Newly released internal documents and messages about the 2018 coronavirus research proposal reveal scientists’ fears that Chinese labs – which are now at the center of the COVID-19 lab leak theory – will be seen by US officials as a security risk.
Drafts and notes on the grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, co-authored by American researchers and scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were published by US Right to Know on Monday through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The proposal, which was ultimately rejected and denied funding by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was put forward by the now-controversial EcoHealth Alliance and sought to test engineer bat coronaviruses in ways that would make them more easily transmissible to humans. .
The researchers proposed introducing “appropriate human-specific cleavage sites” to the SARS-related virus spike protein in the laboratory.
The researchers had planned to conduct part of the research in a Wuhan laboratory where safety precautions did not meet US standards, according to new documents. AFP via Getty Images Virologist Zhengli Shi, a bat coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan facility, is one of the scientists who will carry out the work if funded. Future Publishing via Getty Images
The draft proposal was announced in 2021 and sparked speculation that the coronavirus pandemic may have been caused by infected laboratory technology or the improper disposal of hazardous waste from the Wuhan facility.
Now, messages and notes between the authors of the proposal and the initial draft released this week add another layer to the theory.
According to the new document, the researchers had planned to conduct part of the research in a Wuhan laboratory where safety precautions did not meet US standards, according to US Right to Know, a non-profit public health research group.
“Ralph, Zhengli. If we win this contract, I’m not suggesting that all this work will necessarily be carried out by Ralph, but I want to stress the US side about this proposal so that DARPA is comfortable with our team,” wrote Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance. to the North Carolina-based researcher Ralph Baric and the Wuhan scientist at the lab’s leak theory center, Zhengli Shi.
“Once we get the funding, we can then allocate who is doing the right work, and I believe that many of these tests can be done in Wuhan as well…”
The researchers tried to downplay the role of Chinese scientists in their proposal to please US funders but said they could allocate work to be done where including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology if they get the funding.
He also said he wanted to “downplay” the involvement of the Chinese in the research in hopes of being given funding by DARPA.
“I plan to use my resume and Ralph’s,” Daszak wrote. “Linfa/Zhengli, I realize your resume is impressive as well, but I’m trying to minimize the non-US focus of this proposal so that DARPA doesn’t see this as a negative.”
In an early version of the draft proposal, the researchers said the project would be “very cost-effective” because it would only require laboratories with biosafety level two (BSL-2), on a scale of one to four with four (BSL-4) being the most stringent level of safety standards. .
“The nature of BSL-2 work on SARSr-CoV makes our system very cost-effective compared to other bat virus systems (eg Ebola, Marburg, Hendra, Nipah), which require BSL-4 level facilities for cell culture.
The proposal was later edited and BSL-2 was changed to BSL-3, noting that the lower level of biosafety standards would “likely surprise” US scientists.
“In the US, these recombinant SARS-CoVs are studied under BSL3, not BSL2, especially important for those capable of binding and replicating in primary human cells,” Baric said in the original document. “In china (sic), may be infected with this virus [sic] under bsl2. US researchers [sic] will most likely panic.”
EcoHealth Alliance says the research was never completed because it was never funded. X / @EcoHealthNYC
DARPA never funded the research and the work was never done, the EcoHealth Alliance said in a statement Tuesday.
“Because the work was not selected for funding, any assertions about these details are by definition based on a review of incomplete and highly misleading information,” the statement said.
But some scientists say they have seen enough to believe lab technology is responsible for the worldwide outbreak two years after the draft proposal was rejected.
“This latest leak makes the case for a lab leak almost certain,” biologist Matt Ridley tweeted. “Reckless attempts, known at the time as recklessness, may have caused the deaths of millions of people. Scientists and the media colluded to hide the evidence.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
