Posted on 02/10/2025 9:23:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been totally geeking out on and fangirling @DataRepublican on X. She developed a searchable database of federal grants linked to recipient institutions. Using that, she, and now hundreds if not thousands of others, have broken open truth about how much federal grant funding actually gets to the claimed ultimate beneficiaries. When I was noodling around in the database to see about funding to prevent or treat dangerous viruses, I saw something that, as written, set off warning bells. I’d love to learn that I’m wrong.
DataRepublican is bringing about the transparency President Trump promised during his campaign. The churn and skim of money flowing from the guv to NGO, and then through NGO to NGO, all of which allows each of these organizations to take administrative costs off the top, has been revealed. USAID is under intense scrutiny. Soon, other agencies will be. Now all the walls are made of glass.
I logged into her application, which she offers free to all, and decided to look up an old enemy—Ebola—to see what might be happening there. (I was in West Africa during one of this century’s outbreaks.) Curiously, a $2,266,918 grant to Colorado State University popped up. The grant establishes a “bat resource for infectious disease research”:
Bats are reservoirs, or suspected reservoirs, of many zoonotic viruses, including SARS, SARS2 and MERS coronaviruses, Nipah and Hendra viruses, and Ebola and Marburg viruses. Little is known about how these viruses circulate in their bat reservoirs, principally because of a lack of bat colonies that can be used for the development of experimental infection models. To address this deficiency, we will capture horseshoe bats and Indian flying foxes, respective reservoir hosts of Nipah virus and SARS-related coronaviruses,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So why am I concerned? In my work in West Africa, I became intimately familiar with the CDC-NIH Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL) handbook, now in its 6th edition. The handbook “provides best practices for the safe conduct of work in biomedical and clinical laboratories.”
My familiarity with the handbook arose when some of our researchers wanted to go after Lassa Fever. Because Lassa was locally present, any research done by our staff would have been cutting edge. The BMBL recommends Lassa be handled in BSL-4 containment (think the moon-suited lab space in the movie Contagion). However, our labs only went to BSL-3, so the answer, in the face of fierce opposition, was a firm “no.” This was not a one-time experience with USG-funded scientists. I understood both their drive and their disappointment.
Is there a wet market close to CSU?
To summarize thus far, CSU has a bat facility that is built to BSL-2 biosafety requirements. It’s assured the public that it will not be working with Ebola, Marburg or Nipah viruses, all of which require BSL-4 safety requirements. Finally, the research into bats from Bangladesh sounds as if it could generate some useful information.
So, what’s the issue?
It’s that language I mentioned above when I described the grant itself: “we will perform experimental infection studies of Nipah Virus” and “sera from naïve and infected bats will be archived in a biobank.”
Folks, their lab is not up to the requirement as a BSL-2, but their grant explicitly states they will use their BSL-2 rated lab to test a virus rated only for a BSL-4 lab.
They will not only conduct experimentation in a legally inferior lab, but also STORE Nipah virus serum there.
CSU must be made to cease and desist, or at least prove their lab is BSL-4 rated.
As someone who has served as the Chairman of the Biosafety Committee for one of the largest industrial research centers in the country, I know something about these issues. It is possible to work on weakened (Attenuated) versions of deadly/highly contagious viruses and bacteria in less than BSL4 Labs. They are available through an organization known as BEI Resources. Your organization and researchers have to be certified by the BEI to receive these strains. Under no circumstances should the Wild Type (unmutated) strains of these organisms be used in less than BSL4 labs.
“However, our labs only went to BSL-3, so the answer, in the face of fierce opposition, was a firm “no.” This was not a one-time experience with USG-funded scientists. I understood both their drive and their disappointment.”
Never underestimate the overconfidence of a Ph.D. biochemist who once worked with E. coli in an undergraduate microbiology lab, to believe he is qualified to work with a BSL3 pathogen in a BSL2 lab.
On the surface, it sounds like CSU doesn’t have the right facilities for this research, but universities often share facilities, so this work might be done at another site, but using CSU personnel and money.
Who is going to monitor this for biosafety?
Yes - Aspen Colorado ...
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