Newly released documents show that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology intended to genetically modify viruses to make them more contagious for people and release them into bat caves less than two years before the COVID-19 pandemic started.
Scientists and activists release documents that link the global pandemic to the Wuhan Laboratory.
Scientists and Activists Determine the Origin of the Global Pandemic
In a recently published article in Newsweek, according to Johns Hopkins University, the study proposal was part of a cache of papers published this week by a group of scientists and activists attempting to figure out the origins of the pandemic, which has killed 4.7 million people worldwide.
The plan is likely to exacerbate the debate about the Wuhan lab's involvement in the pandemic. The Chinese government insists that the outbreak started in a wet market and dismisses claims that research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology resulted in a pathogen release.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of scientists and governments across the globe, including the Biden administration, have refused to dismiss the lab leak hypothesis and have urged that China fully participate in a worldwide scientific inquiry, according to a published article in The Washington Post.
Read Also: WHO Investigators Defend Wuhan Lab on COVID-19 Origins
Suspicion of the Origin of the COVID-19 Grew
The Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19 or DRASTIC, which published the papers last week, has fueled increasing skepticism of China's official version, according to a published report in BBC News.
Throughout the pandemic, approximately two dozen DRASTIC researchers and correspondents, many of whom are anonymous, have discovered obscure papers, put together the facts, and explained it all in lengthy Twitter threads. Professional scientists and journalists have gradually praised the quality of their research.
The results of the newest DRASTIC document leak were tweeted out by Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory and director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology.
The EcoHealth Alliance "collaborated" with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to "carry out advanced and hazardous human pathogenicity Bat Coronavirus research," according to papers provided by an anonymous whistleblower, according to a funding application EcoHealth Alliance submitted with DARPA.
What is DARPA?
The Wuhan scientists were identified as collaborators on a grant application submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency by the environmental health organization EcoHealth Alliance (DARPA). Through the PREEMPT program, DARPA, a research organization within the US Department of Defense, seeks to "preserve military preparedness by protecting against the infectious disease threat."
EcoHealth Alliance suggested infusing lethal chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanized and 'batified' mice in their grant proposal, according to DRASTIC Research.
Additionally, the planned initiative, according to a copy of EcoHealth Alliance's proposal provided by DRASTIC Research, sought to prevent the spread of new bat-origin high-zoonotic risk SARS-related coronaviruses in Asia. According to the proposal's executive summary, researchers would sample bats in field areas where scientists indicated significant coronavirus spillover risk.
In a document shared by DRASTIC Research, EcoHealth Alliance stated that it planned to collaborate with researchers from the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, the University of North Carolina, the Palo Alto Research Center in California, the National Wildlife Health Center of the United States Geological Survey, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. DARPA was asked for $14 million to undertake the study, which was expected to take three and a half years.
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