Open-access clash The Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is a global health charity that spent $4.6 billion in 2016, much of it allocated to research. Each year, more than 2,000 papers are published from its funded projects. The Foundation stipulates that these papers, and their data, must be made open.
REVIEW BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION
€2.492.510
Elsevier BV
€1.052.281
Springer Nature
Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously 27 May 2021 Its supporters point to the presence of a major biological research facility in the city. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has been studying coronaviruses in bats for over a decade.
The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged in Wuhan.
Those who support the theory say it could have leaked from a WIV lab and spread to the wet market.
Most argue it would have been an unaltered virus collected from the wild, rather than engineered.
The controversial theory first emerged early on in the pandemic, and was promoted by then-US President Donald Trump. Some even suggested it could have been engineered as a possible biological weapon
So why has it come up again? Because reports swirling around the US media have raised fresh concerns over the lab-leak theory. And some scientists who were once sceptical of the idea have expressed fresh openness to it.
A classified US intelligence report – saying three researchers at the Wuhan laboratory were treated in hospital in November 2019, just before the virus began infecting humans in the city – began circulating in US media this week.
But it was reported the Biden administration had shut down a US state department investigation, set up by President Trump, into the lab-leak theory.
“That possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favour of a full investigation of whether that could have happened,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, told the US senate committee on 11 May.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump sought to take credit for the renewed interest in an emailed statement to the New York Post. “To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticised, as usual,” he said. “Now they are all saying: ‘He was right.'”
A prominent group of scientists criticised the WHO report for not taking the lab-leak theory seriously enough – it was dismissed in a few pages of a several-hundred-page report.
“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” the scientists wrote in Science Magazine.
And there is growing consensus among experts that the laboratory leak should be looked at more closely.
Even the WHO’s own director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called for a new investigation, saying: “All hypotheses remain open and require further study.”
And Dr Fauci now says he’s “not convinced” the virus originated naturally. That’s a shift from a year ago, when he thought it most likely Covid had spread from animals to humans.
Chinese virologist claims COVID was made in lab — but US studies don’t agree
By Natalie Musumeci September 11, 2020 | 5:30pm A Chinese virologist who has reportedly been in hiding over fear for her safety has stepped out into the public eye again to make the explosive claim that she has scientific evidence to prove that COVID-19 was human-made in a lab in China — despite American studies refuting the controversial claim.
Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who says she did some of the earliest research into COVID-19 last year, made the comments Friday during an interview on the British talk show “Loose Women.”
When asked where the deadly virus that has killed more than 900,000 around the globe comes from, Yan — speaking via video chat from a secret location — replied, “It comes from the lab — the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China’s government.”
She insisted that widespread reports that the virus originated last year from a wet market in Wuhan are “a smoke screen.”
“The first thing is the [meat] market in Wuhan … is a smoke screen and this virus is not from nature,” Yan claimed, explaining that she got “her intelligence from the CDC in China, from the local doctors.”
The virologist has previously accused Beijing of lying about when it learned of the killer bug and engaging in an extensive cover-up of her work.
She had said her former supervisors at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, a reference laboratory for the World Health Organization, silenced her when she sounded the alarm about human-to-human transmission in December last year.
“The genome sequence is like a human fingerprint,” she told the talk show. “So based on this, you can identify these things. I use the evidence … to tell people why this has come from the lab in China, why they are the only ones who made it.”
Yan added, “Anyone, even if you have no biology knowledge, you can read it, and you can check and identify and verify by yourself.”
Yan also claimed that before she fled China, her information was wiped from government databases.
“They deleted all my information,” she told “Loose Women,” claiming that people have been recruited “to spread rumors about me, that I’m a liar.”
Trump said in a statement, “Now everybody is agreeing that I was right when I very early on called Wuhan as the source of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus. To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticized, as usual. Now they are all saying ‘He was right.’”
NEWS EXPLAINER 08 June 2021
The COVID lab-leak hypothesis: what scientists do and don’t know
Nature examines arguments that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab in China, and the science behind them.
Amy Maxmen & Smriti Mallapaty
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has carried out research on coronaviruses for years because these pathogens are endemic to the region where it’s located.Credit: Kyodo News via Getty
[a] lab leak has not been ruled out, and many are calling for a deeper investigation into the hypothesis that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases were reported.
China has asked that the probe examine other countries. Such reticence, and the fact that China has withheld information in the past, has fuelled suspicions of a ‘lab leak’. For instance, Chinese government officials suppressed crucial public-health data at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and during the 2002–04 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, according to high-level reports1,2.
- 1.The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic (Independent Panel, 2021).
- 2.Huang, Y. in Learning from SARS: Preparing for the Next Disease Outbreak: Workshop Summary (eds Knobler, S. et al.) (National Academies Press, 2004).
At the assembly, Mike Ryan, director of health emergencies at the WHO, asked for less politicization of calls for an origin investigation, which have, in many ways, devolved into accusations. “Over the last number of days, we have seen more and more and more discourse in the media, with terribly little actual news, or evidence, or new material,” said Ryan. “This is disturbing.”
Scientists don’t have enough evidence about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to rule out the lab-leak hypothesis, or to prove the alternative — that the virus has a natural origin.
Researchers have some leads that support a natural origin. Bats are known carriers of coronaviruses, and scientists have determined that the genome of SARS-CoV-2 is most similar to that of RATG13, a coronavirus that was first found in a horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus affinis) in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan in 20133. But RATG13’s genome is only 96% identical to SARS-CoV-2’s, suggesting that a closer relative of the virus — the one passed to humans — remains unknown.
3. Zhou P. et al. Nature 579, 270–273 (2020).
Still, the possibility remains that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. Although lab leaks have never caused an epidemic, they have resulted in small outbreaks involving well-documented viruses. A relevant example happened in 2004, when two researchers were independently infected by the virus that causes SARS at a virology lab in Beijing that studied the disease. They spread the infection to seven others before the outbreak was contained.
What are the key arguments for a lab leak?
In theory, COVID-19 could have come from a lab in a few ways. Researchers might have collected SARS-CoV-2 from an animal and maintained it in their lab to study, or they might have created it by engineering coronavirus genomes. In these scenarios, a person in the lab might have then been accidentally or deliberately infected by the virus, and then spread it to others — sparking the pandemic. There is currently no clear evidence to back these scenarios, but they aren’t impossible.
One holds that it’s suspicious that, almost a year and a half into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative still hasn’t been found in an animal. Another suggests it is no coincidence that COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, where a top lab studying coronaviruses, the WIV, is located.
Some lab-leak proponents contend that the virus contains unusual features and genetic sequences signalling that it was engineered by humans. And some say that SARS-CoV-2 spreads among people so readily that it must have been created with that intention. Another argument suggests that SARS-CoV-2 might have derived from coronaviruses found in an unused mine where WIV researchers collected samples from bats between 2012 and 2015.
August 1, 202111:37 PM -05Last Updated 5 months ago United States
Republican report says coronavirus leaked from China lab; scientists still probing origins Reuters WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) – A preponderance of evidence proves the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic leaked from a Chinese research facility, said a report by U.S. Republicans released on Monday, a conclusion that U.S. intelligence agencies have not reached.
The report also cited “ample evidence” that Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists – aided by U.S. experts and Chinese and U.S. government funds – were working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans and such manipulation could be hidden.
“We now believe it’s time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source,” said the report. “We also believe the preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the WIV and that it did so sometime before September 12, 2019.”
The report cited what it called new and under-reported information about safety protocols at the lab, including a July 2019 request for a $1.5 million overhaul of a hazardous waste treatment system for the facility, which was less than two years old.
Suez (formerly Suez Environnement) is a French-based utility company which operates largely in the water and waste management sectors. Suez is the largest private water provider worldwide, by number of people served.[2]
[2] « The world’s top 50 private water operators » (August 2019). “” The world’s top 50 private water operators “” (PDF). Global Water Intelligence.
Sentinel surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater anticipates the occurrence of COVID-19 cases Gemma Chavarria-Miró, Eduard Anfruns-Estrada, View ORCID ProfileSusana Guix, Miquel Paraira, Belén Galofré, Gloria Sánchez, View ORCID ProfileRosa M. Pintó, View ORCID ProfileAlbert Boschdoi: SARS-CoV-2 was detected in Barcelona sewage long before the declaration of the first COVID-19 case, indicating that the infection was present in the population before the first imported case was reported. Sentinel surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater would enable adoption of immediate measures in the event of future COVID-19 waves. Funding Statement This research was supported in part by the REVEAL project, funded by SUEZ Spain.
Porque nadie moría de covid antes de declararse pandemia?
Suez, una de las compañías de agua más influyentes de China Suez Asia ha logrado por decimoséptima vez consecutiva posicionarse como una de las diez empresas de agua más influyentes de China según la Plataforma Ambiental E20 Redacción/Agencias Madrid | 12 mayo, 2020 Tiempo de lectura: 3 minutos
FRI JUN 26, 2020 / 5:33 PM EDT Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows Nathan Allen and Inti Landauro Dr Joan Ramon Villalbi of the Spanish Society for Public Health and Sanitary Administration told Reuters it was still early to draw definitive conclusions.
“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological problem,” he said.
There was the potential for a false positive due to the virus’ similarities with other respiratory infections.
N-butilo-N-(4-hidroxibutilo) nitrosaminaSustancia que se usa en el campo de la investigación de cáncer para causar tumores de vejiga en animales de laboratorio. Esto se hace para probar regímenes alimentarios nuevos, medicamentos y procedimientos para usar en la prevención y el tratamiento de cáncer.;› def › n-bu… Definición de N-butilo-N-(4-hidroxibutilo) nitrosamina – National Cancer Institute
Comirnaty BNT162b2
(Pfizer/BioNtech)
Lípidos ((4-hidroxibutil) azanodiil) bis (hexano-6,1-diil) bis (2-hexildecanoato), [(PEG) -2000] -N, N-ditetradecilacetamida, 1,2-diestearoil-sn-glicero3- fosfocolina y 0,2 mg de colesterol).
Electrólitos, cloruro de potasio, fosfato de potasio monobásico, cloruro de sodio, fosfato de sodio dibásico dihidrato.
Azúcar (sacarosa).
Diluyente, añadido a la vacuna para su administración, solución salina (cloruro de sodio).
El gigante farmacéutico Pfizer acordó pagar una multa récord de US$2.300 millones en un arreglo extrajudicial para cerrar un caso sobre sus prácticas comerciales fraudulentas para la venta de algunos medicamentos en Estados Unidos, según informó el Departamento de Justicia de ese país.
Lawsuit Settled Over Heart Valve Implicated in About 300 Deaths
By The Associated Press Jan. 25, 1992 Pfizer Inc., a leading health-care products manufacturer, today announced an agreement to settle lawsuits arising from an artificial heart valve implicated in about 300 deaths.
$60 Million Deal In Pfizer Suit
By Reuters July 3, 2004 Pfizer said yesterday that it had reached a $60 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over its Rezulin diabetes drug, which was withdrawn from the market in March 2002 after about 100 people who took it had to have liver transplants or died from acute liver failure.
Pfizer, which is based in New York, said it would establish a settlement fund to compensate patients in Illinois who can document expenditures for Rezulin related to their medical treatment. Pfizer said the lawsuit sought a refund for all Rezulin tablets purchased by the plaintiffs, who did not contend they had been injured by the drug.
Experts Conclude Pfizer Manipulated Studies
By Stephanie Saul Oct. 8, 2008 The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company.
Pfizer’s tactics included delaying the publication of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for some other disorders, “spinning” negative data to place it in a more positive light, and bundling negative findings with positive studies to neutralize the results, according to written reports by the experts, who analyzed the documents at the request of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
READ precios elevados
Wei Jingsheng, el desertor más conocido de China, reveló en un nuevo libro titulado “What Really Happened in Wuhan” (Lo que realmente ocurrió en Wuhan), que escuchó por primera vez sobre un nuevo y misterioso virus en octubre de 2019, justo durante los juegos Militares Mundiales en Wuhan, China y que llegó a alertar a figuras clave de EE. UU.
El senador Rand Paul increpó al Dr. Fauci porque su Instituto de Enfermedades Infecciosas financió al Instituto de Virología de Wuhan
En el Comité de Salud del Senado, el legislador republicano le preguntó al asesor presidencial si defiende haber aprobado financiar al Laboratorio de Wuhan en sus estudios del coronavirus hace 5 años.
Científico Anthony Fauci y senador republicano chocan por investigación sobre covid El republicano Rand Paul advierte al epidemiólogo Anthony Fauci sobre las sanciones penales de mentir al Congreso, y le recordó su declaración sobre que los Centros Nacionales de Salud no financiaron la investigación de ganancia de función en Wuhan afp_tickersEste contenido fue publicado el 20 julio 2021 – 20:0820 julio 2021 – 20:08
??? Evidencias “Abrumadoras” de que el virus escapó del laboratorio de Wuhan, sostiene asesor de la OMS
El asesor consultivo de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS, por la sigla) Jamie Metzl, señala falencias en el informe reciente de esta entidad acerca del origen del virus del PCCh (Partido comunista de China) que impiden considerarlo como autorizado.
‘Overwhelming circumstantial evidence’ points to COVID-19 lab leak April 04, 2021 – 18:36PM
The theory COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of virology is possibly “more likely” than the current working hypothesis due to “overwhelming” circumstantial evidence, according to the WHO advisory committee’s Jamie Metzl.
It comes after the World Health Organisation released its report into the origins of the deadly virus which placed zoonotic transmission to humans the most likely source of the pandemic.
The report also ranked the likelihood of different hypotheses and claimed the virus most likely transferred from bats to humans via an intermediary zoonotic source, and that a direct transmission was the second most likely.
The theory the virus came from a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was deemed to be unlikely by the report.
Mr Metzl told Sky News the WHO did not conduct this investigation, but it was a “joint study of an independent advisory committee” to the World Health Organisation and their “Chinese counterparts”.
He said the investigation was not “capable of examining all the hypotheses” and therefore it cannot be viewed as authoritative.
“The core point is that any examination of the origins of the pandemic needs to thoroughly examine all of the possible origin hypotheses,” Mr Metzl said.
“It cannot be credible to say we’re only going to look at zoonotic jump and cold chain, and we won’t even lift a finger to examine the lab leak hypothesis.
“This entire joint team study, in my view, is not credible or valid because they examined some hypotheses and not others, and then had the temerity to rank the likelihood of the different hypotheses”.
Mr Metzl said the circumstantial evidence to support the lab leak theory is “overwhelming” including how the horseshoe bat – which was identified as the genetic source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – lives in southern China.
“Wuhan is well beyond their range, Wuhan doesn’t have horseshoe bats,” he said.
“What Wuhan does have is China’s only level-four virology institute with the world’s largest collection of bat coronaviruses.
“I can’t say for sure that SARS-CoV-2 began with an accidental lab leak, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
“On top of that from day one, China began a massive coverup that involved destroying samples, hiding data bases and other records, and imprisoning journalists.”
Jamie Frederic Metzl (born July 1, 1968)[1] is an American geopolitical commentator, author, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a former partner at the global investment company Cranemere LLC,.[2][3]
- Cleary, Tom (2021-03-09). “Jamie Metzl: 25 Questions Answered”. Heavy.com. Retrieved 2021-06-24.
- ^ Vail Symposium: Is the Red Dragon Breathing Fire? Rising China and the Changing Global Order with Jamie Metzl [1]
- ^ a b Jamie F. Metzl -Director, The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, backed up by the Internet Archive as of December 13, 2013. Accessed May 17, 2016.
AMANPOUR AND COMPANY
Why Expert Jamie Metzl Thinks COVID-19 Was Likely a Lab Leak
Clip: 06/11/2021 | 17m 41s
Jamie Metzl is an adviser to the WHO’s committee on human genome editing and was among the first to argue the virus likely escaped from a lab in Wuhan. Once widely dismissed, the theory is now gaining traction. To unpack it all, Metzl speaks with Hari Sreenivasan. Aired: 06/11/21 Rating: NR
Jamie Metzl Statement on WHO COVID-19 Wuhan Press Conference
FEBRUARY 10, 2021 In response to the WHO-China joint study press conference, held in Wuhan on February 9, 2021, I today issued the following statement:
Although I remain a steadfast supporter of the World Health Organization and its Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom, I am appalled by the WHO expert committee’s announcement in its ill-advised February 9 Wuhan press event that the possibility of an accidental lab leak does not merit further investigation. While no evidence has yet been found indicating that COVID-19 stems from a transmission between animal hosts in the wild or from frozen foods, as the committee entertains, significant evidence points to an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as being a possible origin of the pandemic.
Sharing is caring
Share
+1
Tweet
Share
Share