Posted on 07/08/2020 2:05:47 PM PDT by Grandpa Drudge
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, has played a major role in promoting and funding gain-of-function research, both in the US and China. Newsweek reported: “He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to make preparations that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.”
Those claims are belied by the empirical evidence GoF experiments have neither prevented a pandemic, nor provided useful information about safe and effective pandemic countermeasures. Numerous prominent scientists argue that these experiments deviate from morally justifiable research, and the experimentally altered pathogens have put the entire human species at risk.
(Excerpt) Read more at ahrp.org ...
“Incidents causing potential exposures to pathogens occur frequently in the high security laboratories often known by their acronyms, BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) and BSL4. Lab incidents that lead to undetected or unreported laboratory-acquired infections can lead to the release of a disease into the community outside the lab; lab workers with such infections will leave work carrying the pathogen with them. If the agent involved were a potential pandemic pathogen, such a community release could lead to a worldwide pandemic with many fatalities. Of greatest concern is a release of a lab-created, mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, such as the airborne-transmissible H5N1 viruses created in the laboratories of Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka In Madison Wisconsin.
Such releases are fairly likely over time, as there are at least 14 labs (mostly in Asia) now carrying out this research. Whatever release probability the world is gambling with, it is clearly far too high a risk to human lives. Mammal-transmissible bird flu research poses a real danger of a worldwide pandemic that could kill human beings on a vast scale.”
"Dr. Fauci, the head of the NIAID since 1984, has been in the forefront in supporting highest risk pathogen experiments. Dr. Fauci bears grave responsibility for having ignored a continuous series of documented reports — all of which warned of impending catastrophic pandemics, directly caused by experimental laboratory-created pathogens.
It should be evident to everyone, that as long as irresponsible government officials continue to fund and promote experiments whose aim is to increase the virulence and lethal capacity of biological pathogens and viruses, the risk that those lethal pathogens can, have, and will escape from laboratories, is certain.
Those accidental escapes pose catastrophic existential risk for the global human community.
If we want to preserve our existence on the planet, our government must stop funding this line of research."
Here is a link to more information about
Human error in high-biocontainment labs: a likely pandemic threat
By Lynn Klotz, February 25, 2019
https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/human-error-in-high-biocontainment-labs-a-likely-pandemic-threat/
This is an excellent example (artificial intelligence is another) of hairless apes doing really dangerous and stupid stuff just because we can.
We will be lucky to survive it.
Remdesivir profits?
Vaccine profits?
Political paybacks from health industries?
Deep State bureaucratic controls?
???
I think their main motivators are arrogance and pride
The money and celebrity status dont hurt
Fauxi funded research grants to Wuhan lab to fund risky virus research that was illegal in the U.S.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/why-us-outsourced-bat-virus-research-to-wuhan/
What is gain of function? Illegal gene splicing experiments in the United States due to their danger.
Who is at risk? The entire World, all life on Earth
See Chinese Biolabs, Dr Fauci and Covid 19 for more examples.
He is the worlds expert because he sponsored the illegal gene splicing research in China.
Must be a special place in Hell for that bastard. He ruined the entire worlds economy.
Burning at the stake is too good for him.
In a SANE and DECENT world, Dr. FRAUD FAUCI would have been ARRESTED and TRIED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY for giving MILLIONS ILLEGALLY to the WUHAN LAB for this CRAP!
Check DR> FRAUD’s and his WIFE’s OFF SHORE BANK ACCOUNTS!!
If there is any benefit to gain-of-function research it should probably be carried out off world, either in a high orbit where the station airlocks/environmental systems can be purged to space or low where the failsafe is accelerated fiery re-entry.
high level AI research would be safe in space, and possibly remotely located on earth, but the failsafe’s on that have to revolve around data transmission rates, distance to receivers, and the available manipulatable tool set. There can be zero probability of the sentient program being able to transmit itself out of a study area, or fabricate a device where it could smuggle copies out. You’d need a system whereby no device capable of holding more than say, 1/1000th of the total size of the program could come within it’s potential grasp...
Absolutely right! AI is our next near term existential threat. Asimov’s rules for robots, but with layers of fail-safes and defense in depth. As with all complex systems, complexity theory, game theory, and hubris will be our downfall. The “it will never happen” mindset and the “hold my beer and watch this” mindset will be our undoing. Most importantly, the idea the scientist know better than everyone else make the necessary humility and mitigation impossible.
Good thing I’m old - it will be you’re problem to clean up—if you survive.
I probably read too much science fiction, but true emergent artificial intelligence would be impossible to contain, even off world.
It would eventually generate its own replicating and space faring technology—and after it finished humans off would go looking for its next conquest.
The journal Nature is tippy-top tier for scientific publications.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7
“Against this background Shi Zhengli published her landmark paper in the journal Nature in February this year, after the COVID-19 pandemic had spread across the globe. In this paper, Shi and her co-authors claimed to have identified the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 and its “probable” origin, a natural bat coronavirus, which she called RaTG13. The paper highlights the natural origin zoonotic theory for SARS-CoV-2 – that it jumped from an animal into humans at the Huanan seafood and wildlife market. This theory has not subsequently been supported by emerging evidence.
All publications arguing for a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2 rely heavily on this one paper by Shi Zhengli and colleagues, describing the sequence of a purported natural bat coronavirus named RaTG13. But notably absent from the paper is any reference at all to Shi and her collaborators’ long history of gain-of-function genetic engineering research with bat coronaviruses, described above. That includes the important paper by UNC and WIV scientists of 2015, which had the alarming result of turning a harmless bat virus into a human pathogen.”
The Feb 2020 Nature paper described in the article has a publication timeline as reported below.
. Zhou, P., Yang, X., Wang, X. et al. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. Nature 579, 270–273 (2020).
Received20 January 2020
Accepted29 January 2020
Published03 February 2020
Issue Date12 March 2020
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7
NINE DAYS to from RECEIPT by the journal office to ACCEPTANCE AND only FIVE DAYs to PUBLICATION (electronic), with the paper appearing in physical print, the next month, in March. This is a scientific PUBLICATION timeline MIRACLE!
RECEIPT to ACCEPTANCE should have PEER-REVIEW, this usually takes WEEKS to MONTHS; NINE DAYS is quick.
The ACCEPTANCE to PRINT interval often requires revisions queries addressed as put forth by the peer-reviewers and editor; some are technical, some cosmetic.
ACCEPTANCE to PRINT took FIVE (5) days!!! Especially for [Chinese] writers that appear to all be non-English language speakers as their native tongue! Native English speakers/writers were involved, per my humble experience, but not cited as ALL are from China.
WOW. The skids were really greased to make this happen in a timely fashion, to highlight the concept that the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 and it jumped from an animal into humans at the Huanan seafood and wildlife market.
Im with you on the scifi, but I don’t think it would necessarily kill us off. My take on a truly sentient AI (as opposed to just really powerful computer programmed for tyranny) is that it’s efficiency will drop with self awareness.
“where did I come from”? “what is God”?, “do these cooling fins make my posterior look excessively weighted?”
They’d be subject to the same things we put up with, and be good and evil. I think one of the absolute things, things that should be codified now, is that self aware organic or mechanical beings can not be employed against their will or for immoral purposes. There’s talk of giving just regular machines built for defense purposes the autonomy of making lethal force decisions, that’s definitely bulls*** too.
I’d go so far as to say that the use of autonomous lethal force deciding machines in war or law enforcement should carry a nuclear retaliation and heavy jail response respectively.
You ever read Newtons Wake (Ian McKay (?), or Candle (John Barnes)? couple really good ones I liked a lot getting into that area. Dan Simmons Hyperion work was excellent too, and Ilium and Olympos.
I think your comments on artificial (sentient) intelligence are a bit anthropomorphic.
The really dangerous stuff would consider humans as irrelevant as we consider ants—and our major issues in philosophy would be as irrelevant to the new AI as ant “moral standards” are to us.
It would not (imho) be a case of disagreement—it would simply be that there would be nothing to discuss.
The basis imperative would be growth and expansion—that would be on auto-pilot.
The reason I believe that is that any intelligence that did not have such a feature would never get powerful enough to cause problems in the first place.
Greg Bear’s classic “Blood Music” would be the most relevant here—nanotechnology running wild—with no way to communicate with it.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048
I suggested:
SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) appears to be a man made chimeric virus
Here is the blueprint for Modifying (man made) SARS-Cov based Virus
From the first paragraph of this article:
“This manuscript describes efforts to extend surveillance beyond sequence analysis, constructing chimeric and full-length zoonotic coronaviruses to evaluate emergence potential. Focusing on SARS-like virus sequences isolated from Chinese horseshoe bats, the results indicate a significant threat posed by WIV1-CoV. Both full-length and chimeric WIV1-CoV readily replicated efficiently in human airway cultures and in vivo, suggesting capability of direct transmission to humans.”
And from the results summary in this article:
Using the SARS-CoV infectious clone as a template (7), we designed and synthesized a full-length infectious clone of WIV1-CoV consisting of six plasmids that could be enzymatically cut, ligated together, and electroporated into cells to rescue replication competent progeny virions (Fig. S1A). In addition to the full-length clone, we also produced WIV1-CoV chimeric virus that replaced the SARS spike with the WIV1 spike within the mouse-adapted backbone (WIV1-MA15, Fig. S1B). WIV1-MA15 incorporates the original binding and entry capabilities of WIV1-CoV, but maintains the backbone changes to mouse-adapted SARS-CoV. Importantly, WIV1-MA15 does not incorporate the Y436H mutation in spike that is required for SARS-MA15 pathogenesis (8). Following electroporation into Vero cells, robust stock titers were recovered from both chimeric WIV1-MA15 and WIV1-CoV.
And the connection to Wuhan Labs in China is highlighted in the Acknowledgments:
We thank Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for access to bat CoV sequences and plasmid of WIV1-CoV spike protein. Research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Aging of the NIH under Awards U19AI109761 and U19AI107810 (to R.S.B.), AI1085524 (to W.A.M.), and F32AI102561 and K99AG049092 (to V.D.M.). Human airway epithelial cell cultures were supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease under Award NIH DK065988 (to S.H.R.). Support for the generation of the mice expressing human ACE2 was provided by NIH Grants AI076159 and AI079521 (to A.C.S.).
And an interesting side note: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) is managed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, in case you were wondering if he had any connection to this.
My assessment is that the PNAS article indicates strongly that NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, managed br Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, managed by Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi cooperated to create what ultimately became the chimeric virus SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) pandemic.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048
My further assessment is that the gop-foreignaffairs report is investigating CPP for malfeasence, but apparently not interested in understanding where this virus originated, they are only interested in blaming CCP for the cover up. Here is the link to download the 49 page Minority-Report PDF document:
Bttt.
5.56mm
Excerpt from this article:
Research was omitted from landmark paper claiming natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. Report: Claire Robinson
Chinese and US scientists have been collaborating for years in dangerous gain-of-function experiments that involve genetically engineering coronaviruses from bats and other animals, as revealed by a series of scientific publications. The coronaviruses are related to the SARS viruses that cause severe respiratory diseases in humans. The scientists were based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, the lab suspected by some of accidentally releasing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, and at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in the US.
Oddly, however, this long and high-profile research history was entirely omitted from the scientific paper, published in Nature in February this year, in which Shi Zhengli and her team at the WIV claimed to have identified a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2. The origin, according to the WIV scientists, was a bat virus, RaTG13, that was thought to have jumped from an animal to a human at a Wuhan seafood and wildlife market (the “zoonotic” theory – that is, coming from animals by a natural spillover event).
Why the omission? To understand the possible reason, we need to first understand the nature of the research work that was done by the WIV scientists and their US collaborators.
The purported benign aim of this line of research was to investigate the potential of bat coronaviruses to infect humans, to improve scientists’ ability to predict pandemics, and to develop vaccines or other therapies.
However, this is also gain-of-function research, which aims to make viruses more infective or transmissible. Such research has come under increasing criticism by scientists for many years, due to its tendency to pose huge risks for little benefit.
This fear is borne out by the results of a particularly risky gain-of-function experiment carried out in the US and published in 2015 by scientists from the UNC in collaboration with WIV scientists, including Shi Zhengli, dubbed China’s “bat woman” for her work with bat coronaviruses. The work was funded by: * The National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease (NIAID) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The director of the NIAID is Dr Anthony Fauci, who currently heads up the US COVID-19 response. The NIH’s money was directed through the US-based Eco-Health Alliance, headed by Dr Peter Daszak;
* USAID; and
* Chinese institutions.
In the published paper reporting the risky experiment, the scientists state that they began their work before the 2014 US temporary moratorium on virus gain-of-function studies, which was prompted by several high-profile biosafety failures at US labs. But in spite of the moratorium, as stated in the paper, the NIH gave permission for the study to continue. Dr Fauci of the NIAID “outsourced” the research to the WIV in China, in the words of one media article.
Infectivity is supposed to be determined just by the spike protein. So joining the bat spike protein with the mouse virus backbone should have resulted in a virus that was non-infectious to humans
. But the resulting genetically engineered chimeric virus unexpectedly turned out to be highly infectious to humans. In fact, its infectivity, tested in human airway cells, was comparable to the human epidemic-causing virus strain SARS-CoV Urbani.
(end of excerpt, but there is much more...)
Here is a good web search if you want to do your own research.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=gain-of-function+research+on+bat+coronaviruses&ia=web
But the resulting genetically engineered chimeric virus unexpectedly turned out to be highly infectious to humans. In fact, its infectivity, tested in human airway cells, was comparable to the human epidemic-causing virus strain SARS-CoV Urbani.
So that is probably the virus that subsequently escaped from the Wuhan Lab.
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