Boston University researchers who developed a deadly strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 did not clear their endeavor with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the agency claimed on Monday. The NIAID announced that it would be seeking answers as to why it only learned of the experiment through media reports.

The original grant application did not specify that the work might involve gain-of-function-type research, NIAID microbiology and infectious diseases division director Emily Erbelding told STAT News, adding that none of the group’s progress reports mention this crucial detail. NIAID and its parent agency the National Institutes of Health (NIH) partially funded the study.

Ronald Corley, director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, where the deadly strain was created, insisted on Tuesday that the school had paid for the research on its own. This is despite multiple NIAID and NIH grants listed in the preprint paper.

Corley argued the federal funding had merely gone toward developing a system that would later be used in the controversial research. The work did not qualify as gain of function, he explained, because the resulting strain had only killed 80% of infected mice, while the original Wuhan strain of the virus had killed 100% of mice it was tested on. 

READ MORE: US scientists create new lethal Covid variant

The researchers had created a hybrid of the original Wuhan strain of SARS-CoV-2 with the spike protein from the less-severe Omicron in an effort to discover whether the latter’s spike mutations were responsible for the milder illness experienced by those infected.

A gain-of-function experiment gone awry remains one of the main theories to explain the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in 2019, along with the theory that it originated from a bat at a Wuhan livestock market. However, there still has not been any investigation that would either confirm or deny any of the theories.

 

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SEE ALSO: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg44948/html/CHRG-110hhrg44948.htm

 

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By Guo Xiaobing

Deputy Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council Kosachev recently said that evidence has been found proving the military purposes of America’s biolabs in Ukraine. That’s actually no secret. 

According to the report submitted by the US to the Meeting of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in November 2021, the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) of the US Department of Defense (DoD) alone has supported 336 biolabs in Africa, East Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, along with a number of overseas biosecurity labs directly operated by the DoD. What’s the US up to with such a massive amount of biolabs?

First, it wants to timely discover abrupt contagious diseases and signs of terrorist bio-attacks to ensure homeland security. That’s why it has extended its antenna for biosecurity beyond its borders to discover and prevent risks as early as possible. Second, it wants to make sure the US military’s overseas operations won’t be obstructed by contagious diseases or bio-attacks, and the troops could be able to act effectively even in face of a pandemic. Third, it wants to collect various kinds of viruses and bacteria that might be used in bio-warfare and occupy a spot at the forefront of this potential new battlefield. It is also reported that the overseas biolabs associated with the US military are working with biopharmaceutical companies, and the viruses and bacteria collected overseas are used for commercial profits. 

A review of history would show that the US military has set up biolabs across the world to directly serve the national strategy for hegemony, and has deployed them according to the expansion of America’s military and political clout. During WWII, it set up the No.2 and No.3 medical research institutes of the navy in Guam of the Pacific Theater and Egypt of the North African Theater. During the Cold War, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) Medical Research Laboratory in Southeast Asia for the main purpose of containing China. 

After the Cold War, overseas biolabs are mostly located in hotspot regions. In Northeast Asia, America carried out the Jupiter program in Busan, ROK for anthrax and botox tests; in Eurasia, the US military had a “cooperative bio-contact program”, under which biolabs are built in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. 

In recent years, the US military has adjusted the layout and tasks of its overseas biolabs as the focus of its combat-readiness efforts is moved from counterterrorism to major-country competition. It moved the No.3 naval medical research institute from Egypt to Italy with its contracting forces in the Middle East. As per the request of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings, the overseas biolabs have also made the bio-monitoring network more flexible, agile and modular to better support the country in prolonged battles, crises, and conflicts. The series of activities by the US have put relevant countries on high alert. Even before the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, Moscow accused Washington of deliberately collecting the DNA samples of Russian people for suspicious purposes. 

The US military claimed that its overseas biolabs collected the various pathogens for bio-defense purposes rather than to develop bio-weapons. We would like to believe that, but as is said in the arms control circle, we “trust but verify”. Unfortunately, the US refuses to demonstrate its self-claimed “transparency” on this issue but has unilaterally obstructed the adoption of the BWC verification protocol while complaining about smearing and demonization by other countries. 

Biological arms control is special in that the biological agents can serve dual purposes, are easy to hide, and cannot always draw a clear line between attack and defense. To address this, the verification protocol has proposed a series of feasible measures including application, visit, questioning and verification, which have been endorsed by most countries. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown clearly that viruses can lend a heavy blow to human development and security. If they are used in bioweapons, or they or bacteria are modified by certain state or non-state actors into more targeted and destructive weapons, the consequences would be unimaginable. There were two biological arms races in human history – during the WWII and during the Cold War, and the risk of a third one cannot be excluded if an effective verification mechanism cannot be put in place. The US should act in unison with the international community to establish an effective multilateral biological arms control verification mechanism. 

 (The author is the Director of the Center for Arms Control Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations)

 

Editor's note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.

 

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BY Vladimir Platov

 

Despite numerous publications about military research in secret US biology laboratories in the post-Soviet space and demands to place their activities under strict international control, there is, unfortunately, no qualitative improvement of the situation in this matter. Therefore, it is not surprising that at the recent 22nd Meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State, the Chinese president additionally drew the attention of the association’s member countries to the need “to effectively meet the challenges in biosecurity, and other non-traditional security domains”. As part of the Samarkand Declaration of 2022, SCO countries were urged to strictly adhere to the Biological Weapons Convention and to adopt a protocol to it that provides for an effective verification mechanism.

After Russia initiated the special operation to denazify Ukraine, alongside publicly exposing the illegal US biological weapons development activities in secret biolabs, the Pentagon sought to move unfinished programs in Ukraine to other countries in the post-Soviet region as quickly as possible. This particularly pertains to the territory of the states of Central Asia (CA) and Eastern Europe.

Recently, Russia Today journalists have found out that the US has decided to study the deadly anthrax in a bio-lab in Kyrgyzstan. In this regard, the US Department of Health & Human Services plans to fund this work and allocate about a quarter of a million dollars for this purpose. According to the tender published on the procurement portal of the US government, the regional hospital in the city of Osh in the south of the republic will become the base for these tests. At the same time, the publication reminded that Kyrgyzstan and the United States are negotiating a new agreement between the two countries in the field of US biological laboratories in the Republic of Kazakhstan, but the nuances and points of the future document are hidden from the public.

Very disturbing information in this regard has recently come from Uzbekistan, where, according  to the Telegram channel, the active work of US representatives to create a powerful military-biological cluster in that country is confirmed. This is particularly evidenced by the growing “work” in Uzbekistan in recent years on the part of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). On this issue, the publication has prepared an infographic on US military-biological activities in Uzbekistan, which clearly indicates the potential damage to the security of the countries of Central Asia, the Russian Federation and China, the main political opponents of the White House.

There is also information that the United States and the United Kingdom continue to conduct joint research at the Kazakhstan Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Almaty. In early 2022, the United Kingdom shipped a large number of samples of virus strains, laboratory equipment, diagnostic instruments, etc. through the British shipping company WN Shipping the first half of the year.

Kazakhstan’s CRL in Almaty was built with Pentagon funds and has a third level of biohazard because a repository for particularly dangerous infectious agents is located on the premises of this facility, which are examined by staff of specialized laboratories for plague, cholera, zoonotic bacterial and natural viral focal infections. According to Kazakhstan’s official information, no US military experts (biologists and virologists) reportedly work at CRL, and as of January 1, 2020, it is fully funded and owned exclusively by Kazakhstan’s budget. However, in reality, this object is not directly funded by the United States, but through a system of American grants, i.e. the research is carried out in the interest of the United States under a certain program of the Pentagon. And apparently this “cooperation” does not stop today.

This is confirmed, in particular, by the fact that on November 5, 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan initiated the process of public discussion on the construction project of the BSL-4 laboratory for work with especially dangerous strains and an underground storage facility for a collection of dangerous and especially dangerous strains in the village of Gvardeisky in the Zhambyl region, the construction of which is planned for 2025. The fourth biological safety code BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4) of this planned biological laboratory alone indicates that the facility poses a high risk to people and society of the viruses being studied, most of which are simply impossible to handle.

The Kyrgyz public has already reacted very critically to this project. Protesters have gathered in front of the US Embassy, outraged that the lab will be built near the border with Kyrgyzstan, just 90 kilometers from Bishkek. Kyrgyz experts, together with the International Association for the Control of Biological Research, sent a letter this summer to the president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, asking that the construction of a biological laboratory in the border region be stopped.

Obviously, Washington is eager to preserve the countries of Central Asia as a testing ground for its military biological research. Hence the US efforts to develop similar projects in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. At the same time, Washington has an increased interest in Tashkent and Alma-Ata, as these two countries have better developed infrastructure and more qualified personnel compared to other Central Asian states. The increased US interest in Uzbekistan is also due to the fact that the country is not a member of the CSTO, which gives Washington more freedom of action.

Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

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BY John Menadue

 

Influential Japanese want us to join them in their long standing hostility to China

 

And the Japanese Embassy in Canberra is leading the anti China campaign in Australia. Penny Wong should have a serious discussion with the Ambassador.

With QUAD and maybe JAUKUS, Japan is anxious to recruit us and others as spear carriers against China. As Michael Auslin in the AFR put it, ‘A new QUAD is coalescing in the Indo-Pacific- a grouping that brings together Australia, India, Japan and the United States-and it’s likely to have an even greater impact than QUAD’. As Auslin put it, ‘Forget the QUAD or G20, JAUKUS is the talk of the international circuit.’

Japan’s anti-China campaign is in full swing again.

In Australia it is aided by the Japanese Ambassador in Canberra. The anti China crowd at The Australian and AFR give him a pulpit whenever he wants to indulge his anti China propaganda. In fact he has made the Japanese Embassy the meeting place for the anti China brigade in Canberra- out of date former defence officials, selected ASPI staff, serving government officials, academics and hard right conservative politicians.

As far as I know DFAT has ignored this improper behaviour. I know that as a former Australian Ambassador to Japan it would have been most improper if I had been promoting say an anti ROK group at the Australian Embassy. The Japanese Ambassador has a short memory. China suffered greatly at the hands of the brutal Japanese military in the 1930s and the 1940s. Twenty million Chinese died and a large part of the country was plundered and extensively damaged. Fifty million Chinese were made homeless. A rural and undeveloped China was no match for a modernised industrial nation like Japan. China barely survived.

In that war China was on the Allies’ side and in its great land mass China absorbed, at enormous cost, a great deal of Japanese military energy. This tying down of the Japanese military was in some ways similar to the way the USSR absorbed a great deal of Germany’s military might. The Allies benefited but at the cost of great suffering by the people of China and the USSR.

But four years after the end of WWII the Communist Party of China took charge and China became the ‘enemy’ and the story of its suffering at the hands of Japan was deliberately lost. The Korean War pushed China’s WWll experience into the background.

Now with China modernising and growing in confidence, it is not surprising that it expresses concern about what it endured from an invader who consistently seeks to avoid the truth about WWII.

In a speech at the NAB Australia-China Business Week on 5 September 2014, Malcolm Turnbull said “For China the war with Japan had begun in 1937 and for four years she fought alone. Japan had 680,000 troops in China at the time it launched its offensive in the Pacific – four times the number it deployed to sweep through South East Asia until they were stopped at our doorstep in the jungles of New Guinea.

“Had China been defeated and become a collaborating puppet state, like Vichy France, not only would Japan have been able to fling vastly greater resources into the war against Australia, but it would have been able to invade Siberia in 1942, as Hitler asked, when the Red Army was almost smashed by the Nazi offensive in the West.

“We may not have succeeded in resisting Japanese aggression without the tenacious heroism of our Chinese ally.”

The renewed Japanese campaign against China after WW2 was led by Nobusuke Kishi the grandfather of Shinzo Abe.

Nobusuke Kishi was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician. Known for his brutal rule of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, he was nicknamed the “Monster of the Shōwa era”. He drove hundreds of thousands of Chinese into slave labour, referring to them as ‘dogs’. He spent three years in Sugamo prison awaiting trial as a Class -A war criminal.

But with the 1949 revolution in China, the US needed a leader in Japan against China. Kishi filled the bill. He made a comeback as Prime Minister 1957/60.

Fortunately in subsequent years the anti China sentiment in the ruling LDP was constrained by Prime Ministers like Takeo Miki and Masayoshi Ohira.

But it made a revival with Shinzo Abe, the grand son of Kishi.

Abe visited Yasukuni Shrine which commemorates not only millions of Japanese soldiers who died, but also Japan’s war criminals. Abe attempted to undo the Kono Declaration of 1993 in which Japan apologised for its WWII atrocities. Keen to continue the national and family hostility to China he initiated QUAD in 2007. It made little progress but was resuscitated when he returned to power in 2017.

Abe was mired in corruption and was assassinated last year by an aggrieved son of a member of the Moonies in the Unification Church.

The US and Japan are trying to recruit us as a spear carrier against China. We are obliging. And the Japanese Ambassador is adding as much support as he can to the anti-China drive.

The only country that has militarily threatened Australia is Japan, not China.

(Incidentally in 1997 I received the Japanese Imperial Award,The Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure for the promotion of relations between Australia and Japan).

 

This is an updated post from September 7, 2014

 

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