House Oversight Committee Republicans
recently released the contents of emails sent between Dr. Anthony Fauci,
director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID), his boss, then-National Institutes of Health director Dr.
Francis Collins in 2020.
February 1, 2020, Fauci, Collins and 11 other scientists joined a
conference call convened by Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome
Trust in London, during which they were told the virus appeared to have
leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China, and
that it might have been genetically engineered.
The emails show Fauci and Collins rapidly and unanimously agreed to
suppress this evidence and quash anyone promoting the lab leak theory.
While questions of intentions remain, it seems this decision was made
for political, and not scientific, reasons.
On the one hand, it seems they didn’t want to sour relations with
China, and on the other, they may have feared what might happen were
their own gain-of-function research, done at the WIV, to be tied to the
novel virus.
The COVID Origin Conspiracy
As reported by Nicholas Wade, writing for the City Journal, January 23, 2022:1
“From almost the moment the COVID-19 pandemic broke
out in the city of Wuhan, the medical-research establishment in
Washington and London insisted that the virus had emerged naturally.
Only conspiracy theorists, they said, would give credence to the idea
that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Now a string of unearthed emails ... is making it
seem increasingly likely that there was, in fact, a conspiracy, its aim
being to suppress the notion that the virus had emerged from research
funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID), headed by Anthony Fauci.
The latest emails
don’t prove such a conspiracy, but they make it more plausible, for two
reasons: because the expert virologists therein present such a strong
case for thinking that the virus had lab-made features and because of
the wholly political reaction to this bombshell on the part of Francis
Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health.”
In his article, Wade goes through the chain of events, recreated in
part using the released emails. The day before that February 1
conference call, four virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the
Scripps Research Institute emailed Fauci about the genomic sequence of
the virus, which had been published three weeks earlier.
According to Andersen, the genome was “inconsistent with expectations
from evolutionary theory.” Andersen and his three collaborators, Edward
C. Holmes of the University of Sydney, Robert F. Garry of Tulane
University and Michael Farzan at Scripps Research, unanimously agreed
that the virus wasn’t natural and may have escaped from a lab. Wade
writes:2
“... the virologists had little doubt that the virus
bore the fingerprints of manipulation. The focus of their attention was a
genetic element called a furin cleavage site. This short snippet of
genetic material is what makes the virus so infectious for human cells.
Scientists sometimes add this element to laboratory
viruses to make them more virulent, but in nature, viruses usually
acquire runs of genetic material like this by swapping them with other
members of their family.
The furin cleavage site in the COVID virus sticks out
like a sore thumb because no other known member of its family — a group
called Sarbecoviruses — possesses a furin cleavage site. So how did the
virus acquire it?
A member of the Andersen group, Garry of Tulane
University, remarks in the latest emails on the fact that the inserted
furin cleavage site, a string of 12 units of RNA, the virus’s genetic
material, was exactly the required length, a precision unusual in
nature:
‘I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished
in nature ... it’s stunning. Of course, in the lab it would be easy to
generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.’”
In his 2021 book, “Spike: The Virus Versus the People,” Farrar admits
worrying about the political fallout were these preliminary findings to
be true.
“With extremely tense U.S. relations and an
unpredictable American president determined to see a biological threat
through the distorting lens of nationalism, it didn’t feel too
melodramatic to wonder if an engineered virus, either accidentally
leaked or intentionally released, might be the sort of thing countries
could go to war over,” he wrote.3
A Lie to Prevent War?
Three days after Farrar’s conference call, February 4, 2020, Andersen
suddenly changed his tune. In an email, he derided “crackpot” ideas
that “relate to this virus being somehow engineered with intent.”
That same day, Farrar sent Fauci a draft of a paper signed by
Andersen, Garry, Holmes and two other colleagues, Andrew Rambaut and Ian
Lipkin. The paper, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,”4
was published in its final form in mid-March 2020. In it, they roundly
dismissed the lab leak theory and insisted the virus had a natural
origin.
Now, even if Andersen was convinced that there was no ill intent
involved, why did he scrap the evidence that initially convinced him the
virus had to be engineered?
Farrar, in his book, claims that fears of a lab leak were only put to bed after intensive analysis and emergence of new data,5
but the email correspondence doesn’t seem to fit this narrative —
unless you believe that a thorough scientific investigation can be
neatly wrapped up in three days.
Be that as it may, with “The Proximal Origin” paper, the mainstream
press had the ammunition it needed to “debunk” claims of genetic
engineering and/or a laboratory release.
Farrar also cosigned an open letter in The Lancet, denouncing the lab
leak theory as baseless conspiracy theory. Together, these two
“scientific consensus statements” were, for well over a year, used to
silence discussion about a lab leak.
Politics, Not Science, at Play
Like Farrar, Collins and Fauci were also more concerned about
political ramifications than the scientific truth itself. February 2,
2020, after being told point-blank that the virus appeared manufactured
and likely escaped from the WIV, Collins complained that “voices of
conspiracy” could do “great potential harm to science and international
harmony.”
Even after Andersen’s natural origin statement was published, Collins
still fretted about the fact that the lab leak theory wasn’t going
away. “Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this
very destructive conspiracy,” he asked Fauci in an April 16, 2020,
email. Fauci told him to just ignore it, saying it would eventually fade
away.
The problem was that emerging data kept pointing to genetic
engineering and a lab leak, so the theory just wouldn’t stay buried.
Worse yet, grant applications from the EcoHealth Alliance to the NIAID
reveal the U.S. was in fact funding the very research that could have
resulted in this novel virus.
Those involved still maintain that science, not politics, directed their actions,6
but the evidence tells a different story. How can one explain how
initial concerns about genetic engineering within three days shifted to a
rock-solid consensus that we were dealing with natural evolution?
At the same time, Farrar, in his book, makes a big deal about his
fears that then-president Trump was “seeking to blame the virus on
China” and might misuse evidence of a lab leak to start a war.7
Yet we are asked to believe that this supposed fear of war played no
role, and that science can indeed change on a dime and be sorted in a
matter of days. No, if anything, what this tells us is that the
scientific establishment will cover for China, no matter what the cost,
out of fear of being defunded and/or losing scientific credibility and
standing.
Without doubt, researchers involved in dangerous gain-of-function
research want to continue their work — again, regardless of the cost to
humanity. As noted by Wade:8
“The repudiation by Andersen, Garry, and Holmes of
their original conclusion, expressed in the January 31, 2020, email was
of enormous benefit to Collins and Fauci.
Though primary responsibility for any lab leak would
rest with Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and with Chinese
regulatory authorities, Collins and Fauci could share a portion of the
blame for having funded gain-of-function research despite its obvious
risks and then failing to ensure that grant recipients were taking all
necessary precautions.”
The end result of all of this may be just as bad or worse than open
kinetic war. The willingness of U.S. authorities to cover up the origin
of SARS-CoV-2 means that countries can now assault us with bioweapons
indefinitely, with full impunity.
“If there really was a conspiracy surrounding the origin of SARS-CoV-2, Congress should search for it,” Wade writes.9 “First,
in the still-closed records of the National Institutes of Health and
the EcoHealth Alliance. Congress then needs to ask scientists free of
outside pressures or conflicts to reassess the probable origin of a
virus that has now killed some 5 million people worldwide.”
Not All Scientists Are Trustworthy
In related news, journalist Paul Thacker recently dove into yet another example of science gone wrong:10
“Why do people not ‘trust the science’?” Thacker
asks. “Because like all people, scientists are not always trustworthy
... It sometimes feels like researchers are striving to give people
reasons to doubt science in the age of COVID.
In the most recent example, the DisInformation
Chronicle discovered that, in one of the most widely read science
journal articles of 2020, researchers wrote that it was a ‘conspiracy
theory’ to claim that the COVID-19 pandemic could have started from a
lab accident in China.
However, they violated publishing ethics by not
disclosing that the article had been secretly edited by two scientists
whose lab research involves genetically engineering coronaviruses.
The commentary titled, ‘No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2’11
appeared in the journal Emerging Microbes & Infections, which is
published by Taylor and Francis. The authors also appear to have
bypassed the normal process of peer review, according to emails12 made public by U.S. Right to Know.13”
As reported by Thacker, the commentary was edited by none other than
Shi Zhengli of the WIV, and Ralph Baric, Ph.D., of the University of
North Carolina — both of whom have been conducting the kind of risky
gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses thought to have resulted
in SARS-CoV-2.
Baric specifically asked not to be cited as having commented on the
article prior to submission, which is a direct violation of Taylor and
Francis authorship policy. Neither Baric’s nor Zhengli’s names appear in
the final article. Funding sources were also omitted.
Beware the Vaccine Industrial Complex
The issue of whether or not we can simply “trust the science” becomes
even more pertinent in light of the rise of “the vaccine industrial
complex,” where vaccine company executives infiltrate government
positions and vice-versa.
In a February 16, 2021, article14
in Singapore Business Times, associate dean at the California Western
Law School, James Cooper, warns of the potential for a revolving door to
develop between government and the vaccine industry in the wake of
COVID-19. If you ask me, that revolving door has already existed for
many years.
Cooper cites former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous
military-industrial complex speech, in which he cautioned against the
insidious nature of relations between the government and suppliers of
arms. Cooper fears the same kind of insidious relationship is now taking
shape with Big Pharma, where science ends up playing second fiddle to
profits.
“Since the end of World War II, a strong
military-industrial complex has ensured massive profits for weapons
suppliers in government procurement programs and prolonged armed
conflicts around the world. Could the same be possible for the
preventive medical solutions to the pandemic?” Cooper asks.
“After all, in order to maintain the current
valuations that companies which make COVID-related vaccines and
diagnostic tests enjoy, the pandemic will have to become perpetual ...
[T]he unintended consequences of creating a
multi-billion-dollar vaccine industry that did not exist just a year ago
should not be ignored. In the previous U.S. administration, worries
emerged that politics was crowding out science.
There is a risk that science may take a back seat to
economics: When faced with the potential of even greater financial
rewards, randomized controlled trials and peer-reviewed studies may turn
out to be afterthoughts.
To quote Mr. Eisenhower at the end of his speech: ‘In
the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.’”
Indeed, drug companies are not likely to willingly let go of the mRNA
industry that was allowed to prematurely emerge thanks to the supposed
emergency of COVID-19. New viruses and new vaccines are the proverbial
lock and key to the biggest and most dangerous financial fraud the world
has ever known.
The end result of this vaccine industrial complex is the rise of a
worldwide totalitarianism and global genocide. Never before has it been
more important to scrutinize our government leaders to ascertain their
true loyalties.