The Covid-19 Virus and its Laboratory Origin
by
Alan Cantwell, MD, and
Leonard G. Horowitz, DMD
(4-23-2020)
Introduction
One of the most important and controversial questions surrounding the current Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is its origin. Is it from a bat? — or is it a genetically altered laboratory bat coronavirus acting as a bioweapon? This article considers the Covid-19 lab origin.
The first confirmed Chinese Covid-19 case occurred on November 17, 2019; the first U.S. case on January 21, 2020, and on February 3, 2020, President Trump’s Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Kelvin K. Droegemeier, initiated a federal investigation into the alleged laboratory origin of the 2019 coronavirus.
”This is not a major threat to the people of the United States and this is not something that the citizens of the United States should be worried about right now,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly on January 21.
But the virus threat grew from there, and by the end of January travel restrictions were put into place involving China and other nations.
Subsequently, on April 17, 2020, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson scolded health officials worldwide, but especially Dr. Fauci. Carlson accused the President’s Coronavirus Task Force director of “lying” about the apparent lab virus outbreak. He also dismissed the status quo scientific consensus that contaminated bat meat at the Wuhan Seafood and Animal Market was the source of the virus.
Several days later, GreatGameIndia.com reported that parties in India and the U.S. filed complaints against China, the former filing with the United Nations Human Rights Council for waging Covid-19 War. India’s complaint claimed Chinese biowarfare agents stole the Coronavirus from a Canadian lab and weaponized it at the Wuhan Institute of Virology ten miles away from the suspect market. In addition, U.S. lawyer and activist, Larry Klayman, filed a $20 trillion lawsuit against China for waging a biological war.
Prashant Pradhan, Covid-19, and “unique” HIV-like insertions
On-or-about January 31, 2020, Prashant Pradhan and eight experts in coronavirus gene-sequencing affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the University of New Delhi, IBM, and New York University at Stonybrook, published an extraordinary paper. Using the most advanced computer programs for genetic analyses, they posted in urgency and public duty a ‘non-peer reviewed’ study entitled: ‘Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag [gene sequences].’
To some observers, this finding suggested a ‘smoking gun” that pointed to genetic engineering of a malicious virus related to AIDS. Pradhan’s ‘preliminary report’ sent shock waves through the scientific community.
But there was no mention of Pradhan’s stunning findings in the major media. And curiously, two days after the report appeared, the authors voluntarily withdrew the study to avoid misrepresentation and controversy.
Pradhan wrote that it was not his intention to feed into ‘conspiracy theories,’ and said he would get back with a revised version after reanalysis. That never happened. On March 22, however, with no news about revisions, it was announced that Pradhan and the University of New Delhi had developed a cheap Covid-19 detection testing kit currently undergoing clinical trials.
The Anderson paper concluding Covid-19 is not man-made
On March 17, two weeks following Pradhan’s report, and before Carlson’s broadcast on FOX, a paper was published undermining Pradhan’s findings and the lab virus evidence entitled, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2’.” Published in Nature Medicine, 5 authors concluded SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) is not a laboratory manipulated virus. The lead author, Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research Institute of La Jolla, CA; and senior author, Robert F. Garry of Tulane University in New Orleans–the co-founder of Zalgen Labs in Maryland–prompted widespread news headlines such as, “Sorry, conspiracy theorists. Study concludes COVID-19 ‘is not a laboratory construct’.”
Similar to Pradhan’s commercial interests, Zalgen’s background involved the development and testing of a coronavirus diagnostic test in alliance with pharmaceutical companies. Partners included the NIH, NIAID, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as Johns Hopkins University. The latter, operating at the forefront of coronavirus intelligence gathering, data mining, scientific analysis, infection projections, and media reporting.
In the Nature Medicine report, Garry did not specifically mention Zaldan’s research and development of a coronavirus test under the required disclosure of “Competing interests”. He simply noted that he co-founded “Zalgen Labs, a biotechnology company that develops countermeasures to emerging viruses.”
A few years earlier, in 2016, the NIAID (under the direction of Fauci), gave Zalgen a grant for the development of recombinant antigen diagnostics for filoviruses, which resulted in the ReEBOV® Ebola test, among others. In 2018 the NIAID gave a $3.7 million dollar grant to scientists studying coronaviruses “emerging” from bats in China. The Wuhan researchers said their identification of new animal coronaviruses allowed them to quickly determine their potential to infect people and reduce global health threats.
Andersen, Garry et. al., made no mention of Pradhan’s controversial genetic research, nor a 2015 study, also published in Nature Medicine, by Menachery et. al., concluding that “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence,” especially when altered in labs.
It would seem that unnatural “inserts” with “high genetic similarity” to HIV, and Menachery’s group’s coronavirus lab engineering disclosures, would be amenable to confirmation by other virologists.
Indeed, on April 18, 2020, Luc Montagnier, one of the world’s leading virologists and Nobel Prize Winner (in 2008) for the co-discovery of HIV, the AIDS virus, declared that Covid-19 was a “manipulated” man-made virus arising from China’s genetic experiments to develop a vaccine for AIDS.
Montagnier carefully analyzed the description of the genome of Covid-19 and claimed there were indeed insertions of HIV into its genome. Doubting scientific dissenters claimed the insertions might have occurred with Covid infection from an AIDS patient. But Montagnier said: “No, In order to insert HIV sequences into this (Covid) genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can be only be done in a laboratory.”
Referencing Pradhan’s study, Montagnier noted that the Indian researchers tried to publish the results of their analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of the AIDS virus, but “they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great. Not surprisingly, the corporate-controlled media neglected this intelligence, and Montagnier was attacked by fellow virologists. A few called Montagnier’s idea absurd, ridiculous, and worse.
One is left wondering if virologists and geneticists can ever agree if a virus damaging society is “natural” or “man-made” in a lab.
Andersen and Garry et. al., did note that “obtaining related viral sequences from animal sources would be the most definitive way of revealing viral origins.” But, the genetic makeup of dangerous recombinants, and/or “classified” viral bioweapons, are not likely to be made public, nor to be deposited in ‘genetic banks.’
It is a little known fact that genetic engineers, molecular biologists and virologists constantly create new viruses by genetically altering or combining two or more animal viruses together to make “chimera” viruses.
Ten years before Covid-19, Wimmer et al presented details of so-called “synthetic viruses.” The manufactured RNA viruses combined the “human endogenous retrovirus”, a “chimp virus” (HIV cpz and AIDS virus progenitor) and the “SARS-like coronavirus.” This dangerous biotechnology with chimera-like viruses could easily induce epidemics and even pandemics, if maliciously employed or accidentally loosed from a lab.
Apparently aware of these dangers, the Andersen team noted, “[b]asic research involving passage of bat SARS-CoV-like coronaviruses in cell culture and/or animal models has been ongoing for many years in biosafety level 2 laboratories across the world, and there are documented instances of laboratory escapes of SARS-CoV.” They further noted, “ Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic (animal to man) events.”
However, as though willfully blind to the facts, Andersen and Garry, et. al., totally dismissed the lab origin theory of Covid-19 despite the increasing suspicion that it is an unnatural ‘chimera virus’.
Genetic engineering of viruses and species jumping
Covid-19 was quickly and widely accepted as deriving from a horseshoe bat corona virus, perhaps with a pangolin intermediary, before “jumping” into humans at the Wuhan wet market. This was close to a Chinese biowarfare lab, and not far from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Virus species jumping has frequently occurred in biowarfare labs worldwide operating under the guise of “preventative medicine” or proposed vaccine development. “Dual use” research, however, for both military and the drug industry, is conducted in the world’s most advanced labs. “Classified research” enables the concealment of biowarfare methods and materials.
The HIV-like genetic insertions spliced into Covid-19 (seemingly corroborating Pradhan’s and Montagnier’s findings as reported by Chinese virologists from the University of Tianjin) could have been inserted through genetic engineering. New York Magazine’s Intelligencer heralded even more evidence that the bat virus did not necessarily arise by “natural evolution.”
We believe the most likely scenario is that Covid-19 is a “supervirus” created through dangerous experiments with bats and bat virus recombinants.
The Wuhan Virology Institute has a history of bat viruses escaping from the lab. According to NIAID officials (January 23, 2020), the new cluster of Covid-19 pneumonia cases originating in Wuhan marks the third time in 20 years that a member of the large family of coronaviruses has jumped from animals to humans and sparked an outbreak.
In 2018, US officials warned that the Wuhan Institute’s research into SARS-like coronaviruses, and its improper lab safety procedures, could result in human transmissions and the possibility of a future emerging coronavirus outbreak.
Accordingly, there is much fodder for the likely ‘cover’ that Covid-19 outbroke “accidentally.”
This theory, and liability, is intertwined with the public’s right to know what biowarfare researchers conceal. Unfortunately, bio-warriors are sworn to secrecy, and the penalties for breaking confidentiality agreements are severe. One can easily Google “dead microbiologists” and be confronted with dozens of web pages documenting the premature and suspicious deaths, even murders, of microbiologists.
Scientists are not always humanitarians. They typically protect their personal interests, and avoid whistleblowing. Many blame ‘natural evolution,’ and animals in the wild, for all “emerging viruses” and new diseases.
We hope this article will contribute to a thorough investigation at the highest levels of science and government to determine the origin of the man-made Covid-19 bioweapon.
–End–
Copyright (c) 2020, by Alan Cantwell and Leonard Horowitz, is waived for republication with proper professional attributions, including the publisher, MedicalVeritas.org.
