The Origins of SARS-Cov-2 - on virus research and its funding
My original Oct 2021 article in English
Original article in Finnish here:
Why this article?
Gain of Function research is a somewhat inflammatory subject; why write about it? One reason is that it may play a significant role in everything that has driven us to the situation we are in the world today. So in this article, the topic will be addressed mainly in the context of its role in the covid-pandemic.
Gain of Function- research; definitions:
Scientists use a variety of techniques to modify organisms depending on the properties of the organism itself and the end goal. Some of these methods involve directly making changes at the level of genetic code. Others may involve placing organisms in environments that select for functions linked to genetic changes.
Gain-of-function research that focuses on potential pandemic pathogens has been supported on the premise that it will help researchers better understand the evolving pathogenic landscape, be better prepared for a pandemic response and develop treatments and countermeasures.
“Gain-of-function” is the euphemism for biological research aimed at increasing the virulence and lethality of pathogens and viruses. GoF research is government funded; its focus is on enhancing the pathogens’ ability to infect different species and to increase their deadly impact as airborne pathogens and viruses. Ostensibly, GoF research is conducted for biodefense purposes.
The notion becomes public
Already in the early weeks of the epidemic in spring-winter 2020, the fact that China's only (known) P4-level pathogen laboratory (where the most dangerous viruses and pathogens can be handled in authorized way) is located in Wuhan has made the issue quite relevant. Initially, questions about - firstly on laboratory- leak and then later about the Covid- related gain of function research - were branded as conspiracy theories by the mainstream media and the authorities. However, time has proven the questions to be valid. Today, the denying or downplaying these issues better meets the criteria of a conspiracy theory. In May 2021, Washington Examiner reviewed the fact-checking applied by the mainstream media on these issues in its article: ‘PolitiFact Quietly Retracts Fact Check Of COVID-19 Wuhan Lab Theory’
Many in the press last year were eager - perhaps a little too eager - to dismiss the theory that the COVID-19 virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
It was foolish to dismiss the theory outright without any convincing evidence to support the dismissal. Now it looks even more foolish, as more and more evidence shows that the theory may be correct. PolitiFact looks particularly silly this week after it retracted a "fact check" that originally gave a "pants on fire" rating to a doctor who claimed last year that COVID-19 was a "virus created in a human laboratory".
— Washington Examiner
(here is The Federalist on the same topic)
The Content of this article
(*Hereafter, the term 'gain of function' will be replaced by GoF in this article.)
This article first gives a superficial overview of the GoF as a concept providing some background and history. This also requires a brief glimpse into topic of bioweapons and related treaties. This is then followed by a discussion of GoF-research in Wuhan and a discussion of a possible laboratory leak.
The final part of the article discusses the role of Western - mainly US - actors in the Wuhan GoF research and the Covid. Of particular note is the role of frontline health authorities, such as the National Institutes of Health, NIH and "covid czar" Anthony Fauci, in research and funding.
Gain-of-Function - What? Why?
For example, EASAC (the European Academies' Science Advisory Council) discusses GoF research in its report ‘Gain of function: experimental applications relating to potentially pandemic pathogens’. The publication explains that GoF research usually involves modifying genes to gain more insight into their function. The report underlines that GoF research has played an important role in microbiology in the elucidation of different pathogens. This knowledge is said to be very useful in the selection and development of new drugs and vaccines. However, the report states it is have been compiled primarily to address the debate on the dangers of GoF research and calls for a wider public debate on its final recommendations. The reader is told that, for example, in the US, certain types of GoF research and its funding have been banned and that also in the EU, some members of the scientific community have questioned the need for such research altogether (see also the previous AHRP article on this).
The dangers of GoF research are generally seen as including the possible opposite consequences in relation to their original objective. An example of this could be a situation where a respiratory virus, which is only spread among animals and previously completely harmless to humans, is genetically manipulated for research purposes so that it can be transmitted to humans. This would become a problem, especially if such a new synthetic virus were to somehow escape from the laboratory and spread in the human population.
Lord May's comment when asked about the dangers of GoF research:
Yes, there is a danger, but it’s not arising from the viruses out there in the animals, it’s arising from the labs of grossly ambitious people.”
— LORD MAY, PROFESSOR AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND FORMER SCIENCE ADVISER TO THE UNITED KINGDOM GOVERNMENT (source)
However, Anthony Fauci (more on him later), for example, has argued, at least as recently as 2012, that the benefits of GoF research far outweigh the risks. He argued that the likelihood of a naturally occurring pandemic was much higher compared to a laboratory accident and that research was important precisely because "we would be able to stay ahead" of such threats by conducting such research, even if it involved risks.
With all this in mind, it should also be easy to understand that GoF research inevitably has another, more sinister and more deliberate potential use, which relates to the development of bio-weapons.
GoF research and bioweapons?
Definition of bioweapon:
A biological weapon is generally composed of a biological agent or toxin (bacteria, mycoplasma, rickettsiae, viruses, yeasts, fungi), additives to assist with dissemination and stability, and a delivery system. Biological agents can be delivered:
as an aerosol
by food or water
by a vector
by injection
Bioweapons are a taboo subject and their development and use has been regulated for decades by numerous international treaties. After the First World War, the international community banned the use of bioweapons by international law in 1925 (Geneva Protocol). This ban has been reinforced by the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which prohibit their development, production, stockpiling and transport (More in: International Committee of the Red Cross - Chemical and biological weapons).
The Johns Hopkins Hospital in the United States divides biological weapons into three categories according to their dangerousness. The most dangerous "Category A" bioweapons have the following common features:
can be easily disseminated or spread person-to-person
can be highly lethal
have the potential for serious public health impact?
can potentially cause public panic and lead to social disruption
Examples of Category A bioweapons include various viruses such as smallpox, anthrax and various hemorrhagic fevers.
Could GoF research also, for example, allow one party to develop a virus that would target more, say, populations with a particular gene pool? On the other hand, GoF research could be used to develop an antidote to a synthesized virus, using the same knowledge used for development, which could then be used by the bioweapon developer to immunize the desired population while the virus was being distributed globally. What would that look like in practice? An example could be a vaccine developed and produced before the virus "emerged". Some rumors of such possibility have surfaced.
It is precisely because of such dangers that the United States decided in 2014 to suspend funding (moratorium) for all GoF research related to influenza, MERS and SARS viruses. Fauci resumed its research in 2017, despite the funding ban. The issue has been explored in particular by Australian investigative journalist Sharri Markson (video clip on the subject), but we will return to this in more depth later in the article.
Wuhan; lab leak & GoF research and its funding
It is therefore hardly surprising that the GoF aspect of the Covid has sparked a debate, especially when one takes into account the information that has been made public over the past year and a half. The idea that the very city (Wuhan) from which the virus originated has a laboratory for handling dangerous animal pathogens (including those from bats) is already… a little tantalizing. And when it appears that the laboratory in question has also been involved in GoF research on viruses, while at the same time we understand that a large proportion of the most dangerous Category A bioweapons agents (presented earlier), are viruses, the whole thing starts to seem downright disturbing. But that's not all; the holey gets even deeper when you start to look at the links to funding.
Rumours about the Wuhan laboratory and the research carried out there were already circulating in the spring of 2020, but it was difficult to find confirmation because it was China in question and the mainstream media were extremely reluctant to investigate further. However, the issues became public when various members of the US administration took public positions on the issue, such as Senator Tom Cotton in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in April 2020. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also addressed the issue in his statements. The issue has also not been directly clarified by the 'independent' studies on the issue conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is heavily influenced by China, including through its Secretary General Tedros (another article on the subject here).
The Biden administration's final statement on the study on the origin of the virus was that the question 'has no conclusive answer', which in itself is not unexpected given Biden's own China connections. The contradictory representations of the issue by the mainstream media illustrate the topic well:
In the summer of 2021, however, things took a clear and surprising turn when first the 'Informed Consent Action Network' got hold of emails from Anthony Fauci (US 'Covid Czar' and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIAID) under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). In total, there were over 3000 pages of material. A little later, 'The Intercept' magazine also received 900 pages of documents under FOIA, mostly relating to GoF research and funding (documents here).
The emergence of the emails inevitably began to flip the narrative, because with FOIA, they became public through a formal process. Nonetheless, there was an immediate attempt to downplay and censor the issue by the mainstream media and social media giants in the usual way - Facebook had already been actively censoring discussion of the possible lab leak.
The debate on the origin of the virus was also heavily censored:
Senator Marsha Blackburn - Press conference on Big Tech's censorship on the origin of Covid, June 10th, 2021 (alternative link)
So why have emails been so important? The emails and documents released under FOIA have a wide and complex significance for the Covid- narrative. Broadly speaking, they reveal how there has been an attempt to hide essential facts from the public by the very leading health authorities; and in the case of the US, now demonstrably so.
This demonstrated misleading applies to the narrative about the origin of the virus, to the assessments of its dangerousness, and to the views about the usefulness of facemasks. The emails also include a cooperative message from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to Fauci depicted in article ‘The Floodgate is Open on Fauci’s Emails’ (FOIA material here), which may also help explain the platform's heavy censorship on the subject. Investigative journalist Jeff Carlson has compiled a comprehensive timeline based on the information contained in the emails. He also published an article on the subject.
One interesting discussion comes from an email exchange between Fauci and Kristian Andersen, a professor at Scripps Research, where Andersen noted that some of the characteristics of viruses appear to be engineered. Shortly afterwards, however, the same Andersen published a paper asserting that the virus was of natural origin, and most blatantly - Fauci himself used the paper as a basis for "debunking" the laboratory origin theories (article).
Fauci and Andersen were also in close contact during the compilation of the paper. The Lancet and Nature Medicine also played an important role in getting the narrative about the origin of the virus into the desired direction - i.e. in favor of a natural origin of the virus (article). It turns out - not entirely surprisingly - that 26 of the 27 people who co-authored the Lancet letter condemning the laboratory leak had links to scientists associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a huge conflict of interest.
Email discussion about the “unusual” composition of the virus:
An email discussion on research funding:
The published material is of particular importance, especially in how it sheds light on the gain of function research and the network of actors involved. In practice, the published documents give strong indications that, with GoF research on SARS being suspended in the US since 2014, the ban was later circumvented by 'laundering' funding through a non-governmental organization. This organization was the 'Ecohealth Alliance' led by Peter Daszak.
According to some estimates, the Pentagon and the federal administration have channelled more than $150 million to the GoF study in Wuhan through the Ecohealth Alliance. The Ecohealth Alliance has also received funding from other actors, including USAID:
Interestingly, the emails also reveal the gratitude of Peter Daszak of the aforementioned Ecohealth Alliance to Fauci after the latter publicly dismissed theories about the laboratory origin of the virus. I must remind, that this exactly would have been the line of enquiry that would have inevitably lead to Daszak. It's hard not to think, "Oh, boy; here we have foxes guarding the henhouse...
Peter Daszak sent to China by WHO?
1It is also good to be aware of the fact that Peter Dazak was also one of the experts sent by the International Health Organization (WHO) in early 2021 to China to investigate the origin of the virus - this team of experts found no evidence of a laboratory origin …
An American conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch, which advocates for government transparency mainly through FOIA requests, also obtained documents related to the GoF investigation in the summer of 2021.The Judicial Watch documents show a direct link of funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology:
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch today announced that it obtained 280 pages of documents from the Department of Health and Human Services revealing that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The documents, some of which were redacted or withheld in their entirely, were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records of communications, contracts and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-00696)). The agency is only processing 300 pages records per month, which means it will take until the end of November for the records to be fully reviewed and released under FOIA.
The records include a chart of NIAID funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology sent on April 21, 2020, by NIAID’s Chase Crawford to Principal Deputy Director Hugh Auchincloss and other NIAID officials. The agency funds directed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology between the years 2014-2019 total $826,277. All of the projects listed in the chart are titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
Project DEFUSE
In addition to the emails, in September 2021, a whistleblower leaked a funding proposal submitted to the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) in 2018, which aimed to "add human-specific cleavage sites into coronaviruses in order to increase their ability to infect human cells". The leak was made public and analyzed by research group DRASTIC.
The Epoch Times article on the subject notes that the document is particularly interesting because it is the specific ability to infect human cells that distinguishes this coronavirus from previous viruses of the 'same branch'. The funding proposal has been authenticated by a previous federal administration official, the article says.
According to the official story, DARPA refused to fund the project because it considered it too risky. Later, Project Veritas also obtained material on the subject from a whistleblower, former DARPA Major Joseph Murphy. More on the subject below:
Project Veritas received new leaked documents (10 January 2022):
The documents obtained by the group are material from the US Department of Defense/Pentagon subdivision DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA focuses on "Advanced Research Projects" in the field of defense.
Veritas has got:
- Project rejection decision
- Project application summary
- A separate cautionary report written to the DOD Inspector General on the case
What do we learn from the Veritas story then?
Among other things:
Eco Health Alliance and Peter Daszak tried to apply for funding from DARPA for a bat virus research project
DARPA rejected the application, according to the documents, because the safety risks had not been assessed
Fauci's very own institute NIAID (National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Allergies) decided to continue the research detailed in the project
DOD/DARPA's reasons for rejecting the project also included.
vaccines against such viruses were known to be ineffective
in the context of the Gain of Function study, the creation of new variants using spike protein was considered too dangerous
the Gain of Function study was not only conducted in Wuhan
— Project Veritas & video summary here
As an interesting addition, the documents mention, among other things, the efficacy of both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as a drug against these kind of viruses - so the knowledge of this already existed within DARPA at least.
By October 2021, it has come to the point where even the caricature example of the mainstream media, the Washington Post, is insisting for Peter Daszak to be called before Congress in opinion piece ‘One person who might know what really happened in Wuhan’.
The WaPo article writes:
Zoonotic spillover is a plausible explanation based on historical experience, and scientists should pursue it vigorously. But similar efforts must be made to discover whether a laboratory release or infection led to the pandemic. Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit based in New York, organized a five-year research program funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to study bat coronaviruses and potential spillover risk to people, with significant participation by the WIV and its scientist, Shi Zhengli. The government of China, Ms. Shi and Mr. Daszak all insist the laboratory could not be the source of the pandemic strain. Mr. Daszak has been particularly aggressive in promoting the zoonotic spillover hypothesis and attacking the laboratory leak as a “conspiracy theory.”
Last week, it was disclosed that the EcoHealth Alliance in August filed a report on its research in 2018-2019 — the report was two years late. This just happens to be the two-year period of the pandemic and intense debate about the virus origins. No reason has been given. Mr. Daszak did not respond to our query.
— Washington Post, October 2021
It is precisely the role of Daszak that has been the subject of a steady stream of new material in recent weeks. In one video, for example, he boasts "how his Chinese colleagues are developing killer viruses by manipulating proteins.
Below is another example of one of the funded projects:
*Added later: Senator Kennedy condemns GoF research and Peter Daszak in end of March 2023 - future proves the past:
.. returning to 2021 ..
Another person associated with GoF research and the Wuhan Virology Institute is Dr. Ralph Baric, a well-known figure in the field of GoF research. Baric was a key voice in lobbying against the freeze of GoF funding in 2014 and has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute. The National Pulse discusses Baric's actions and statements in its article ‘WATCH: 2018 Video Shows Wuhan Lab Partner Scheming on How to Make Money from a Pandemic’. In the video, Baric is seen giving a presentation to the audience. In it, he aims to illustrate, among other things, how great business opportunities pandemics offer for those who know how to take advantage of them. In addition, Baric has also acted as a GoF research funding conduit between NIAID and Wuhan.
Baric's name is also alleged to be on a confidentiality agreement written at the same time that potential coronavirus vaccine candidates were transferred from drugmaker Moderna to the University of North Carolina - 19 days before the virus even officially emerged in Wuhan.
It may also be that with so much information already in the public domain, this is effectively a final tournament on hand-washing, with various players trying to pass the buck and avoid being the bagman. Anthony Fauci is in an awkward position on this issue, as he repeatedly asserted before Congress, under oath that the NIH & NIAID had nothing to do with GoF research and experiments.
He was in a tough exchange of words with Congressman Rand Paul in particular, who is a doctor by profession:
In October 2021, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was forced to pull the rug from under Fauci and Daszak. The Institute officially announced that it would have to correct previous statements made by Anthony Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins (who then resigned), in which they had asserted that the Institute had not funded GoF research in Wuhan.
According to the NIH, there may have been funding, but according to the institute, this is because the Daszak’s Ecohealth Alliance violated the conditions imposed on the funding.
NIH letter to congressional oversight committee:
The NIH was forced to make the correction when the media discovered that the Ecohealth Alliance had submitted its funding report exceptionally two years late. The Intercept has more on the subject:
The documents released to The Intercept are also missing a year-five progress report, covering the crucial period of June 2018 to May 2019, which was due in September 2019, according to NIH guidelines. Scientists said that NIH program officers sometimes overlook reports for the final reporting period, but taken together with the odd date on the year-four report, the omission raises questions that the agency should answer.
The role of US actors in the Wuhan GoF research will likely take years to unravel and the full picture may never be known. However, the Department of Justice has regularly prosecuted individuals, particularly in academia, for acting on China's behalf - including now during the pandemic.
One of the most interesting cases is probably that of Dr. Charles Lieber, who specializes in nanotechnology. Lieber participated in China's 'Thousand Talents Plan' and collaborated with Wuhan University of Technology (not institute of virology ;)) as a 'strategic researcher'. Lieber's possible links to any virus research are still open, but his area of expertise, nanotechnology, has sparked much speculation.
“Lieber,” wrote one medical professional, “has made a huge difference with ultra-flexible mesh electronics, which promise to deliver what he calls ‘precision electronic medicine.’ These hardly activate an immune response, but remain very close to the cells they are intended to spy on.”
All in all, the suggestion - or even the possibility - that US taxpayers' money was used to finance the development of the virus that may have caused the current pandemic is, in all its banality, both chilling and insanely absurd - but it is by no means ruled out in the light of current knowledge.
/END
And what do I think about all this myself now..? I have been using this graph I once made as a kind of “disclaimer” as I report on the developments of the narrative…
Tens of pages of other archived related material (2021-2025) can be found here, at the bottom of the original Finnish version:
— to related archived material (starts at the end of the article)
Daszak in China - added 20 April 2025.