WantToKnow.info: Biotech Dangers News

These Weaponized Germs Are Deadly, Unstoppable and Very Real

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

[Annie] Jacobsen’s new book, “Biological War: A Scenario” ... is a heavily researched book about contagious and potentially civilization-ending pathogens. Though banned by international treaty, these germs have been weaponized and hoarded by countries that include Russia, North Korea and Syria. Jacobsen has interviewed everyone, from former high-ranking members of the military, the C.I.A., FEMA and NATO to former secretaries of defense, counterterrorism experts, epidemiologists and Sam [expletive] Altman. That so many were willing to talk to her, and have their names affixed to this book, indicates the esteem in which she is held. “Biological War” is fact-based except for Jacobsen’s assumption that our leaders have experience, knowledge, integrity and empathy. The infectious killer this book describes, I am sorry to say, exists. It’s what’s referred to as a chimera pathogen, alive and airborne, a booby-trapped hybrid of two or more viruses. In this case, the infected person first experiences a long wave of euphoria, of the sort that makes one want to rush out and dance with somebody. Later, the suffering begins. Bubbly pink sputum, hacked up bits of lung, “bestial noises,” stenches on airplanes mistaken for dirty diapers. This pathogen is engineered to destroy trust in medicine. If a patient is given antibiotics — these would barely help anyway — the disease mutates into a form of deadly encephalitis.

Note: In 1977, a US Senate investigation revealed that, during the Cold War, the Army had secretly conducted at least 239 biological warfare tests by releasing bacteria into American cities and public transportation systems. In one experiment, a bacterial cloud released over the San Francisco Bay Area exposed hundreds of thousands of people, contributing to illnesses and death, and lasting changes to the region's microbial ecology. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on weapons of mass destruction, biotech dangers, and science corruption.

- New York Times

People Are Not Happy About Google’s Plan to Release Millions of Bioengineered Mosquitoes Into the Wild

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One of the wealthiest corporations in the world is seeking government permission to release 32 million mosquitoes throughout Florida and California. Called “Debug,” the Google-owned company is attempting to flood disease-carrying mosquito populations with ... male mosquitoes that have been infected with a bacteria called Wolbachia that causes cytoplasmic incompatibility — meaning their sperm can’t fertilize the eggs of uninfected females. Over time, the theory goes, this will disrupt the reproduction cycle, thereby increasing competition and decreasing the overall population. The American people aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of a tech company releasing millions of skeeters into the wild. “Ask yourself who is to benefit most from this, and why is it being done?” one anonymous citizen commented. “Corporations should not play a part in regulating or artificially altering ecosystems, that is the job of the EPA. This project should NOT be approved.” Another unnamed commentator concurred, writing that “we are not experimental rats. A separate 2019 project in Brazil using genetically modified ... mosquitoes was found to have inadvertently introduced lab DNA into wild populations, because the mosquitoes began reproducing anyway. Debug’s approach is substantially different, but the incident illustrates the highly experimental and uncontrollable nature of large-scale releases: the specter that a bug drop might not just fail, but backfire entirely.

Note: Oxitec, a biotech firm bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, has been authorized to release up to 2.4 billion genetically modified mosquitoes in California’s Central Valley by 2024. A plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. These Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are engineered so that only non-biting males survive, supposedly to curb Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya. Yet California has had no significant outbreaks of these diseases, which means billions of engineered insects are being released into the environment without a genuine health crisis to justify it. Read more about the "Pandora's Box" of bioengineered insects.

- Futurism

U.S. Funded Biolabs in 30+ Countries — Many Experimented With Highly Contagious Pathogens

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The U.S. has funded over 120 biolabs in 30-plus countries, according to declassified documents released by outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “Many of these U.S. government-funded biolabs are currently or have previously engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous Gain-of-Function research, with very little visibility or oversight,” Gabbard’s office said in a statement. About a third of the biolabs are located in Ukraine and are “vulnerable to longstanding threats of Russian attack, seizure, or damage,” Gabbard stated. Gain-of-function research, which increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses, has been linked to the development of COVID-19. Gabbard targeted Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom she said “lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs.” The document release drew the ire of virologists linked to Fauci and gain-of-function research, including Peter Daszak, Ph.D., former president of the Bill Gates-funded EcoHealth Alliance. Stephanie Weidle, executive director of Feds for Freedom, said the release “represents the first time a U.S. official has formally acknowledged the existence of the labs and the threat posed by the scientific work being conducted.” Gabbard said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will work to identify the labs and to “end dangerous Gain-of-Function research.”

Note:The lab-leak hypothesis was censored on social media and labeled a conspiracy theory for years. Today, the evidence is overwhelming that the pandemic was manmade. Leaked emails, grant proposals, NIH records, congressional subpoenas, whistleblower testimony, criminal indictments and even emerging discoveries into Dr. Anthony Fauci’s biodefense legacy all indicate that COVID was likely the outcome of risky bioweapons research intentionally operating outside of congressional oversight.

- Science, Public Health Policy and the Law

Assassinations? Defamation? How genetic technology could destabilize the world

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The forensic scientist Claire Glynn estimated that more than 40 million people have sent in their DNA and personal data for direct-to-consumer genetic testing, mostly to map their ancestry and find relatives. Since 2020, at least two genetic genealogy firms have been hacked and at least one had its genomic data leaked. Yet when discussing future risks of genetic technology, the security policy community has largely focused on spectacular scenarios of genetically tailored bioweapons or artificial intelligence (AI) engineered superbugs. A more imminent weaponization concern is more straightforward: the risk that nefarious actors use the genetic techniques ... to frame, defame, or even assassinate targets. A Russian parliamentary report from 2023 claimed that “by using foreign biological facilities, the United States can collect and study pathogens that can infect a specific genotype of humans.” Designer bioweapons, if ever successfully developed, produced, and tested, would indeed pose a major threat. Unscrupulous actors with access to DNA synthesis infrastructure could ... frame someone for a crime such as murder, for example, by using DNA that synthetically reproduces the DNA regions used in forensic crime analysis. The research and policy communities must dedicate resources not simply to dystopian, low-probability threats like AI designed bioweapons, but also to gray zone genomics and smaller-scale, but higher probability, scenarios for misuse.

Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in biotech.

- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Tech execs are joining the Army — no grueling boot camp required

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Four top tech execs from OpenAI, Meta, and Palantir have just joined the US Army. The Army Reserve has commissioned these senior tech leaders to serve as midlevel officers, skipping tradition to pursue transformation. The newcomers won't attend any current version of the military's most basic and ingrained rite of passage— boot camp. Instead, they'll be ushered in through express training that Army leaders are still hashing out, Col. Dave Butler ... said. The execs — Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, the chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was formerly the chief research officer for OpenAI — are joining the Army as lieutenant colonels. The name of their unit, "Detachment 201," is named for the "201" status code generated when a new resource is created for Hypertext Transfer Protocols in internet coding, Butler explained. "In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems," read the Army press release. "By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal." Lethality, a vague Pentagon buzzword, has been at the heart of the massive modernization and transformation effort the Army is undergoing.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and military corruption.

- Business Insider

Fauci was told by Feb. 2020 that COVID was already ‘adapted’ to humans, messages show

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. and Chinese government officials knew as early as February 2020 that the emerging novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 had already been well-adapted to humans – an early signal not only that it would spread efficiently, but also that it may not have emerged at the Wuhan wet market. Recently released chat messages indicate that former National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci was informed by early February 2020 by then-China Center for Disease for Disease Control and Prevention Director George Gao that the emerging novel coronavirus had already “adapted to human hosts well.” It was not until approximately three months later, on May 21, 2020, that this alarming characteristic of the novel coronavirus, starkly different than the SARS virus that circulated from 2002-2004, first generated widespread discussion and debate in the U.S. Critics included authors of an earlier March 2020 publication in Nature Medicine titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” While this paper acknowledged the virus was well adapted to humans, it described this feature as assuredly natural. The paper was viewed millions of times within days and made the authors go-to experts in the media on the novel coronavirus. It wasn’t until Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits revealed Fauci’s emails that the public became aware of his involvement with the conception of that paper. “It is indeed striking that this virus is so closely related to SARS yet is behaving so differently. It seems to have been preadapted for human spread since the get go,” coauthor University of Sydney virologist Eddie Holmes said in a message on February 10, 2020.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the cover-up of COVID origins. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on biotech dangers.

- US Right to Know

Trump’s NIH Chief Lets Loose on Fauci, Vaccines and Covid Cover-Ups

Wed, 14 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Jay Bhattacharya is no longer on the fringe. Bhattacharya is now the director of the National Institutes of Health, one of the most powerful figures in public health and biomedical research in the U.S. and across the globe. “The first and most important thing,” he says in a new interview with POLITICO Magazine, “is that dissenting voices need to be heard and allowed.” He praises the pardon of Anthony Fauci even as he effectively accuses the former public health official of engaging in a Covid cover-up. He endorses the creation of an independent commission to assess the pandemic response. He rejects the continued recommendation of mRNA vaccines for healthy young people. Do you believe the U.S. — or other countries — should do more to uncover the origins of Covid-19? "Yes, but I think the Chinese need to cooperate and they have not cooperated," [said Bhattacharya]. "There’s enough evidence that I’ve seen from the outside that suggests that there was at the very least a cover-up of dangerous experiments that were done in China with — by the way — the help of the U.S. and also Germany and the UK. There was an international effort to try to supposedly prevent pandemics by finding viruses and pathogens in the wild [and] making them more transmissible. I think that was a very, very dangerous kind of utopian research agenda. I’m convinced that research agenda led to this pandemic through a lab leak in China, in Wuhan. But that was a global effort."

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the cover-up of COVID origins. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID and government corruption.

- Politico

We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since scientists began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics. Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. A March 2020 paper in the journal Nature Medicine, which was written by five prominent scientists and declared that no “laboratory-based scenario” for the pandemic virus was plausible. But we later learned through congressional subpoenas of their Slack conversations that while the scientists publicly said the scenario was implausible, privately many of its authors considered the scenario to be not just plausible but likely. One of the authors of that paper, the evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen, wrote in the Slack messages, “The lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the origins of COVID. Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and COVID corruption.

- New York Times

C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there. But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory. There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said. John Ratcliffe, the new director of the C.I.A., has long favored the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that needs to be understood and that it has consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations. The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Even in the absence of hard intelligence, the lab leak hypothesis has been gaining ground inside spy agencies. But some analysts question the wisdom of shifting a position in absence of new information. Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic. But they said that they had only low-confidence in their assessment. Until now, two agencies, the F.B.I. and Department of Energy, thought a lab leak was more likely. But their theories are different.

Note: For years, the lab leak hypothesis was labeled as “racist,” “ thoroughly debunked," and "something out of a comic book." If intelligence agencies are just now admitting the lab leak is ‘more likely,’ does that mean they were ignoring or covering up evidence—or just waiting for the political winds to shift? Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19.

- New York Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci writes COVID-19 lab leak is a ‘conspiracy theory’ in memoir — but told Congress it wasn’t

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dr. Anthony Fauci writes in his new “tell-all” that those who argue the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, potentially due to experiments funded by US grants, are promoting a “conspiracy theory” — contradicting his own recent testimony before Congress. NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak told members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last month that US taxpayers did fund gain-of-function research on bat SARS viruses at the WIV. Manhattan-based EcoHealth has denied that its work met the controlling definition for that research — or that the experiments could have led to the pandemic. Earlier this week, two scientific experts testified before another Senate committee that evidence points to the experiments at the Wuhan lab as the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. NIH, which oversees NIAID, awarded more than $500,000 to EcoHealth between 2014 and 2020 that was funneled toward risky viral research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The research resulted in a modified virus that was 10,000 times more infectious in lungs, 1 million times more infectious in brains and three times more lethal in humanized lab mice, [Rutgers University molecular biologist Dr. Richard] Ebright testified earlier this week, based on NIH disclosures of the experiment. Another EcoHealth proposal, which was never funded, is seen as a potential way in which the virus could have been created.

Note: Read how the NIH bypassed the oversight process, allowing controversial gain-of-function experiments to proceed unchecked. Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID and corruption in biotech.

- New York Post

DOJ secretly investigated nonprofit at center of Wuhan COVID lab leak questions, bombshell House report reveals

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Department of Justice secretly launched a grand jury investigation into a US nonprofit that steered American taxpayer funding to the Chinese lab suspected of leaking the COVID-19 virus and causing the global pandemic. Scientific experts and former federal officials have suggested that EcoHealth Alliance’s grants to the China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) funded gain-of-function research that could have led to a lab leak — but records requests have repeatedly been blocked by the National Institutes of Health. The details of the apparent federal investigation of EcoHealth Alliance remain secret — and members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which released [a] 520-page report on the origins of and response to the pandemic, have declined to talk about it, citing concerns about interfering in any potential DOJ investigation. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies awarded millions of dollars’ worth of grants to the now-suspended public health nonprofit — including a $4 million NIH project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” More than $1.4 million dollars flowed from NIH and USAID to the WIV for that project, which the agency’s principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak later acknowledged was gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses modified with SARS and MERS viruses to become 10,000 times more infectious.

- New York Post

COVID-19 came from lab leak, report finds

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A final congressional report on COVID-19 released Monday has determined the virus likely emerged from a lab accident in China and that the U.S. government perpetrated “misinformation” by incorrectly calling the lab leak theory a “conspiracy.” The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s COVID-19 panel, controlled by Republicans, issued its 520-page report two years after its investigation began. The report affirmed ... that a “lab-related incident” involving gain-of-function research in Wuhan is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report specifically calls out Anthony Fauci ... saying that he pushed back on the lab leak theory and “prompted” a research report called “The Proximal Origin” that was used to discredit it. “Although Dr. Fauci believed the lab-leak theory to be a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, it now appears that his position is that he does have an open mind about the origin of the virus—so long as it does not implicate EcoHealth Alliance, and by extension himself and NIAID. Understandably, as he signed off on the EcoHealth Alliance grant,” the report stated. The massive report also examined the effectiveness and consequences of masks and mask mandates and stated that they were ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19. Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens.

- News Nation

COVID-19 Report Suggests Wuhan Lab as Virus Origin, Criticizes WHO and Vaccine Messaging

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has released its final report, summarizing two years of investigations into the origins and handling of COVID-19. The 520-page report, published Monday, concludes that the virus most likely originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Republican-led committee cited biological characteristics of the virus and reports of illnesses among researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019 as key evidence for its findings. The report also scrutinized the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of prioritizing the Chinese Communist Party’s interests over its global mission to protect public health. The subcommittee criticized U.S. health officials and the Biden administration for what it described as overselling the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission and infection. However, the report praised the early travel restrictions implemented by the Trump administration as a significant step in mitigating the pandemic's spread. This conclusion contrasts with other research pointing to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan as the most likely origin of the virus. The WHO and many scientists have stated that the exact origins of the pandemic remain uncertain. The release of the report highlights the ongoing debate over the pandemic's beginnings and the global response, underscoring the complexities of managing an unprecedented public health crisis.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and COVID vaccines.

- NBC News (Palm Springs Affiliate)

Before the pandemic, top contractor received billions from government to help prepare the nation for biowarfare

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Trump administration this month announced that one of its largest pandemic-related contracts would go to a little-known biodefense company named Emergent BioSolutions. The $628 million deal to help manufacture an eventual vaccine cemented Emergent's status as the highest-paid and most important contractor to the HHS office responsible for preparing for public health threats and maintaining the government's stockpile of emergency medical supplies. Emergent has long been the government's sole provider of BioThrax, a vaccine for anthrax poisoning. Emergent's advocacy for biodefense spending over more than a decade was aided by influential allies in Washington and tens of millions of dollars in lobbying campaigns. "It has strategically placed itself to be, let's just say, the company that can't fail," said a former senior government official who worked with Emergent on stockpile operations. The company that would become Emergent began as BioPort Corp., formed in 1998 to buy an aging, state-owned company in Lansing, Mich., that was the only licensed supplier of anthrax vaccine to the Pentagon. The Pentagon ... awarded a $29 million no-bid contract for the anthrax vaccine, BioThrax. Controversy swamped the operation. Hundreds of U.S. troops who received the BioThrax treatment complained of bad reactions, such as headaches and nerve problems. Some troops risked courts-martial by refusing vaccination. Emergent spent nearly $4 million on lobbying last year alone.

Note: To understand the huge influence of lobbying and profits on the development and stockpiling of vaccines, don't miss reading this entire, eye-opening article.

- Washington Post

Declassify State Dept. COVID documents: Former CDC director

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The man who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when the COVID pandemic began says still-classified State Department documents add credibility to his long-held contention that the virus spread because of a leak from a laboratory. “Once they are declassified, the American public will get a much better understanding of the knowledge base we have,” Dr. Robert Redfield [said]. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the House Select Subcommittee son the Coronavirus Pandemic, says he recently viewed the State Department’s documents, which he says strongly hint that ... COVID first spread due to a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wenstrup is asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken to declassify the report, and Redfield agrees. On Wednesday, Wenstrup announced that his panel has issued a subpoena “to compel Dr. David Morens — a top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — to appear for a public hearing.” The committee’s news release says “Dr. Morens will be asked to address new evidence suggesting he deliberately obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigations into the origins of COVID-19 to protect his former boss, Dr. (Anthony) Fauci.” “I think he (Wenstrup) is gonna get to the truth,” said Redfield, who has long complained that he was “sidelined” because his lab leak theory contradicted other scientists including Fauci. Redfield says it’s also vital that researchers minimize the danger of future lab leaks. He’s calling for an end to “gain of function” research. “That’s the real biosecurity threat,” he said.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more, tune into a nuanced interview with Dr. Robert Redfield about the origins and ongoing impact of COVID-19.

- News Nation

Emails detail Fauci’s controversial biodefense legacy

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Anthony Fauci detailed how the research portfolio of his longtime former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not distinguish between “biodefense efforts” and “naturally occurring” pathogens in a fall 2017 presentation. Fauci described “the joining with and ultimate indistinguishing of biodefense efforts and efforts directed at naturally occurring emerging and re-emerging infections. “Gain-of-function” research (GOF) makes viruses more pathogenic or transmissible. Much of this gain-of-function research is considered “dual use research of concern” (DURC) because it can be applied toward benevolent civilian aims or misapplied toward the development of bioweapons. Fauci’s biodefense legacy has taken on a new significance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics, especially those who believe the pandemic is likely to have resulted from a lab accident, say the global proliferation of maximum security labs and GOF/DURC has made the world less safe. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, amid concerns about alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” including biological weapons, former President George W. Bush asked Congress to invest billions in building maximum security labs capable of combating bioterrorism. By the late 2000s, fears of bioterrorism from the Middle East had faded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conclusion that a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick had been responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks stoked a new kind of fear — of an expanding population of scientists with classified knowledge and access to pathogens. Counter-bioterrorism research at the National Institutes for Health surged from $53 million in 2001 to at least $1.6 billion in 2004. GAO reports uncovered major biosecurity breaches.

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci admitted to congress that there was no scientific basis for many pandemic policies. Can anything he's said about gain-of-function research be trusted?

- US Right to Know

Should We Blame Fauci for the COVID Pandemic?

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For nearly 40 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, [Anthony] Fauci had served as the ... director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to COVID-19, Fauci had long supported funding pandemic research that other scientists found risky, if not downright dangerous. In 2014, there was a series of embarrassing safety lapses at U.S. government labs. In October 2014, President Barack Obama's administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that could make ... viruses transmissible via the respiratory route in mammals. In 2017, the White House produced the ... P3CO framework. Under P3CO, the NIH would forward grant proposals involving research on known pandemic pathogens or research that might create or enhance such pathogens to a new P3CO committee within HHS for a department-level risk-benefit analysis. To date, the P3CO committee has vetted just three research proposals involving so-called enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, out of potentially dozens that should have been examined. Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins ... found a way to skirt the oversight process. They "realized that if they don't [forward proposals to HHS for review], there is no review." In 2014, [EcoHealth Alliance] received a five-year, $3.7 million NIAID grant to collect virus samples from human beings and bats in China and then experiment on these viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth announced that it intended to create "chimeric" or hybrid viruses out of spike proteins, the part of a virus that allows it to enter and infect hosts cells, from SARS-like coronaviruses discovered in the wild and the backbone of another, already-known SARS virus. When EcoHealth's year five report was eventually submitted two years late, in 2021, it showed that additional chimeric viruses created in Wuhan demonstrated both enhanced transmission and lethality in humanized mice. By that time, the COVID-19 pandemic was already well underway.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Yahoo! News

The FDA Just Quietly Gutted Protections for Human Subjects in Research

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Late last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly introduced a regulation that may be one of the most important shifts in how [clinical research organizations, universities large and small, pharma companies, and multi-billion dollar corporations] conduct future medical and public health research. A bedrock of ethical research design is the universal requirement of informed consent for any medical procedure, treatment, or intervention. These measures have generally been strengthened since the Nuremberg Trials, formally adopted across the U.S. government through the institutional review board (IRB) system. An IRB is a committee of specialists and administrators at each institution that oversees research design and assures the protection of research subjects. At its core, the new FDA rule change allows any IRB to broadly assume the FDA's own exemption power, dubiously granted under the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, to grant exemptions to informed consent requirements based on "minimal risk." Based on vague guidelines, it effectively gives thousands of IRB committees the unilateral ability to determine that researchers need not obtain true informed consent from research participants. The relaxed standards could facilitate the quick approval of controversial research projects. The Gates Foundation-backed Oxitec program is currently releasing millions of genetically modified mosquitos in the Florida Keys. Another application of the relaxed standards is to government-funded studies of online posts designed to identify "misinformation." Entities like the Stanford Internet Observatory have laundered government demands for censorship of speech—even true speech—in online settings like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). The literal purpose of this research is to harm its research subjects by censoring their speech and labeling them as purveyors of misinformation. In 2021, a conservative journalist sued Stanford University for slandering him via this research project, which never sought his informed consent to be a subject of their study. Under the new FDA rule, IRBs everywhere would feel no compunction to require it.

Note: Read about the shocking history of human experimentation. See a disturbing timeline of corporate and government experiments that treated people like guinea pigs. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in science from reliable major media sources.

- Newsweek

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ‘shielded’ biotech firms in gain-of-function research audit, GOP senator claims

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A recent audit of Pentagon funding of gain-of-function research outside the US “may have shielded” collaborations with Chinese biotech firms — including at least one linked to Beijing’s military, a Republican senator alleged. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for answers about redactions that had concealed the firms — WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron Beijing Co., and Genscript Inc. — from public scrutiny in the audit, according to a letter. “American taxpayers deserve transparency about the programs they are funding, and I am disappointed this OIG report does not provide that accountability,” Marshall wrote. According to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General audit, more than $15.5 million in grants between 2014 and 2023 flowed through subrecipients to “contracting research organization[s] in China or other foreign countries for research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential.” However, the 20-page audit cited “significant limitations with the adequacy of data” — and said the Pentagon “did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding ... for the gain-of-function experiments. Such research is classified as “offensive biological work” by the Pentagon, which Marshall said “raises questions” about National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials having admitted this year to funding gain-of-function experiments at the ... Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and military corruption from reliable major media sources.

- New York Post

Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The year before the outbreak, the Wuhan institute, working with U.S. partners, had proposed creating viruses with SARS-CoV-2's defining feature. Much of this work was conducted in partnership with the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based scientific organization that, since 2002, has been awarded over $80 million in federal funding to research the risks of emerging infectious diseases. The laboratory pursued risky research that resulted in viruses becoming more infectious: Coronaviruses were grown from samples from infected animals and genetically reconstructed and recombined to create new viruses unknown in nature. In 2021, The Intercept published a leaked 2018 grant proposal for a research project named Defuse, which had been written as a collaboration between EcoHealth, the Wuhan institute and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina. The Defuse project proposed to search for and create SARS-like viruses carrying spikes with a unique feature: a furin cleavage site — the same feature that enhances infectiousness in humans, making it capable of causing a pandemic. As the pandemic raged, their American collaborators failed to publicly reveal the existence of the Defuse proposal. One alarming detail — leaked to The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by current and former U.S. government officials — is that scientists ... fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019. One of the scientists had been named in the Defuse proposal as the person in charge of virus discovery work. [This] would be the most costly accident in the history of science. U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video for a deeper dive into the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- New York Times

Fauci’s institute hid mpox gain-of-function plans from Congress and the media

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For nearly nine years Anthony Fauci’s institute concealed plans to engineer a pandemic capable mpox virus with a case fatality rate of up to 15 percent, congressional investigators revealed in a new report. In June 2015, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases received formal approval from the National Institutes of Health’s Institutional Review Board for experiments expected to engineer an mpox virus with high transmissibility and moderate mortality. NIAID — the institute Fauci oversaw for nearly four decades and which underwrites most federally funded gain-of-function research — concealed the project’s approval from investigators with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over the course of a 17 month-long investigation. [The] report describes the obstruction and secrecy around the mpox proposal as a case study in how the institute “oversees and accounts for the monitoring of potentially dangerous gain-of-function research of concern.” The revelations land amid global concerns about whether coronavirus gain-of-function research — research that might generate pathogens with increased pathogenicity or transmissibility — may have contributed to the worst pandemic in a century. The committee, in conjunction with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, is also investigating coronavirus gain-of-function research underwritten by NIAID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and faces similar stonewalling in that investigation.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- US Right to Know

Biden Administration Strips Federal Funding From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy

Wed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds. For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells. In testimony to the House's coronavirus subcommittee, [EcoHealth President Peter ] Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIH's reporting system. [An] HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIH's reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Aol News/Reason

What Might the US Owe the World for Covid-19?

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The US government (USG) funded and supported a program of dangerous laboratory research that may have resulted in the creation and accidental laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the outbreak, the USG lied in order to cover up its possible role. The evidence of a possible laboratory creation revolves around a multi-year US-led research program that involved US and Chinese scientists. The research was designed by US scientists, funded mainly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense, and administered by a US organization, the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), with much of the work taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The NIH became the home for biodefense research starting in 2001. Biodefense funding from the Defense Department budget went to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division, the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). NIAID and DARPA (in the Defense Department) supported extensive research on potential pathogens for biowarfare and biodefense, and for the design of vaccines to protect against biowarfare. NIAID became a large-scale financial supporter of Gain of Function (GoF) research, meaning laboratory experiments designed to genetically alter pathogens to make them even more pathogenic. There is a high likelihood that the US Government continues to this day to fund dangerous GoF work.

- Common Dreams

Can a 50-year-old treaty still keep the world safe from the changing threat of bioweapons?

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibits the production, use, development, stockpiling, or transfer of biological toxins or disease-causing organisms against humans, animals, or plants. More than 180 countries are party to the pact, which came into force in 1975 as the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapon. And in the years since, the taboo against state use of biological weapons has largely held. Yet a volatile geopolitical environment, combined with the rapid advance and increased access in the ability to edit and engineer pathogens, is straining and testing the nearly 50-year-old BWC as never before. From the BWC’s beginnings, critics have said it lacked vital elements, like a verification mechanism to make sure everyone is following it. Global tensions, scientific advances, and the ever-expanding repertoire of what is possible with both biology and chemistry are making those flaws and cracks ever more visible. Some high-profile mishaps linked to the US chemical and biological weapons programs ... along with public anger over the use of herbicides like Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, prompted Congress to pressure the Nixon administration to review the biological and chemical weapons programs. Contagions are hard to control and contain, and the same pathogens that can infect your target can also sicken you and your population. This is also why they tend to be used as a stealth agent of war. “The holy grail that we’ve struggled with with the Biological Weapons Convention is how do you verify that the countries that have signed up to the treaty are not making biological weapons?” said Kenneth Ward, US special representative to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on science corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Vox

Dangerous lab leaks happen far more often than the public is aware

Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Safety breaches happen every year at labs experimenting with dangerous pathogens. Scientists and other lab workers are bitten by infected animals, stuck by contaminated needles and splashed with infectious fluids. Yet the public rarely learns about these incidents, which tend to be shrouded in secrecy. For example, when a safety breach occurred in 2019 at a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab experimenting with a dangerous and highly controversial lab-created H5N1 avian influenza virus, the university never told the public – or local and state public health officials. In another incident, a pipe burst on a lab waste-holding tank in 2018 at a US army research facility at Fort Detrick, near Washington DC. Workers initially dismissed that any safety breach had occurred. Then army officials belatedly issued public statements that left out key details and created the misleading impression that no dangerous pathogens could have left the base. Yet my reporting has uncovered government documents and even a photo showing the giant tank spewing an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of unsterilized lab wastewater near an open storm drain that feeds into a popular public waterway. Regulation of lab safety in the US and around the world is fragmented and often relies heavily on scientific institutions policing themselves. There is no comprehensive tracking of which labs hold collections of the most dangerous viruses, bacteria and toxins.

Note: Watch our latest Mindful News Brief series on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community from reliable major media sources.

- The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)

Pentagon Report Predicts New Age of COVID Bioweapons and Brain Chip Warfare

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Military strategists believe that a "coronavirus bioweapon" may lurk on the horizon. This possibility is one of several outlined in a new report sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The report “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War Research” delves into how CRISPR gene-editing technology, mRNA vaccines, brain networking, and other technological advancements could unleash new forms of military conflict. “We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts” and “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” that cripple the American military-industrial base,” the report warns. At the same time, authoritarian states might ... brutally suppress "anti-vaccine populists" and enforce compliance. The report claims this could hinder the U.S. due to its more relaxed regulatory environment that values individual liberties, where such crackdowns and forced vaccinations are more difficult to deploy. The report takes aim at Congress, criticizing the recent repeal of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members. It urges lawmakers to resist "anti-vaccine populism" to ensure military readiness. Simultaneously, the report urges the Pentagon to consider using genetic screening to find qualified military recruits and develop clear plans for integrating bioweapon warfare capabilities.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and microchip implants from reliable major media sources .

- Lee Fang on Substack

DOCUMENTS: Chinese Researcher Who Mapped COVID Virus Two Weeks Before China Released Sequence Was on Anthony Fauci’s Payroll

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A Chinese researcher who first submitted the genetic sequence for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in late December 2019, around two weeks before China disclosed the deadly virus to outside scientists, was on the payroll of Anthony Fauci’s institute at the time, according to a grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit operated by Peter Daszak. The disclosures call into further question what officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) knew about research they were funding in China where the pandemic began. “The grant doesn't work on SARS-CoV-2,” Daszak [said], when the NIH was forced to review the grant in the summer of 2020. “Our organization has not actually published any data on SARS-CoV-2. We work on bat coronaviruses that are out there in the wild and trying to predict what the next one is.” NIH officials refused to respond to multiple requests to explain how much salary they provided to Dr. Lili Ren, a scientist at the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology, who wrote a letter in support of Daszak’s grant application to Fauci’s NIH institute. Ren first uploaded the COVID virus sequence to the NIH’s GenBank on December 28, 2019—two weeks before scientists celebrated China’s release of the genetic sequence on January 11, 2020. Fauci’s NIH grant also paid for Ren’s expenses, including travel to the United States to meet with Daszak as well as her collaborator Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina.

Note: The author of Disinformation Chronicle on Substack is Paul Thacker, an American investigative journalist who served as an investigator in the US Senate, focusing on financial ties between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 from reliable major media sources.

- The DisInformation Chronicle on Substack

A scientist who helped Fauci discredit the lab leak theory is now speaking out

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In March 2020, Dr. Robert Kadlec addressed a House committee to confirm his role and responsibilities as the federal government’s top preparedness official coordinating the government’s COVID-19 response. As assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Kadlec offered a lengthy statement to lawmakers on the “four principal functions” of his role. None of those functions involved downplaying without scientific evidence a theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But that’s what Kadlec now says he did by assisting Dr. Anthony Fauci ... in his effort to suppress the lab leak theory. Kadlec says it’s a decision that keeps him up at night. “I wake up at usually about 2 or 3 a.m. and think about it honestly, because it’s something that we all played a role in,” Kadlec [said]. For much of 2020 and 2021, anyone who brought up the possibility that COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan risked being labeled a conspiracy theorist by legacy media and “fact-checkers.” In September, the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that Fauci was secretly admitted to CIA headquarters while the agency conducted its analysis of the virus’s origins, allegedly to “‘influence’ the Agency’s review.” A ... CIA whistleblower claims the agency attempted to bribe six analysts tasked with assessing the origin of the virus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Washington Examiner

Scientists at the center of the ‘lab leak’ controversy met with NIH, Fauci

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scientists at the center of the “lab leak” controversy visited Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health in 2017 to discuss their research — just months before NIH lifted a pause on high-risk virology. Wuhan Institute of Virology Senior Scientist Shi Zhengli [visited] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases staffers in June 2017, where she gave a presentation about novel coronaviruses. Shi is known internationally as the “Bat Lady” for her work with bats and their coronaviruses. Though ostensibly a civilian lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research projects “for defensive and biosecurity needs of the military” since at least 2017, according to U.S. intelligence. EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. research organization, partnered closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, subcontracting NIAID funding to Shi’s lab, and arranged the meeting. Fauci himself met with [EcoHealth Alliance President Peter] Daszak four months later, in October 2017. By December 2017, NIH had resumed funding for gain-of-function research that generates new viruses in the lab following a three year pause and debate about the possibility that such research could cause a pandemic. A 2021 State Department fact sheet stated that “despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution,” it has conducted classified research on behalf of the Chinese military “since at least 2017.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- U.S. Right to Know

CIA accused of hiding records that analysts took ‘monetary incentives’ to bury COVID lab leak finding

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

An offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payoffs to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic. The think tank’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA Dec. 22, alleging the agency did not comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about analysts who allegedly “received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus,” according to a copy of the complaint. A senior-level CIA agent told House Republican committee chairmen in September that the agency offered payments to six analysts tasked with determining the origins of SARS-CoV-2 if they said that the virus jumped from animals to humans. The Sept. 12 letter from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to CIA Director William Burns also demanded documentation ... about the payments. “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the House panel chairmen wrote. In February, the FBI became the first US intelligence agency to conclude the coronavirus pandemic most likely began with a lab leak.

Note: Former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci will testify before Congress on COVID origins in early 2024. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our COVID Information Center.

- New York Post