By Dr. Joseph Mercola | mercola.com
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded risky gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as recently as 2019
- Two U.S. individuals implicated in funding and researching bat coronaviruses with human infection potential are Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID, and Peter Daszak, Ph.D. Both have also publicly dismissed the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 originating in a lab and have worked to suppress such lines of inquiry
- As early as March 2020, Fauci knew that up to 90% of positive PCR tests were false positives, yet he said and did nothing. Instead, he fueled the flames of fearmongering, perpetuating the myth that we were in a lethal pandemic
- The World Health Organization’s commission charged with the investigation of SARS-CoV-2’s origin has dismissed the lab-origin theory. In response, two dozen scientists and policy experts are calling for a truly independent investigation into the virus’ origin
- Key pieces of research that support the lab-origin theory — by presenting a highly credible theory for how the virus became so highly adapted for human infection — are coronavirus studies done on mice genetically engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor
While the outrageously conflicted investigative commission put together by the World Health Organization has dismissed the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 being a lab-leaked virus, deciding to pursue the imported frozen food theory instead,1,2,3 the lab-origin story refuses to die, and for good reason.
There’s just too much evidence pointing in that direction. Evidence of U.S. involvement is also mounting, although it hasn’t received quite as much coverage. Two individuals who have been heavily implicated are:
•Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who rose to national prominence as the leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
•Peter Daszak, Ph.D., president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on pandemic prevention that has worked closely with bat coronavirus researcher Shi Zhengli and others at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Daszak was chosen to be on two separate commissions charged with investigating the origin of SARS-CoV-2, one by the WHO4 and one by The Lancet.5 His inclusion has been widely criticized, as he played a central role in the plot to obscure the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 from the very beginning by crafting a scientific statement condemning such inquiries as “conspiracy theory.”6,7
In the video above, Chris Martenson, Ph.D., reviews Newsweek’s reporting8,9 on NIAID-funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the WIV. Newsweek wrote a series of articles on this in late April 2020.
I first mentioned that the outbreak had the hallmarks of a laboratory escape in my February 4, 2020, article, “Novel Coronavirus — The Latest Pandemic Scare.” Now, well over a year later, mainstream media like Politico10 and The New York Times11 are picking up the threads as well.
US Defense Suspected Lab Origin From the Start
In its April 27, 2020, article,12 Newsweek noted that, according to March 27, 2020, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment report, SARS-CoV-2 was likely an accidental release from an infectious diseases laboratory. In its original January 2020 report, the DIA had stated the outbreak “probably occurred naturally.”
According to Newsweek,13 “The classified report, titled ‘China: Origins of COVID-19 Outbreak Remain Unknown,’ ruled out that the disease was genetically engineered or released intentionally as a biological weapon.”
More recently, in his March 8, 2021, Politico article,14 columnist Josh Rogin also points out that “just months into the pandemic, a large swath of the government already believed the virus had escaped from the WIV lab, rather than having leaped from an animal to a human at the Wuhan seafood market or some other random natural setting …”
Rogin also touches on key pieces of research that support the lab-origin theory by presenting a highly credible theory for how the virus became so highly adapted for human infection, namely coronavirus studies done on mice genetically engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor. He writes:15
“A little-noticed study was released in early July 2020 by a group of Chinese researchers in Beijing, including several affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Science.
These scientists said that they had created a new model for studying SARS-CoV-2 by creating mice with humanlike lung characteristics by using the CRISPR gene-editing technology to give the mice lung cells with the human ACE2 receptor — the cell receptor that allowed coronaviruses to so easily infect human lungs.
After consultations with experts, some U.S. officials came to believe that this Beijing lab was likely conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with ACE2 receptors well before the coronavirus outbreak — research that they hadn’t disclosed and continued not to admit to.”
Indeed, in 2015, Daszak spoke at a National Academies of Science seminar on reducing risk from emerging infectious diseases, warning of the danger of experimenting on “humanized mice,”16 meaning lab mice that have been genetically altered to carry human genes, cells, or tissues.
According to the Daily Mail,17 that same year Daszak also published a paper in which he warned a global pandemic might occur from a laboratory incident and that “the risks were greater with the sort of virus manipulation research being carried out in Wuhan.”
Then, on January 2, 2020, Daszak sent out a tweet announcing he’d successfully isolated SARS coronaviruses “that bind to human cells in the lab,” and that the work of other scientists show some of these viruses have pandemic potential as they can infect humanized mice.18 Lastly, there are the words of WIV researcher Zhengli herself, who in a July 31, 2020, Science article admitted:19,20
“We performed in vivo experiments in transgenic (human ACE2 expressing) mice and civets in 2018 and 2019 in the Institute’s biosafety laboratory. The viruses we used were bat SARSr-CoV close to SARS-CoV … The results suggested that bat SARSr-CoV can directly infect civets and can also infect mice with human ACE2 receptors.”
Scientists Call for Independent Investigation
March 4, 2021, The New York Times21 reported that, following the WHO’s dismissal of the lab-origin theory, two dozen scientists and policy experts have signed an open letter22 calling for an independent investigation into the virus’s origin.
“The open letter … lists what the signers see as flaws in the joint W.H.O.-China inquiry, and state that it could not adequately address the possibility that the virus leaked from a lab,” The New York Times writes.
Perhaps one of the biggest flaws in the WHO’s inquiry is the universal absence of evidence demonstrating a wholly natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. If the virus was truly natural, surely, we’d have some evidence of its evolution at this point, yet we have nothing.
In addition to highlighting their concern about the investigative commission’s limited scientific independence, they also expressed concern “that the joint team’s work has been inaccurately reported by the media as an independent investigation whose conclusions reflect those of the WHO”:
“Although the findings were those of the joint team, they were widely reported as representing the WHO itself. As strong supporters of the WHO and its mission, we believe it must be made clear that any findings of the joint committee, while potentially useful to a limited extent, represent neither the official position of the WHO nor the result of an unrestricted, independent investigation.”
The letter details not only the shortcomings of the WHO’s investigative commission but also what a full and independent investigation “should look like,” starting with the creation of a multidisciplinary team, whose members have “no unresolved conflicts of interest and no full or partial control by any specific agenda or country.”
They also, and rightfully so, recommend “considering all possible scenarios for each pathway,” and then following standard forensic approaches, which include securing full access to all relevant sites, records, logs, databases, and samples.
Fauci Implicated in Risky Research at WIV
April 28, 2021, Newsweek published a follow-up article highlighting Fauci’s role, noting that the NIAID funded “risky coronavirus research” at the WIV as recently as 2019:23
“In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million …
The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part24 began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses … The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab … to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.
A second phase25 of the project, beginning that year, included … gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance … under the direction of President Peter Daszak … NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24 [2020] …
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.”
At the time, Fauci and Daszak both declined to comment and the National Institutes of Health responded with a dismissive statement saying that “Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife,” and that “scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory.”26 In the video above, Martenson reviews research refuting the NIH’s claim of there being no evidence of a lab connection.
Fauci’s Despicable Treachery
Someone who has taken a particular interest in Fauci’s potential role in this pandemic is Dr. Peter Breggin. He actually wrote an entire report,27 “Dr. Fauci’s COVID-19 Treachery,” about Fauci’s “chilling ties” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its military. The report was published in October 2020.
Breggin is convinced Fauci “has been the major force” behind research activities that enabled the CCP to manufacture lethal SARS coronaviruses, which in turn led to the release — whether accidental or not — of SARS-CoV-2 from the WIV.
He claims Fauci has helped the CCP obtain “valuable U.S. patents,” and that he, in collaboration with the CCP and the WHO, initially suppressed the truth about the origins and dangers of the pandemic, thereby enabling the spread of the virus from China to the rest of the world.
Fauci has, and continues to, shield the CCP and himself, Breggin says, by “denying the origin of SARS-CoV-2” and “delaying and thwarting worldwide attempts to deal rationally with the pandemic.”
In the executive summary of the report, Breggin documents 15 questionable activities that Fauci has been engaged in, starting with the fact that he funded dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, both by individual Chinese researchers and the WIV in collaboration with American researchers. This research, Breggin says, allowed the CCP and its military to create their own bioweapons, including SARS-CoV-2.
He points out that the American-Chinese collaboration was initially detailed in a paper written by two Chinese researchers, Botao Xiao (trained at Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School) and Lei Xiao back in February 2020. According to Breggin, the CCP forced them to recant and the paper was withdrawn.
“The stated purpose [of gain-of-function research] is to learn to prevent and treat future outbreaks; but research labs are the most common source of outbreaks from dangerous pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, as well as two earlier accidental escapes by SARS viruses in 2004 from a research facility in Beijing,” Breggin writes.28
Why Did Fauci Continue Gain-of-Function Research?
While President Trump canceled funding for dangerous gain-of-function research on viruses in April 2020 after the Chinese-American collaborations became publicly known, Fauci has since then released fresh funds.
Part of the funding is again directed to the EcoHealth Alliance, which for years has outsourced its research projects to WIV and other Chinese researchers. Fauci also continued outsourcing gain-of-function research to the WIV back in 2014, after then-President Obama ordered a stop to such research.
“In order to outsource dangerous viral research from the U.S. to China during the Obama moratorium, Fauci prematurely approved the Wuhan Institute as a highest-level containment facility (known as BSL-4) capable of safely working with lethal viruses,” Breggin writes.29
“He did this while knowing the Institute had a very poor safety record and while also knowing that all such facilities in China are overseen by the military as part of its biowarfare program. Thus, Fauci created two grave worldwide threats, the accidental release of a deadly coronavirus and/or its use as a military weapon.”
Interestingly, while the original moratorium on gain-of-function research was a direct order by the president when the moratorium was lifted at the end of 2017, it was done so by the NIH and NIAID.
Fauci also defended and promoted gain-of-function research on bird flu viruses a decade ago, saying such research was worth the risk because it allows scientists to prepare for pandemics.30 However, as noted by Breggin, this kind of research does not appear to have improved governments’ pandemic responses one whit.
Fauci Has Globalist Ties
Breggin also highlights Fauci’s connections to and support of director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a member of a Marxist-Leninist Ethiopian political party whose corrupt past and terrorist ties have been highlighted ever since his controversial nomination.31,32,33 Incidentally, Tedros has also been accused of covering up cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia.
“Together, they initially minimized the dangers of COVID-19. Fauci and Tedros also delayed worldwide preparations for the pandemic while allowing the Chinese to spread the virus with thousands of international passenger flights,” Breggin writes.
Commenting on a recent paper by Fauci, in which he dismisses the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was created in and released from the WIV, arguing instead for a natural mutation, Breggin says:
“By persistently and unequivocally claiming that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from nature untouched by lab manipulations, Fauci continues to protect himself and China, and their relationship, to the endangerment of America and the rest of the world.
Fauci holds himself out as the ultimate source of objective scientific information and science-based conclusions. In reality, he works with and empowers globalist pharmaceutical firms and globalist organizations such as WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation … These globalists gained power and influence as their policies and practices, including the shutdowns, continue to worsen conditions throughout the world.”
The globalist, technocratic agenda also shines through Fauci’s call for a political agenda that protects the population from pathogens by limiting or eliminating “aggressive” and manmade interventions into nature. Fauci’s paper, published in the journal Cell in September 2020, reads in part:34
“The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another reminder … that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergences.
We remain at risk for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century. It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature …”
Indeed, this language is straight out of the technocratic handbook, now rebranded as “the Great Reset.” As noted by Breggin:
“Fauci’s utopian scheme, which overlaps with the Green New Deal, would permanently suppress and disrupt the activities and lives of the 7.8 billion people on Earth in the vain hope of reducing future pandemics.
Thus the American official most responsible for the creation of SARS-CoV-2 in a Chinese lab instead blames its origins on human interventions into the environment and nature, thereby completely exonerating himself while holding humanity responsible.
Simultaneously, he is using the pretext of protecting us from viruses to impose a radical totalitarian agenda upon humanity. Indeed, the largest, most aggressive, and most dangerous human interventions into nature must include Fauci-funded gain-of-function research in which viruses are taken out of nature and engineered into pathogens.”
Fauci the Fearmonger Flag Bearer
In the main body of the report (Page 7 onward), Breggin goes on to detail Fauci’s role in the media fearmongering that has allowed pandemic measures to stretch on.
“Most people have very unrealistic fears about the risk of dying from COVID-19,” Breggin notes, and “This is due in part to the CDC and to Dr. Anthony Fauci who inflate the risk of COVID-19 deaths. Most people who die while being positive for SARS-CoV-2 are near to or past their average longevity.
In addition to being old, the great majority are already ill with heart disease, cancer, or some other chronic illnesses that may in fact have caused them to die. But even using the CDC’s biased data, the risk of death for most people is too small to require them to sacrifice the quality of their lives as the government demands under the threat of catching COVID-19.”
In Breggin’s estimation, Fauci “has been and continues to be an extraordinarily destructive force in the world.” Not only did he play a role in China’s ability to create SARS-CoV-2 and other potential biological weapons, but he’s also covering up its origin, and initially tried to downplay the threat of the novel virus.
To top it off, “he became the go-to scientist and management czar for the very pandemic that he helped to create, enormously increasing his power and influence, and the wealth of his institute and his global collaborators, including Bill Gates and the international pharmaceutical industry,” Breggin writes, adding, in conclusion:
“In his rise to power, Fauci has done a great deal of additional damage … for example, by suppressing the most effective, safest, and least expensive medication treatment (hydroxychloroquine in varied combinations), while manipulating his clinical research to promote an ineffective, dangerous, and highly expensive drug (remdesivir) …
It is time to fire Fauci, to investigate this entire disaster, and to consider what needs to be done to protect the US and the world from future lab-generated pandemic disasters, whether accidental or intentional.”
Gain-of-Function Research Must Be Banned
Fauci isn’t the only individual who needs to be fired. The Organic Consumer Association’s “Gain-of-Function Hall of Shame”35 lists several others whose wheeling and dealings ought to be scrutinized under a high-magnifying loupe. These include Zhengli, Daszak, Bill Gates, Dr. Ralph Baric, Dr. Christian Hassell, Dr. Robert Kadlec, and Scott Dowell.
Even more importantly, we need to ban gain-of-function research. As noted by Marc Lipsitch in his 2018 review, “Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in Influenza?”:36
“This is a question of intense debate over the last 5 years, though the history of such experiments goes back at least to the synthesis of viable influenza A H1N1 (1918) based on material preserved from the 1918 pandemic.
Experiments to create potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) are nearly unique in that they present biosafety risks that extend well beyond the experimenter or laboratory performing them; an accidental release could, as the name suggests, lead to global spread of a virulent virus, a biosafety incident on a scale never before seen …
While there are indisputably certain questions that can be answered only by gain-of-function experiments in highly pathogenic strains, these questions are narrow and unlikely to meaningfully advance public health goals such as vaccine production and pandemic prediction.
Alternative approaches to experimental influenza virology and characterization of existing strains are in general completely safe, higher throughput, more generalizable, and less costly than creation of PPP in the laboratory and can thereby better inform public health. Indeed, virtually every finding of recent PPP experiments that has been cited for its public health value was predated by similar findings using safe methodologies.”
While the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains to be conclusively proven, a paper37 published in Nature in 2015 discussed how a “lab-made coronavirus related to SARS” capable of infecting human cells had stirred up the debate as to whether or not this kind of research is worth the risks:
“Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that ‘grows remarkably well’ in human cells. ‘If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,’ he says.”
With 20/20 hindsight, we now have a much clearer idea of what the release of such a virus can do. We may chalk it up to luck that SARS-CoV-2 turned out to be orders of magnitude less lethal than initially suspected, thereby not resulting in the deaths of tens of millions.
Biggest Fraud in Human History
The sad part is that even though SARS-CoV-2 turned out to be a minor hazard for the vast majority of people, its existence was used to justify the elimination of rights and liberties and facilitate the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-classes to the ultra-rich the world has ever seen.
In the video above, Minnesota state senator and family physician Scott Jensen summarizes how we’ve been played. Essentially, by using PCR testing incorrectly, false positives were maximized, thereby keeping the fearmongering of rising “cases” going.
Then, on January 20, 2021, on the day of the inauguration of Joe Biden, the World Health Organization finally did what it should have done from the very beginning — it recommended using lower cycle thresholds for the PCR test to prevent false positives, and changed the way COVID-19 is diagnosed.
Whereas before, doctors were told to slap a diagnosis on anyone with a certain range of symptoms, they were now told that a symptomatic patient also must have a positive test. Conversely, a positive test is not a case unless they also have the appropriate symptoms.
With that, the “case” load immediately started dropping.38 In reality, though, the caseload was always low, and none of the pandemic measures that destroyed lives and livelihoods were actually required. All that was needed was for honest and scientifically justifiable recommendations to be issued.
Dismantle the Medical Crime Syndicate
Fauci, again, bears the blame for this needless destruction, as he knew up to 90% of positive PCR tests were false positives. Documents obtained through FOIA by The Colorado Herald39 conclusively prove Fauci knew this as early as March 2020, and he said and did nothing.
“For a year, the CDC and WHO have guided public policy to include lockdowns, mask orders, school closures, segregation of the elderly, and now a vaccine push that rivals China’s, all based on a lie,” The Colorado Herald writes.40
“If a person has a positive PCR test, he has the deadly Coronavirus; that is a lie, one-hundred percent. Everyone has coronaviruses; they are everywhere, and that is why the overly sensitive PCR tests contributed, more than any other COVID-19 lie this year, to a pandemic that did not exist.
Fauci, the CDC, and the WHO should be held civilly and criminally liable for any business that shut down as a result of policies that were based on lies, lives lost to suicide and isolation based on lies, and the education lost by the nation’s youth this year … all based on lies.”
Indeed, defunding and dismantling the public terror organization that is the WHO, firing co-conspirators, starting with Fauci, and decentralizing pandemic planning from the global and federal level to the state and local levels would be a good start. To be in control of your health, you first need to have individual rights.
Medicine and government both work best when individualized and locally applied. Now that the truth is out, we must cease obeying the dictates of master manipulators and stand firm in the truth. Enough is enough. We must not give another inch to this lie.