruz-reveals-huge-coronavirus-bombshell/

[30] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeD0qhR5XOY

[31] http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Exchange2016/Foreign_Visits/index.html

[32] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html

[33] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-announces-new-policy-for-pathogens-that-could-cause-a-pandemic/2017/12/19/bb715f7c-e4b5-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html

[34] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/19/571744856/nih-lifts-ban-on-research-that-could-make-deadly-viruses-stronger

[35] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-officials-lift-ban-on-making-lethal-viruses-in-labs/

[36] https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mers-mystery/nih-lifts-limits-making-deadly-new-viruses-lab-n831086

[37] https://news.yahoo.com/u-lifts-funding-ban-studies-enhance-dangerous-germs-181215774.html

[38] https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/19/health/nih-deadly-viruses-bn/index.html

[39] https://in.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pathogens-funding-idINKBN1ED2FT

[40] https://www.businessinsider.in/the-us-government-is-lifting-a-ban-on-engineering-deadly-viruses-to-make-them-more-dangerous/articleshow/62184306.cms

[41] https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/u-s-lifts-ban-funding-risky-virus-research-article-1.3709571

[32] https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Federal-ban-on-making-lethal-viruses-lifted-12442051.php

[43] https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7kukce/a_federal_ban_on_making_lethal_viruses_is_lifted/

[44] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/ban-lifted-on-killer-virus-research

[45] https://www.alternet.org/2017/12/us-government-lifts-ban-making-viruses-more-deadly-and-transmissible/

[46] https://www.salon.com/2017/12/24/u-s-lifts-ban-on-making-viruses-more-transmissible_partner/

[47] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/19/1725819/-Government-will-once-again-pay-for-scientists-to-make-deadly-viruses-even-deadlier

[48] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nih-lifts-3-year-ban-funding-risky-virus-studies

[49] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-lifts-moratorium-on-funding-controversial-high-risk-virus-research/

[50] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08837-7?fbclid=IwAR0o3BKKOXINi0acBC1iouWZL93on1hIqx_MpxsTB_1U3aiDliOkhmZuVl4

[51] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nih-removes-funding-ban-high-risk-virus-research-180967598/

[52] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a14465332/feds-lift-ban-on-making-viruses-more-lethal/

[53] https://www.clinicalconnection.com/health-news/news-article/41909/us-lifts-ban-on-laboratory-made-lethal-viruses

[54] https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/12/20/us-lifts-ban-on-risky-research-to-make-viruses-more-deadly/23313015/

[55] https://anonhq.com/didnt-have-enough-to-worry-about-trump-quietly-lifts-obama-ban-on-making-lethal-viruses/

[56] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/20/us-government-lifts-ban-deadly-virus-experiments/

[57] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5195651/U-S-lifts-funding-ban-studies-enhance-dangerous-germs.html

[58] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/deadly-virus-experiments-lift-ban-health-security-risk-a8120916.html

[59] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42426548

[60] https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/20/us-lifts-ban-making-lethal-viruses-risking-accidental-pandemic-7174561/

[61] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-scientists-might-soon-have-a-better-understanding-of-how-viruses-mutate

[62] https://www.eutimes.net/2017/12/us-lifts-ban-on-pandemic-pathogen-tweaks/

[63] https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/evolution/us-lifts-ban-on-genetically-modifying-viruses-to-make-them-more-deadly/news

[64] https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/12/20/us-lifts-funding-ban-on-studies-that-enhance-dangerous-germs/

[65] https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Pages/Two-Research-Projects-PPP.aspx

[66] https://reporter.nih.gov/

[67] https://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm

[68] http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/179/3/907

[69] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biodefense

[70] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biotechnology

[71] https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/nih-lifts-funding-pause-gain-function-research

[72] See Note 65

[73] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/09/ban-on-most-hazardous-virus-experiments-could-be-lifted-this-week

[74] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump/2020/09/09/0368fe3c-efd2-11ea-b4bc-3a2098fc73d4_story.html

[75] https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/politics/trump-woodward-interview-covid/index.html

[76] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-bob-woodward-rage-60-minutes-2020-09-13/

[77] https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/25/politics/mark-meadows-controlling-coronavirus-pandemic-cnntv/index.html

[78] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/biden-trump-national-security-435364