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Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der COVID-19-Pandemie
National Institutes of Health
Department of Health & Human Services
Public Health Service
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland 20992
October 20, 2021
The Honorable James Comer
Ranking Member, Committee on Oversight and Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington D.C., 20515
Dear Representatitive Comer,
Thank you for your continued interest in the work of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). I am writing today to provide additional information and documents regarding the NIH‘s grant to EcoHealth Alliance Inc.
It is important to state at the outset that published genomic data demonstrate that the bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and subawarded to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2. Both the progress report and the analysis attached here again confirm that conclusion, as the sequences of the viruses are genetically very distant.
The fifth and final progress report for Grant R01 AI110964, awarded to EcoHealth Alliance Inc. is attached with redactions only for personally identifyable information. This progress report was submitted to NIH in August 2021 in response to NHI‘s compliance enforcement efforts. It includes data from a research project conducted during the 2018-19 grant period using bat coronaviruse genome sequences already existing in nature.
The limited experiment described in the final progress report provided by EcoHealth Alliance was testing if spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circualting in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model. All other aspects of the mice, including the immune system, remained unchanged. In this limited experiment, laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV 1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV 1 bat coronavirus. As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something the researchers set out to do. Regardless, the viruses being studied under this grant were genetically very distant from SARS-CoV-2.
The research plan was reviewed by NIH in advance of funding, and NIH determined that it did not to fit the definition of research involving enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans. As such, the research was not subject to departmental review under the HHS P3CO Framwork. However, out of an abundance of caution and as an additional layer of oversite, language was included in the terms and conditions of the grant to EcoHealth that outlined criteria for a secondary review, such as a requirement that the grantee report immediately a one log increase in growth. These …
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… measures would prompt a secondary review to determine whether the research aims should be re-evaluated or new biosafety measures should be enacted.
EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant. EcoHealth is being notified that they have five days from today to submit to NHI any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under this award. Additional compliance efforts continue.
The second document is a genetic analysis demonstrating that the actual occurring bat coronaviruses used in experiments under the NIH grant from 2014-2018 are decades removed from SARS-CoV-2 evolutionarily. The analysis compares the sequence relationships between:
* SARS-CoV-1, the cause of SARS outbreak in 2003;
* SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19 pandemic;
* WIV-1, a naturally occurring bat coronavirus used in experiments funded by the NIH;
* RaTG13, one of the closest bat coronavirus relatives to SARS-CoV-2 collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology; and
* BANAL-52, one of several bat coronaviruses recently identified from bats living in Laos.
While it might appear that the similarity of RaTG13 and BANAL-52 bat coronaviruses to SARS-CoV-2 is close because it overlaps by 96-97%, experts agree that even these viruses are far too divergent to have been the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2. For comparison, today‘s human genome is 96% similar to our closest ancestor, the chimpanzee. Humans and chimpanzees are thought to have diverged approximately 6 million years ago.
This analysis attached confirms that the bat coronaviruses studied under EcoHealth Alliance grant could not have been the source of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you or your staff have questions, NHI would be pleased to brief you on these documents.
Lawrence A. Tabak , D.D.S. Ph.D.
Principal Deputy Director
[Der stellvertretende Generaldirektor der National Institutions of Healt (NIH), Lawrence A. Tabak versichert in seinem Schreiben an das ranghohe Mitglied des Ausschusses für Aufsicht und Reform des U.S. Repärsentantenhauses, James Comer (Rep.) vom 20. Oktober 2021, dass zwischen den von der NIH unter der Förderprojektnummer R01 AI110964 staatlich geförderten Forschungen der NGO EcoHealth Alliance Inc. von Peter Daszak im Wuhan Institute of Virology an natürlichen Fledermaus-Coronaviren zwischen 2014 und 2019 und dem Ausbruch der COVOD-19-Pandemie in Wuhan im Jahr 2019 kein Zusammenhang bestände. Die 96-97%ige Ähnlichkeit zwischen einigen der im Projekt AI110964 erforschten Viren mit SARS-CoV-2 Virus bezeichnet er als entfernt mit folgender Erklärung: „Auch wenn es den Anschein hat, dass die Ähnlichkeit der Fledermaus-Coronaviren RaTG13 und BANAL-52 mit SARS-CoV-2 groß ist, weil sie sich zu 96-97 % überschneiden, sind sich die Experten einig, dass selbst diese Viren viel zu unterschiedlich sind, um der Vorläufer von SARS-CoV-2 gewesen zu sein. Zum Vergleich: Das Genom des heutigen Menschen ist unserem nächsten Vorfahren, dem Schimpansen, zu 96 % ähnlich. Es wird angenommen, dass sich Menschen und Schimpansen vor etwa 6 Millionen Jahren voneinander auseinanderentwickelt haben.“
Gleichwohl gibt er zu, dass unter dem fraglichen NIH-Fördertitel R01 AI110964 Gain-of-Function-Forschung zur Erweiterung der Übertragbarkeit von Fledermaus-Coronaviren auf menschliche Rezeptoren betrieben wurde. Damit korrigiert er die unwahre Behauptungen von NIH-Direktor Collins und NIAID-Direktor Fauci vor dem Kongress-Untersuchungsausschuss, wonach die NIH keine Gain-of-Function-Forschung in Wuhan finanziert hätten. Zudem stellt Tabak fest, dass EcoHealth Alliance gegen die Bedingungen des NIH-Förderprojekt AI110964 verstoßen hat.]
Im Washington Examiner vom gleichen Tag findet sich dazu folgende Interpretation:
„NIH admits Fauci lied about funding Wuhan gain-of-function experiments
by Tiana Lowe, Commentary Writer | | October 20, 2021 11:44 PM
Two years after Wuhan hosted the 2019 Military World Games, determined to be one of the planet's first superspreader events of the novel coronavirus pandemic, a top official at the National Institutes of Health has conceded that the agency did indeed fund highly dangerous gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In a letter to Kentucky Republican James Comer, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Lawrence A. Tabak of the NIH admitted that "out of an abundance of caution," and, of course, after two years of conspicuous indignant behavior that anyone would consider the lab-leak hypothesis, the nation's top medical research agency conducted an additional review of how the funds authorized by Dr. Anthony Fauci and friends were used by EcoHealth Alliance, the New York City-based nonprofit organization headed by frequent WIV collaborator Peter Daszak.
The bulk of Tabak's letter is spent minimizing the culpability of the NIH, but the admission is no less gratifying.
Per the letter, EcoHealth did indeed "fail to report" findings required by the terms of the NIH grant. More crucially, the gain-of-function experiments in question were conducted at the WIV. Tabak ultimately says that Daszak's EcoHealth has just five days to respond to the infraction. Daszak was last seen bullying into silence anyone who considered this possibility.
NIH has, until now, acquiesced to Fauci's pearl-clutching outrage at the idea that his department carved out exceptions from the Obama-era ban of gain-of-function research to fund EcoHealth. Not even a year ago, tried and true virologists such as Robert Redfield, President Donald Trump's head of the CDC, were smeared as Sinophobic bigots for entertaining the lab leak hypothesis, let alone the notion that Fauci and his friends actually funded the sort of experiments that probably brought
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/nih-admits-fauci-lied-about-funding-wuhan-gain-of-function-experiments?utm_source=msn&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=msn_feed
darin Bezug auf:
Richard H. Ebright Tweet:
NIH corrects untruthful assertions by NIH Director Collins and NIAID Director Fauci that NIH had not funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
NIH states that EcoHealth Alliance violated Terms and Conditions of NIH grant AI110964.
https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1450947395508858880%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fopinion%2Fnih-admits-fauci-lied-about-funding-wu
Am 1. November 2021 stellte der Chirurg und Gesundheitspolitiker Joel Zinberg im City Journal das Tabak-Schreiben vom 20. Oktober in den weiteren gesundheitspolitischen Kontext. Der Diskurs zur Labor-Theorie – im Gegensatz von der gerade von Peter Daszak von der EcoHealth Alliance Inc. verfochteten Theorie der Zoogenese des Virus‘ – und die erheblichen gesundheits- und medienpolitischen Implikationen ist in den USA deutlich weiter vorangeschritten als in Deutschland (wo wenig bis nichts zu dieser Frage berichtet wird), nicht zuletzt seit die TV-dokumentierten Befragungen von NIAID-Direktor Anthony Fauci durch Senator Rand Paul ab Mai 2021 im Sommer 2021 hohe Wellen geschlagen hatten, als Fauci den Senator mit den Worten „If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you“ zum Verschwörungstheoretiker abzustempeln versuchte. Nach Zinberg gewinnt durch die unfreiwilligen Eingeständnisse des Tabak-Schreibens die Labor-Theorie an Wahrscheinlichkeit. Umgekehrt wird damit die Glaubwürdigkeit des von westlichen Medien verbreiteten Narrativs der Zoogenese des SARS-CoV-2 Virus und der COVOD-19 Pandemie erschüttert. Das von diesen Medien praktizierte Muster, anderslautende Deutungen als „Verschwörungstheorie“ bzw. „Verschwörungserzählung“ zu diffamieren, bekommt damit weitere Risse.
„The Evidence Mounts
A new NIH letter reinforces the lab-leak hypothesis for the origins of Covid-19.
[by Joel Jinberg, 1. November 2021]
The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 remains unclear, but recent revelations reinforce the likelihood that the true source was a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
A letter from Lawrence Tabak, the National Institutes of Health’s principal deputy director, to Kentucky congressman James Comer confirms that the NIH funded research at the WIV during 2018–2019 that manipulated a bat coronavirus called WIV1. Researchers at the institute grafted spike proteins from other coronaviruses onto WIV1 to see if the modified virus was capable of binding in a mouse that possessed the ACE2 receptors found in humans—the same receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 binds. The modified virus reproduced more rapidly and made infected humanized mice sicker than the unmodified virus.
Starting in 2014, the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Anthony Fauci, funded the New York-based research nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance with annual grants through 2020 for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” Total funding was $3,748,715. More than $600,000 of that went to the WIV. Three other Chinese institutions received funding as well. The principal investigator was EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak, who, from the onset of the pandemic, has consistently campaigned in public and behind the scenes to convince people that SARS-CoV-2 did not come from the WIV but evolved naturally from animal-to-human transmission.
Tabak’s letter asserts that the modified virus’s becoming more virulent “was an unexpected result” and not “something that the researchers set out to do”—an odd claim, considering that the whole point of manipulating the virus was to investigate things that could make it more virulent. The 2018 research mentioned in Tabak’s letter is similar to earlier WIV research, funded in part by the NIH, that modified viruses related to SARS to see if they could infect human cells. Publications of these studies in 2017 and 2016 were the subject of a contentious Senate hearing in which Senator Rand Paul pressed Fauci to admit that they constituted gain-of-function research, prompting Fauci’s denial and a statement that “NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Many, but not all, virologists believe that the WIV experimentation qualifies as gain-of-function research. Such research was originally defined as “any modification of a biological agent that confers new or enhanced activity.” The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity proposed that only a narrower category, gain-of-function research of concern—research that could make a pathogen likely to spread and cause disease in humans—needs extra regulatory oversight.
Following laboratory biosafety incidents at government research facilities, the U.S. paused funding on gain-of-function research with influenza and the SARS and MERS coronaviruses in 2014 to determine additional oversight. Researchers conducted the 2017 and 2016 studies discussed in the Senate while this pause was in effect. In 2017, officials lifted the moratorium and replaced it with oversight guidelines for research using potential pandemic pathogens (PPP)—pathogens likely to be highly transmissible, capable of uncontrollable spread, and able to cause significant morbidity or mortality in humans. A PPP resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility or virulence of a pathogen is called an enhanced PPP (ePPP).
Tabak does not address whether the 2018 WIV experiments he cited in his letter were gain-of-function research. Instead, he maintains that NIH did not consider the WIV experiments so dangerous as to require special review and biosafety measures under the ePPP regulations adopted in 2017 “because these bat coronaviruses had not been shown to infect humans.” But this is an unconvincing technicality. Other bat coronaviruses had already caused two deadly diseases, SARS and MERS, and other coronaviruses regularly circulate and infect humans to cause the common cold. It isn’t a stretch to think that a different coronavirus could become dangerous, too—particularly if used in an experiment designed to manipulate a virus that humans have never encountered to see if it could acquire the ability to infect humans.
After explaining why NIH didn’t review the proposal under its guidelines, Tabak’s letter claims that EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant stipulating that it had to report if its research increased the viral growth of a pathogen by tenfold—terms that NIH inserted “out of an abundance of caution and as an added layer of oversight.” But the letter never explains why this stipulation was necessary. This blame-shifting is not only unseemly but also may be untrue: EcoHealth maintains that it reported the results in its April 2018, year-four report.
The main point of the letter seems to be that any deficiencies in NIH’s grant-review and oversight processes didn’t make a difference. Tabak repeatedly assures Congressman Comer that the viruses being studied “were genetically very distant from SARS-CoV-2,” so they “are not and could not have become SARS-CoV-2.” Whether this particular virus evolved into SARS-CoV-2 is beside the point: WIV was engaged in this type of research, with U.S. government support, and this makes it more, not less, likely that the Covid-19 pandemic is a manmade catastrophe. Another WIV project, other than the specific one in the Tabak letter, could have created SARS-CoV-2.
Despite early attempts by the scientific community, with the aid of a credulous and politically motivated media, to downplay this possibility, the accumulating evidence suggests that the pandemic was more likely the result of laboratory creation and accidental release of SARS-CoV-2 than a product of natural viral evolution.
The first reported cases of Covid-19 occurred in Wuhan, China, the site of the WIV. In addition, both U.S. intelligence sources and the State Departmentreported that several WIV researchers became ill and were hospitalized with Covid-19-like symptoms months prior to the Chinese government’s announcement of the first cases.
In previous animal-to-human viral transmissions such as the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, researchers ascertained intermediate animal hosts and serologic signs of infections in animal traders within months of the outbreaks. Despite intensive efforts over the past two years, no one has found a bat-source population, SARS-CoV-2 circulating in an intermediate species that functioned as a viral conduit between bats and humans, or evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was present anywhere else before it emerged in Wuhan.
Consider, too, the unique furin cleavage site between the S1 and S2 subunits of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Furin is an enzyme expressed by human cells that separates the spike protein subunits at the cleavage site, enabling the virus to bind more efficiently to human cells and release its genetic material into them. It is an important reason that SARS-CoV-2 is so easily transmissible.
The furin cleavage site is found nowhere else in the entire genus of SARS-related betacoronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 is the only one that has it. This fact alone suggests that it did not arise naturally in SARS-CoV-2. In addition, while other, more distant coronaviruses do have furin cleavage sites, the protein components (amino acids) in the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site are coded for by a unique set of nucleotides in its RNA, not found in the other viruses, making natural recombination between the viruses unlikely.
It’s particularly concerning that in 2018 the EcoHealth Alliance reportedly submitted a proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to partner with the WIV in constructing SARS-related bat coronaviruses by inserting such cleavage sites into their spike proteins. DARPA rejected the proposal because it failed to address the risks of gain-of-function research. EcoHealth’s president, Peter Daszak, did not dispute details of the reporting.
In other words: there are many indications that SARS-CoV-2 could have been created in a lab, specifically the WIV, which was conducting gain-of-function-type research with coronaviruses, some of it funded by the NIH. While the particular experiments revealed in Tabak’s letter may not have created SARS-CoV-2, other research at WIV, including research that EcoHealth sought to fund with U.S. grants, could have done so.
It’s doubtful that we will ever discover the true origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, since the Chinese will never cooperate with a full and open investigation. It doesn’t help that, until recently, our own NIH stonewalled on questions about its funding of WIV research. Considering the release of the recent NIH letter and the revelations about EcoHealth Alliance, it remains entirely possible that U.S. taxpayers funded a project at the Wuhan lab that may have led to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Joel Zinberg, M.D., J.D., is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and an associate clinical professor of surgery at the Icahn Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He was general counsel and senior economist in 2017–19 at the Council of Economic Advisers, where he specialized in health policy.
Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images“
https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-for-lab-leak-hypothesis-of-covid-origins
Am 22. August 2021, noch vor Beendigung der unter US-Präsident Joe Biden angestoßenen Untersuchung, hatte Robin McKee, Wissenschaftsredakteur des Guardian, jede Validität der Labor-Theorie in Abrede gestellt. Zentrales Argument: Diese wäre Wasser auf die Mühlen von „Verschwörungstheoretikern“.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/22/the-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-is-more-about-politics-than-science
Quellenkritischer Hinweis: Mit dem Empfang von rd. 3,5 Millionen $ für „Globale Gesundheit und Entwicklung: Sensibilisierung der Öffentlichkeit und Analyse“ allein im Jahr 2020 zählt der Guardian neben El Pais, Le Monde und der Spiegel zu einer Gruppe von westlichen Leitmedien, die von der Bill-and-Melinda-Gates Foundation im Rahmen ihrer Medienpartnerschaften substantiell finanziert wird. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Stiftungen macht die Bill-and-Melinda-Gates Foundation ihre Förderungen an private und öffentliche Empfänger bemerkenswert transparent.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants?q=guardian
Das Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) schreibt zum Global Media Partnership portfolio der Bill-and-Melinda-Gates Foundation: „Der Geschäftsbereich „Globale Medienpartnerschaft“, in dem der größte Teil der Medienförderung angesiedelt ist, gehört zum Team „Programm Interessenvertretung und Kommunikation“ der Stiftung und zur Abteilung „Globale Politik und Interessenvertretung“. Mit fast 1.400 Mitarbeitern ist die Stiftung von ihrem Hauptsitz in Seattle und Büros in Washington, D.C., Delhi, Peking, London, Berlin, Addis Abeba, Abuja und Johannesburg aus tätig. Ein Team von vier Mitarbeitern arbeitet im Geschäftsbereich Medienpartnerschaft.“
https://www.cima.ned.org/donor-profiles/bill-melinda-gates-foundation/