Former senior director for Global Health Security and
Biodefense at the National Security Council, R. Adm. Tim Ziemer, Dr. Henry
Schaffer, emeritus professor of genetics and biomath at North Carolina State
University, and Dr. Richard H. Ebright, Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University,
weigh in on international biosecurity Feb. and April 2021. Images provided.America
may fund the next deadly pandemic because most virus research across the globe
is federally funded, and incompletely regulated. It is no longer a conspiracy theory that the 2019 pandemic may have begun from a lab and a new NCBI autopsy report shows the RNA vaccines invade the entire body and questions the effectiveness of vaccinating.
Scientific research on life-threatening
organisms that can spread to humans is conducted daily and the system to report
accidents, thefts, loss and misuse is voluntary. The system is called
biosecurity and biodefense and Congress has not stopped the public safety
threat, as the 2019 pandemic exemplified.
Congress has a history of reacting
with new policies to address biological disasters. For example, in 2014 the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense assessed gaps in
policies, added improvements and the panel issues updates, but it is only
policy.
One example of
Congress placing a policy over a life-threatening problem was in
June 2020 when the director of Global Affairs in the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services reminded Congress that the International Health
Regulations had already been revised after China failed to report a 2005 SARS
pandemic. The revised policy was written to improve transparency and reinforce
obligations to report outbreaks.
But policies did not stop the 2019
novel coronavirus pandemic and federal funding in China for research on
potential pandemic viruses continues.
No International Biosecurity System
“The framework is there” to mandate
controls of research, “but part of the problem is it does not extend
internationally,” R. Adm. Tim Ziemer said in his first interview since leaving
the White House in June 2018.
International tactics is a skill
Ziemer polished during his 30-year U.S. Navy career as commander of the
Mid-Atlantic Region. He served under Presidents Bush and Obama in a historic
malaria initiative saving over 6 million lives by reducing malaria by 50%.
Former President Trump asked Ziemer
to serve in the National Security Council for Global Health Security and
Biodefense. Ziemer had international biosecurity goals and said they merged the
four primary agencies which had biodefense protocols and created a consolidated
set of objectives.
But in 2018, when John Bolton, a
well-known anti-military strategist, was assigned as the new National Security
Advisor, the merge was dissembled and the goal for a strong pandemic response
was lost.
AUDIO link to interview with R. Admiral Tim Ziemer Feb. 2021
Research on Potential Pandemic Viruses
The U.S. Government has known
potential pandemic research was not properly controlled since 2011 after lab
accidents with “controlled” pathogens, but Congress still funded potential
pandemic virus research under the same regulations, including coronaviruses.
Plus, the U.S. Government funded this
type of research in China, which is known as the “greatest threat to democracy
and freedom” since World War II, according to
John
Ratcliffe, the top U.S. intelligence official, in a Dec. 2020 BBC news report.
However, a policy is only a rule and rules get broken every
day.
Besides, the U.S. Government also allows the sale of
Do-It-Yourself DNA modification kits. Vials of DNA and scientific elements can
be purchased online.
“And if you have trouble buying it, go into a lab and steal
it or go into a biology lab at Pembroke [University of North Carolina] and find
a nice young lab tech, or not so young, and say, “Here’s a hundred bucks. Would
you mind getting me a vial of something out of the refrigerator?” Dr.
Henry Schaffer, emeritus professor of genetics and biomath at North Carolina
State University (NCSU), said about preventing misuse with policies and
pressure, “People steal and take bribes.”
VIDEO link to interview with Dr. Henry Schaffer of North Carolina State University
Dr. Henry Schaffer of North Carolina State University
discusses the trials of scientific research on Feb. 18, 2021 with Stephanie M.
Sellers via Zoom.
Schaffer now works for NCSU
installing the National Institute of Technology’s intelligence theft protective
software, SP 800-171, that is required for federal funding and is familiar with
research security from both the lab and technological aspects.
“I am confident [China] has in its
government structure, packing shops that spend their days and nights working on
trying to get into U.S. Government computer systems, corporate systems, and so
on,” Schaffer said.
The opportunity for misuse of research is
seen in its ability to guide vaccines, create wealth, tax exemptions, fame and
to create fear and control. For example, a virus could be held as a threat to
bring a country to its knees, according to Ziemer.
Public safety is also
compromised when high-risk research is conducted strictly out of curiosity,
according to the Board of Governors’ Professor
of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University,
Dr. Richard H. Ebright.
Public safety is compromised when
potential pandemic viruses are not researched in a lab designed for the
specific agent. SARS, which is the foundation of the novel coronavirus is an
agent that requires at least a BSL-3 lab. A BSL-3 lab is designed to protect
workers from inhaling viruses, according to the Biosafety in Microbiological
and Biomedical Laboratories.
“However, all coronaviruses other
than SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV--even bat SARS-related coronaviruses
deemed to pose a clear and present danger for pandemic emergence--currently are
assigned as BSL-2 pathogens. This is an inappropriately, irresponsibly,
indefensibly, lax biosafety standard and urgently requires revision,” Ebright
said. “Currently, have a strictly Wild West system in terms of biosafety and
biosecurity.”
Moreover, there is no sufficient
oversight to prevent high-risk research that will not produce new information
that has potential to benefit the public in some way, such as with a cure or a
vaccine, according to Ebright, who said the biosecurity system is deficient
because it lacks oversight and it should be international.
Check out the interactive infograph titled Throwing money at a dead horse.
“If you have a system of guidelines
that is not enforced and for which there are no enforcement measures and no
sanctions, when someone is out of compliance, that system of guidance will be
ignored, and that is clearly what has been happening in biosafety in the U.S.
and China,” Ebright said.
In 2003, Taipei and Singapore lab
researchers were infected with SARS and in 2004, Beijing had two infected. The
WHO advised inventory checks, meetings on policies and attending WHO safety
workshops. That was almost 16 years before the 2019 pandemic and the U.S.
Government, which funds virus research across the globe, continues to let risky
research be self-reported, conducted without beneficial purposes, and in the
hands of those deemed a threat.
The 2019 Annual Report of the Federal
Select Agent Program contains a 31-page explanation of scientific research
incidents and the theft, loss and release, which includes being bitten by an
infected lab animal, of biological select agents and toxins (BSAT) such as
coronaviruses, anthrax and H5N1.
In 2019, there were 247 labs
registered to handle BSAT and of those, 189 were inspected.
There were 219 reports of BSAT
release. Most of the release problems originated from defects in personal
protection equipment, such as tiny holes in gowns and ill-fitting helmets.
Other problems were from equipment designed to protect from infectious
aerosols, and there are nine reports of BSAT loss from labs in 2019 still
pending FBI determination.
Nine reports BSAT loss
from labs in 2019 is still pending FBI determination.
Ebright said the biosecurity system
is lax and “as a basic rule of thumb we have not let medical doctors regulate
themselves,” but for biological research, they regulate themselves.
The Investigation into Origins of the Novel
Coronavirus
Investigations into the origins of
the novel coronavirus continue. Look at the relationships of these agencies and
people and decide if they are compromised.
Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth
Alliance, has worked as a famous zoonotic disease expert with China’s Wuhan
Institute of Virology, which is federally funded for gain-of-function research
by the U.S. Government, for over 15 years.
Daszak’s federal funding was cut
after the pandemic began and later restored when Daszak began investigating the
origins of the novel coronavirus with the World Health Organization (WHO).
It is interesting to note that
China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology gave the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill’s (UNC-CH) researchers, who worked in Dr. Ralph Baric’s lab, the
horseshoe bat CoV sequences to create their SARS-like virus.
And as early as 2016, Baric and his
team released a study titled, “SARS-like
WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence,” and it stated more
vaccine research was needed.
This research was conducted during a
U.S. Government moratorium on infectious disease research. Under the
moratorium, gain-of-function research would not receive funding but research in
progress would not be cut or stopped, and neither would vaccine research, such
as Baric’s.
According to an Aug. 2020 Nature
article, Daszak said the novel coronavirus did not begin in a lab.
However, in a Dec. 9, 2019, just
three weeks before the pandemic, in a TWiV video at the 28:10 mark, Daszak said
while working on SARS research in the lab setting that the SARS virus can get
into human cells.
VIDEO link to interview on TWiV 615 with Dr. Peter Daszak
TWiV 615: Peter Daszak of Eco Health Alliance is interviewed
Dec. 9, 2019.
The above contradiction may be a
compromise in the investigation and it is further complicated by a Feb. 9, 2021
tweet when Daszak said American Intelligence was not to be trusted about their
investigation.
Economically, the investigation is
complicated by the National Institute of Health choice to restore Daszak’s
multimillion-dollar research and increase it to $7.5 million. The New York Times reported that of
the total $123 million in government funding Daszak’s research has received,
one third was from the Pentagon.
President Biden chose Jake Sullivan
as his National Security Advisor. Sullivan, like Daszak, does not support
American Intelligence, according to his interview on CBS Feb. 21, 2021.
Sullivan blames Bolton’s dismantling of Ziemer’s military-style consolidated
biodefense.
Still, newly unclassified information
shows China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology had persons with flu-like illness in
the fall of 2019, according to former Asian Affairs director for the National
Security Council, Matthew Pottinger, in a Newsmax article.
“If the agency that is doing the
oversight is also carrying out the work [research] or funding the work, that is
errant conflict of interest. That almost by definition, ensures that the
oversight will be lax and that is, of course, what we have currently,” Ebright
said.
The truth of origin may not come to
light for generations but the facts are that an international biosecurity
system should be in place and it is past time to lasso the Wild West of
scientific research, but wranglers will need miles of rope.
Because in 2005, the U.S. Government
made pharmaceutical companies exempt from liability when creating
vaccines during a pandemic. It is not clear if less pressure for the gold
standard in meeting FDA requirements led to rushed FDA releases of the trial
vaccines and the increase of reported side-effects and vaccinated persons
becoming reinfected.
But the drive to create vaccines
under federally funded gain-of-function research, like the novel coronavirus,
may be why the rush to research while dodging public safety has been trotting
along at a steady pace.
The novel coronavirus vaccines are
expected to generate billions in 2021. Pfizer is expected to make at least $15
billion in 2021 alone, according to its quarterly report and production
agreements. Moderna is expected to make $18.4 billion and Johnson & Johnson
is expected to bring in $10 billion, according to their financial reports.
However, hydroxychloroquine costs
pennies in comparison and in April 2020, the Association of American Physicians
and Surgeons (AAPS) showed evidence of effectiveness.
“The HCQ-AZ combination, when started
immediately after diagnosis, appears to be a safe and efficient treatment for
COVID-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5% in elderly patients. It avoids
worsening and clears virus persistence and contagious infectivity in most
cases,” AAPS said.
Besides, Daszak said in the TWiV
video that humanized coronaviruses are "untreatable with
therapeutic monoclonals [lab-made antibodies] and you can’t vaccinate against
them with a vaccine."
In the video, Daszak describes different
types of coronaviruses used to make the vaccines for the novel coronavirus. For
the average listener, it is not certain which bat coronaviruses are used to
make the vaccines.
One thing is certain. Public safety will
be at risk until Congress creates international policies that work under a rigid oversight program.
By Stephanie M. Sellers
Journalist
gaumedup@gmail.com
