Im-Politic: From Inside the Wuhan Lab

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, Bloomberg.com, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Danielle Anderson, gain-of-function research, Im-Politic, lab leak, Michelle Fay Cortez, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, NIH, Ralph Baric, Shi Zeng-li, virologists, virology, WIV, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan virus

That was some scoop by Bloomberg.com’s Michelle Fay Cortez the other day, bagging an interview with the last (and only) non-Chinese scientist to work in the Wuhan, China lab suspected of being the origin point of the CCP Virus and the pandemic it’s spawned.

Danielle Anderson apparently wasn’t working on coronaviruses per se, but her views are of special interest not only because she has first-hand knowledge of the Chinese researchers who were, and of the safety standards at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Her views are of special interest because she’s the only person with such knowledge who isn’t vulnerable to Chinese regime threats against herself or her family or friends.

So when the Australian virologist speaks highly of the integrity of Wuhan colleagues and of the lab’s safety policies, she deserves to be taken seriously. Ditto for her claim that, although U.S. intelligence agencies are reported to have determined that three WIV researchers became sick enough with flu-like symptoms to have sought hospitalization in November, 2019 – about a month before physicians in Wuhan first reported to Chinese health officials the appearance of a novel coronavirus – she knew of no such illness among Institute staff. So that appears to undercut the argument that the three researchers’ illness tightly connect the pandemic to work done at the lab.

Nonetheless, in many ways, Anderson’s statements generally leave the lab leak theory – as opposed to the contention that the virus’ emergence had nothing to do with the WIV and jumped naturally from animals to humans – decidedly alive and kicking.

For example, Anderson’s praise of the WIV’s safety culture seems retricted to its BSL-4 facility – a lab that supposedly met the highest internationally used standards for handling dangerous pathogens. But Dr. Shi Zheng-li, China’s lead bat virus expert, has stated on the record that she’s conducted her coronavirus research in facilities at the Institute that meet less exacting safety requirements.

Moreover, her suggestion that using a form of gain-of-function research known as reverse genetics to increase the infectiousness of viruses is too difficult to have taken place at the WIV is contradicted by two important facts. First, this is precisely the kind of work at that lab that was paid for grants from the U.S. government’s National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (the latter of course headed by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci). Second, the WIV doubtless got the grants largely because Shi and a U.S. coronavirus researcher named Ralph Baric had in fact used the technique to create a novel coronavirus as early as 2015. (See this post for documentation.)

Perhaps most important, although she doubts the WIV gave the world the CCP Virus, Anderson made clear that she “could foresee how [an accident spawning the virus] could maybe happen, declared that “I’m not naive enough to say I absolutely write this off,” and said that she thinks, in Cortez’ words, that “an investigation is needed to nail down the virus’s origin once and for all.”

Which leaves me with only one criticism of Cortez’ interview: Given her distinctive vantage point, why didn’t she ask Anderson why she thought China has done everything possible to prevent such a probe?

Advertisement

Im-Politic: Another CCP Virus Failure by “The Science”

Tags

Alison Young, Anthony S. Fauci, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Daily Mail, Dany Shoham, Francis Collins, Glenn Kessler, Im-Politic, Kristian Anderson, Marcia McNutt, National Academy of Science, National Institutes of Health, Peter Daszak, The Lancet, The Washington Times, Tom Cotton, USAToday, virologists, Washington Post, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan lab, Wuhan virus

America’s official scientific establishment is in a huff over the CCP Virus origins theory controversy. “There’s sniping going on in all directions,” groused National Academy of Sciences president Marcia McNutt to a Washington Post reporter. “Her message to everyone,” correspondent Joel Achenbach continued, “cool it.”

Added McNutt:

“If anyone is going to come out strongly on one hypothesis or another, the scientific method says that there should be evidence to back it. I worry when some people are very willing to be firm about one origin or the other but fail to either have the evidence or the expertise to back it up.”

All of which I strongly endorse. But a recent statement of hers, co-signed by her counterparts at the National Academies of Engineering and Medicine, let off the hook the main culprits in turning this debate over whether the pandemic came directly from nature or escaped from a Chinese lab into a brawl. For the record clearly shows that the mudslingers who have sown “public confusion” and risk “undermining the public’s trust in science and scientists, including those still leading efforts to bring the pandemic under control,” first came from the national and global scientific establishments themselves.

Possibly worse, even if you ignore compelling evidence of their powerful self-interest in brushing off the lab leak theory (see, e.g., here) Washington’s own science leaders apparently put up no resistance.

Let’s use for documentation a recent lab leak-related timeline compiled by the Washington Post, which – as compiler Glenn Kessler shows – was one of many mainstream media outlets that portrayed this view as a wild and crazy notion.

According to Kessler, two of the first four presentations of lab leak claims and potentially related views (in January, 2020) came from an apparent Hong Kong democracy supporter on Twitter, and from a study by Chinese researchers published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet and actually funded by Chinese government agencies.

This study found that, in Kessler’s words, “13 of the 41 cases [of the CCP Virus], including the first documented case, had no link to the seafood marketplace that originally was considered the origin of the outbreak.” In other words, at this admittedly early stage, the natural origin supporters had some major explaining to do.

The other two reports that linked the Chinese facility in question – the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) came in the British newspaper Daily Mail and the American newspaper The Washington Times.

The former simply noted that a 2017 article in the (also prestigious) science publication nature reported that “A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens” and that “Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping….”

The latter, titled “Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program,” was based on an interview with a former Israeli intelligence officer with a biowarfare specialty and a microbiology Ph.D. who contended that “Certain laboratories in the [WIV] have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally….”

He turned out to be right – as even the Biden administration has acknowledged.

Yet this specialist, Dany Shoham, also said that “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident.”

So no conspiracy-mongering there, either.

Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, as Kessler noted, has been widely accused of “repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.” But as already made clear, many non-fringe-y types had been making similar statements, too, by the time he spoke out in late January.

Moreover, all Cotton said at various time then and in mid-February was:

>”…Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

>”…super-lab is just a few miles from that [Wuhan seafood] market. Where did it start? We don’t know.” He did add more provocatively that “China lied about virus starting in Wuhan food market.”

But he also argued that “burden of proof is on you & fellow communists” – a claim that was eminently unreasonable given the secrecy with which China had been handling virus-related issues and its outright intimidation of a Chinese researcher who had posted a paper charging that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan” and who (in Kessler’s words) “pointed to the previous safety mishaps and the kind of research undertaken at the lab. He withdrew the paper a few weeks later after Chinese authorities insisted no accident had taken place.”

>And on February 9, after Beijing called his remarks “absolutely crazy,” Cotton tweeted the following description of four possible virus origin scenarios:

“1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market) 2. Good science, bad safety (e.g., they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred). 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach). 4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in). Again, none of these are ‘theories’ and certainly not ‘conspiracy theories.’ They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence.”

Sorry, but there’s no fear-mongering here, either.

But how did the scientific community respond? Twenty-seven of its members published a statement in The Lancet declaring: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin.” Scientists, they continued “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.”

This statement, however, suffered fatal conflict of interest flaws in that, as Kessler writes, “it was drafted and organized by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which funded [coronavirus] research at WIV with U.S. government grants.” That is, the statement was the product of someone who had everything to lose either if a naturally occurring virus leaked from a lab in a country whose dodgy safety procedures were no secret, or if this lab had – and possibly in cooperation with the Chinese military – created this pathogen and lost control of it (or, as indeed currently seems less likely, at least to me, let it loose).

And although the 27 signers of Daszak’s statement certainly didn’t represent the entire U.S. or global virology or bio-sciences communities, evidently no one in these larger communities’ ranks thought to point out Daszak’s thoroughly compromised position. (Unless – improbably – none of them knew anything about his relationship with the lab?). Even more damningly, neither National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins or U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci (who approved these grants) called out Daszak, either.

Nor were Daszak and the other signers (three of whom have now endorsed investigating the lab leak theory) the only scientists smearing all lab leakers. Last week, a USAToday probe of Fauci’s role in the early stages of the virus origins debate showed that Kristian Anderson, an infectious disease expert at California’s Scripps Research Translational Institute belongs on the list, too. And again, Fauci himself maintained a conspicuous silence.

It was Anderson who first alerted Fauci at the end of January, 2020 to the possibility that the virus might have been a human creation. He subsequently changed his mind – which is perfectly fine, except that his own explanation for the switch contains some contradictions – but for some reason, Anderson wasn’t content to set forth his own views. Just a few days later, in very early February, according to USAToday author Alison Young, he was “telling another group of scientists” that “suggestions of engineering [were] ‘fringe’ and ‘crackpot’ theories.”

Indeed, Anderson went so far as to suggest to the top career U.S. government science officials drafting a letter on the virus (including its origins) that they “be more firm on the question of engineering. The main crackpot theories going around at the moment relate to this virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case. Engineering can mean many things and could be done for either basic research or nefarious reasons, but the data conclusively show that neither was done…”

Anderson continued, “If one of the main purposes of this document is to counter those fringe theories, I think it’s very important that we do so strongly and in plain language….”

To the credit of the government scientists (and possibly Fauci, who was involved in the drafting) Anderson’s proposals were rejected. But as the controversy over the virus’ origins continued, and scornful dismissals of the lab leak theory hardened into conventional wisdom, instances of the scientific community, especially inside U.S. government, warning “Not so fast” simply can’t be found. In fact, as detailed in Kessler’s timeline, the only such examples from the professionals that appeared in public during this time came to the in the form of research outside the federal government explaining why the lab leak theory retained varying degrees of plausibility. 

As I’ve previously written, I’m fine with “following the science” when dealing with crises like the pandemic – though not with leaving policy decisions with far-reaching and gigantic ramifications outside science to this particular group of specialists.  But if “the science,” or at least the current group of government officials and advisers, wants continued major input, a much better job will need to be done in carrying out what should a priority responsibility – recognizing and encouraging legitimate scientific debates.  That is, they’ll need to “follow the science” and the actual evidence themselves, instead of simply parroting conventional wisdoms and especially narratives whose origins require thorough investigations themselves.        

Im-Politic: Why Fauci’s China Blind Spot Really Matters

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, gain-of-function research, Im-Politic, lab leak, National Institutes of Health, national security, research, totalitarianism, virologists, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Wuhan virus

Looking at some of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s recent related comments about the renewed controversy over the CCP Virus’ origins and U.S.-China scientific cooperation, it’s easy to conclude that, when it comes to anything other than the science of infectious diseases, the anti-virus point man in this administration and its predecessor is pathetically naive. Easy and misleading – and above all, useless in terms of the imperative of reducing the odds that such deadly pandemics break out again.

Only a little less distracting are charges that Fauci and his boss, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dr. Francis Collins, have downplayed evidence that the virus escaped from a Chinese virology lab because they approved federal funding for research there. In this view, they’re trying to cover up having sent taxpayer dollars to a facility that either manufactured the virus or was operated carelessly enough practically to guarantee a leak.

Of course, if the two are covering up, they should be fired and investigated criminally (e.g., for violating federal guidelines governing the financing of such research, or for lying to Congress, or both).

But the most serious problem raised by actions we know about for sure is that they’re both scientists. Undoubtedly, they and their colleagues in these fields have invaluable contributions to make to help the country’s policymakers make the biggest calls when science-based problems threaten major, multidimensional damage to the nation’s well-being. Yet they’re utterly unqualified to make such calls, which entail major considerations outside their discipline, themselves. And this point applies these days particularly to Fauci, who has practically blanketed the new media since the virus’ potential to hit the United States became clear, and whose pronouncements on responses that have inevitably and profoundly impacted every corner of American life have been widely viewed as gospel – including by President Biden.

In this case, the reason is that one of the biggest features of this profession’s culture – the overriding value it places on knowledge sharing and collaboration – can be downright dangerous when scientists have to deal with the outside world, which of course contains ruthless and dangerous regimes like China’s. This powerful collaborative ethos – which is unquestionably has fostered much and even most vital scientific and technological progress, and which surely will continue to do so – in turn sheds light on a subject I wrote about at the end of last month: why Fauci and colleagues have acted so thoroughly oblivious to, and sometimes positively obtuse about, the risks of cooperating with China.

Both the naivete and corruption charges have been fueled by Fauci statements like the following:

>his February, 2020 contention that “early on in the outbreak it was clear that there was some muddling of information, but over the last several weeks, the Chinese authorities have really been very explicit that they were not going to tolerate any misinformation going out because it really was clear that no one was believing them, and they’re really very sensitive to that right now” and

>his June 3 claim that “It’s obviously in China’s interests to find out exactly what it is. And the ‘is’ of the natural theory would be to find that link. So you have to keep looking for it.”

Not helpful either: remarks like “The idea, I think, is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves, as well as other people. I think that’s a bit far out” – which on top of being an obvious absurdity, ignores the possibility that the virus was being stored in a naturally occuring form at one of the facilities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and leaked out because of shoddy safety practices.

In addition, given that he’s the (very) long-time head of the U.S. agency within the NIH that specializes in infectious diseases like coronaviruses, Fauci seems surprisingly ill-informed about conditions at the WIV. Last week in another interview, he called it “a very well known, highly qualified laboratory.”

Yet as early as January, 2018, State Department officials reported after an inspection tour that the Institute’s single supposedly world-class lab was plagued with safety issues. And the WIV’s top bat coronavirus expert (and a Fauci grant recipient) admitted shortly after the pandemic’s outbreak that she performed much of her most dangerous research – the gain-of-function work that seeks to heighten natural virus’ most dangerous qualities to assess their potential to infect humans – at WIV facilities which maintained considerably lower fewer safety standards.

Further, Fauci seems to have been curiously unaware that China’s military was closely involved with the WIV’s work, or that in China, the military is entitled to learn the results of any research performed by officially civilian scientists. In the second above-linked June interview, he took great pains to argue there’s a bright line between the two sectors – even after hearing that the U.S. armed forces’ top official declared these categories to be distinctions without differences.

But the recent Vanity Fair investigation linked above reports that “U.S. government virologists” themselves had found an April, 2020 WIV study in which eleven of the 23 listed authors worked for the Chinese military’s medical research institute. In addition, by that time, U.S. National Security Council officials had “tracked collaborations between the WIV and military scientists—which stretch back 20 years, with 51 coauthored papers.” Author Katherine Eban also writes that by mid-January, 2020, “a team of military scientists led by China’s top virologist and biochemical expert, Major General Chen Wei, had set up operations inside the WIV.” And as I documented in my post late last month, President Biden’s own chief national security adviser publicly confirmed this relationship in February. 

None of this necessarily means that the WIV was trying to create a coronavirus-based bio-weapon, as some have suggested. But all of it underscores Beijing’s policy of treating everything produced or discovered by Chinese entities, and especially of course by any formal Chinese government agencies, as resources that must be put at the disposal of the leadership to be used in any way it sees fit.

And then of course there’s Fauci’s jumble of inconsistent statements, including under oath to Congressional committees, about whether any of his agency’s grants to the WIV were spent on gain-of- function research, on how much realistically could have known about how the monies were spent once they were out the door, and whether he tried to evade government restrictions (although not an outright ban) on supporting such experiments. (See my post last month for examples.) 

Look more carefully at Fauci’s recent remarks, however, and you’ll find evidence of beliefs that more convincingly represent his ultimate bottom line, and whose fatal flaws must be recognized if Washington is to prepare for future pandemics more effectively. Having lived all his professional life in the collaborative culture of science, Fauci has become incapable of admitting first, that fellow scientists can be untrustworthy and even nefarious if they come from untrustworthy, nefarious governments; and second, that even those governments themselves need to treated with extreme caution.

Indeed, as with so many in his profession, Fauci has become infatuated enough by the promise of unfettered international scientific cooperation to mistakes the ideal as the reality – or as a reality eminently and imminently attainable if not for paranoid or shortsighted laymen. Nothing, therefore, is more instinctive to him than taking for granted the good will and sense of global responsibility of the Chinese government, or insisting that its totalitarian rulers – whose obsession with controlling every significant aspect of their people’s lives must be apparent to any thinking person – leave their scientists free to pursue the truth whatever the political or geopolitical consequences.

Why else, for example, would he tell Fox News talker Laura Ingraham (in the above-linked February, 2020 appearance on her show), that his Chinese counterparts are credible on the virus’ origins and biology because

“there’s Chinese officials, party people, and there’s Chinese scientists. The Chinese scientists we’ve dealt with, I’ve dealt with myself personally for years, if not decades, many of them have trained here in the United States – now, today, when we communicate with them, which we do almost on a daily basis – I’m gonna be on a conference call tomorrow with a couple of them – I have faith that they are not distorting things. Now what the party leaders do, I can’t address. That’s not what I do. But at a medical-to-medical level, I can believe my colleagues there, and what they’re telling me now, I think, is the truth.”

Why else would he add that

“I cannot say that I am satisfied with every single bit of information [coming from China about the virus’ trajectory and origin]. But I can tell you in my direct interaction with Chinese scientists and Chinese health officials, not party politics people, but medical people and scientists, that I can believe what they’re telling me”?

Why else would he make virtually the same point in one of those June, 2021 interviews:

“The scientists in the Wuhan lab for years and years among credible, trusted scientists in China – we’re not talking about the Communist Chinese Party. We’re not talking about the Chinese military. We’re talking about scientists we’ve had relationships for years.”?

In the same session, a related characteristic of the scientist caste came through loud and clear as well: Its clubiness. In a detailed look at the virus origin debate last month former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade observed that:

“Virologists around the world are a loose-knit professional community. They write articles in the same journals. They attend the same conferences. They have common interests in seeking funds from governments and in not being overburdened with safety regulations.”

He emphasizes the latter point and the disaster it might have created:

“Virologists knew better than anyone the dangers of gain-of-function research. But the power to create new viruses, and the research funding obtainable by doing so, was too tempting. They pushed ahead with gain-of-function experiments. They lobbied against the moratorium imposed on Federal funding for gain-of-function research in 2014 and it was raised in 2017.”

But the purely social ties of this community’s members matter also in assessing its judgment, and in his numerous interviews, Fauci makes clear not only their strength but their incestuousness. For when asked why he trusted his Chinese colleagues’ honesty and good faith, his consistent answer amounted to “Because I know them so well.”

There’s the above June interview statement that

“The scientists in the Wuhan lab for years and years….we’re not talking about the Communist Chinese Party. We’re not talking about the Chinese military. We’re talking about scientists we’ve had relationships for years.”

In addition,

:The Chinese scientists we’ve dealt with, I’ve dealt with myself personally for years, if not decades, many of them have trained here in the United States – now, today, when we communicate with them, which we do almost on a daily basis – I’m gonna be on a conference call tomorrow with a couple of them – I have faith that they are not distorting things.”

Moreover,

“[W]e have very many years of experience of productive interaction with Chinese scientists. For example, Dr. George Gao, who’s the director of the Chinese CDC [Centers for Disease Control], has been a colleague for many years. He’s a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences….”

In other words, “Trust us. We trained lots of them. And George Gao – we initiated him into the fraternity.”

In Laura Ingraham appearance, right after vouching for all the Chinese scientists he’s long known, added that “what the party leaders do, I can’t address. That’s not what I do.” And he’s absolutely right. It’s not his job to be an expert on the Chinese political system (though you’d think he might have learned a thing or two after all those decades dealing with the scienists).

But for precisely that reason, federal government scientists like him (and surely other subject-specific specialists) clearly need their international activities much more tightly supervised by political appointees directly representing an accountable to the administration in power, and that goes double for their interactions with China, which raise so many political, national security and, as the pandemic has made so clear, economic, social, and cultural questions.

It’s long been a cliché that war is too important to leave to the generals. The pandemic and Fauci’s record on scientific collaboration are unmistakably teaching the imperative of recognizing that America needs to be just as mindful that this activity is too important to leave to the scientists.