https://www.yahoo.com/news/wuhan-scientists-planned-release-skin-145326380.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink
The Telegraph
Wuhan scientists planned to release coronaviruses into cave bats 18
months before outbreak
Sarah Knapton
Tue, September 21, 2021, 7:53 AM
Wuhan scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne
coronaviruses into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against
diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from
2018 show.
New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases
appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating
nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat
coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.
They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to
infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.
Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump
administration, show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific
cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the
virus to enter human cells.
When Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, scientists were puzzled
about how the virus had evolved such a human-specific adaptation at the
cleavage site on the spike protein, which is the reason it is so infectious.
The documents were released by Drastic, the web-based investigations
team set up by scientists from across the world to look into the origins
of Covid-19.
In a statement, Drastic said: “Given that we find in this proposal a
discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites,
a review by the wider scientific community of the plausibility of
artificial insertion is warranted.”
The proposal also included plans to mix high-risk natural coronavirus
strains with more infectious but less dangerous varieties.
The bid was submitted by British zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth
Alliance, the US-based organisation, which has worked closely with the
Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researching bat coronaviruses.
Team members included Dr Shi Zhengli, the WIV researcher dubbed “bat
woman”, pictured below, as well as US researchers from the University of
North Carolina and the United States Geological Survey National Wildlife
Health Centre.
Dr Shi Zhengli
Darpa refused to fund the work, saying: “It is clear that the proposed
project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk”,
and warned that the team had not properly considered the dangers of
enhancing the virus (gain of function research) or releasing a vaccine
by air.
Grant documents show that the team also had some concerns about the
vaccine programme and said they would “conduct educational outreach … so
that there is a public understanding of what we are doing and why we are
doing it, particularly because of the practice of bat-consumption in the
region”.
Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St Georges, University of
London, who struggled to get work published showing that the Wuhan
Institute of Virology (WIV) had been carrying out “gain of function”
work for years before the pandemic, said the research may have gone
ahead even without the funding.
“This is clearly a gain of function, engineering the cleavage site and
polishing the new viruses to enhance human cell infectibility in more
than one cell line,” he said.
Daszak was also behind a letter published in The Lancet last year which
effectively shut down scientific debate into the origins of Covid-19.
Wuhan testing  - Roman Pilipey/Shutterstock
Wuhan testing - Roman Pilipey/Shutterstock
Viscount Ridley, who has co-authored a book on the origin of Covid-19,
due for release in November, and who has frequently called for a further
investigation into what caused the pandemic in the House of Lords, said:
“For more than a year I tried repeatedly to ask questions of Peter
Daszak with no response.
“Now it turns out he had authored this vital piece of information about
virus work in Wuhan but refused to share it with the world. I am
furious. So should the world be.
“Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) proposed injecting deadly
chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology
into humanised and ‘batified’ mice, and much, much more.”
A Covid-19 researcher from the World Health Organisation (WHO), who
wished to remain anonymous, said it was alarming that the grant proposal
included plans to enhance the more deadly disease of Middle-East
Respiratory Syndrome (Mers).
“The scary part is they were making infectious chimeric Mers viruses,”
the source said.
“These viruses have a fatality rate over 30 per cent, which is at least
an order of magnitude more deadly than Sars-CoV-2.
“If one of their receptor replacements made Mers spread similarly, while
maintaining its lethality, this pandemic would be nearly apocalyptic.”
EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been
aproached for comment.