American scientists applied to engineer coronaviruses with remarkable similarities to SARS-CoV-2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018, just one year before the pandemic’s outbreak, according to newly released internal documents. The 2018 grant proposal and related documents — obtained by the watchdog group U.S. Right to Know through a Freedom of Information request — reveal that an American virologist working with the Wuhan lab planned to engineer a virus that resembles SARS-CoV-2 as part of a U.S.-China research collaboration called “DEFUSE.” The research project was to be led by EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based research nonprofit that...