Once known as a hawkish foreign policy think tank, the Center for Security Policy is perhaps now more of a right-wing biased organization. While we at TrialSite harshly disown any bias—from right to left—and take care to ensure a balanced point of view–we could not ignore the Center’s August 2021 article, “NIH Funded China’s Gain-of-Function Research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” by Gordon G. Chang. Given that the facts presented are well-footnoted, this may be a case where an important message comes from an otherwise questionable source. As has been well shown, the Obama administration ordered a moratorium on gain-of-function research in 2014. Also well documented is that Dr. Fauci’s NIAID provided funds to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance which studied infectious diseases. In turn, EcoHealth transferred some of these funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the end of the moratorium. Papers published by researchers at Wuhan, “make clear that the researchers were using NIAID funds for research that can be described as ‘gain-of-function.’” Chang’s article focuses on two of these papers.
Gain-of-Function Work Put on Pause
Based on the two papers, Chang argues that Fauci knew or should have known that his agency’s grant money was being used for dangerous research that in fact met the definition of the prohibited work. So, his testimony in both May and July before the US Senate’s committee was not true. Gain-of-function research involves changing a pathogen to make it more contagious or more deadly. While this can be done in order to advance treatments, it is inherently a dual-use activity as it lies, “at the heart of biological weapons programs.” Back in 2011, US scientists had altered the genes of the H5N1 “bird flu” so it would spread between ferrets, and a controversy ensued. Many researchers urged a ban. On October 17, 2014, DHHS and the Office of Science and Technology Policy issued, “U.S. Government Gain-of-Function Deliberative Process and Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses.” The document ended federal money for “for gain-of-function research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.”
Reverse Genetics and Humanized Mice
The 2014 directive also called for both federally-funded and other researchers to follow a “voluntary pause” on research. Then, in 2017 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a “Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight;” On his way out of office, President Obama had lifted the moratorium. Back in 2014, NIH announced a five-year grant to EcoHealth. The Fauci-led NIAID was listed as the administrator of the grant, entitled, “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” The award was for a total of $3.75 million with $666,442 funded for the 2014 fiscal year. The award documents note that the researchers would look at, “the risk of future coronavirus (CoV) emergence from wildlife using in-depth field investigations across the human-wildlife interface in China.” The paperwork also noted, “Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus, and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.” This grant was made five months before the alleged “pause,” and, “NIH continued to fund it, and EcoHealth Alliance transferred to the Wuhan institute $133,000 per year through 2019,” and also $66,000 in 2020.
Bat Woman and the ORFX Gene
Peter Daszak, the British zoologist who is EcoHealth’s president, “did not hide the dangerous nature of his work in Wuhan.” In February 2016 he publicly noted that his, “colleagues in China” were creating “killer” viruses. Two papers that Daszak co-authored offer key insights. The first one, “Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus WIV1 Encodes an Extra Accessory Protein, ORFX, Involved in Modulation of the Host Immune Response.” One co-author was Shi Zhengli, who is known as the “Bat Woman” of the WIV. The paper was based on work done at Wuhan and looked at the creation of new types of WIV1 virus along with testing in human cells. Using complex reverse genetics and bacteria-based man-made chromosome methods to make, “recombinant SARS-like CoVs.” Some would call the work, “loss-of-function” since it involved the deletion of the ORFX gene. Yet, “the deletion of a gene or genes does not necessarily lead to the loss or diminution of the function of a virus. On the contrary, gene deletion can end up increasing function.” As an example, H5N1 was seen to be enhanced by a 15-nucleotide deletion. The Wuhan researchers could not know which functions in the rWIV1-DeltaX virus might be strengthened. The MIT Technology Review noted that two of the newly created chimeras, “replicated well in human cells [and] were, for all intents and purposes, brand-new pathogens.”
“Sampling and Lab Capacity” Only
The publishing of this paper in 2016, with Shi Zhengli’s name attached, in the Journal of Virology, “guaranteed wide attention in the scientific community.” So we need to be wary of various denials of NIAID funding, such as NIH’s statement that, “NIH has never approved any grant to support ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans—-The research proposed in the EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. grant application sought to understand how bat coronaviruses evolve naturally in the environment to become transmissible to the human population.” So, NIH must have known that its, “money was used for” dangerous research. Clearly, the research did create two brand-new pathogens, “the essence of gain of function.” EcoHealth’s spokesman Robert Kessley has told the Washington Post that, “The NIH has not funded gain-of-function work—-EcoHealth Alliance was funded by the NIH to conduct a study of coronavirus diversity in China. From that award, we subcontracted work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help with sampling and lab capacity.” But with Daszak listed as an author, obviously NIH money did not only go to, “sampling and lab capacity.”
“Chimeric Viruses Based on a Bat Virus”
The second paper that is significant is “Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS-Related Coronaviruses Provides New Insights into the Origin of SARS Coronavirus,” by authors Ben Hu, Lei-Ping Zeng, Xing-Lou Yang, et al. in 2017. It was this paper that led Senator Rand Paul to cite a Rutgers University molecular biologist to the effect that the “research matches, indeed epitomizes the definition of gain-of-function research.” This paper also lists NIH as a funder and has the project number from the May 2014 funding of EcoHealth with a note, “NIAID.” 14 of 17 co-authors are listed as tied to the WIV, and once again Daszak is a co-author. While not describing standard gain-of-function work, this research paper shows evidence of dangerous gene-splicing. Dr. Li-Meng Yan has said that Dr. Shi’s team, “made chimeric viruses based on a bat virus, WIV1.” Shi had moved spike proteins from various novel bat viruses to WIV1, and the created viruses were able to bind to human ACE2 receptors. Yan who is a Chinese virologist living in the US who studies coronaviruses notes, “This shows that WIV1, as engineered, can potentially infect humans.” And Yan argues that creating new viruses is just as dangerous as gain-of-function work.
China’s Top Biowarfare Expert
The Washington Post’s fact-checker has said, “the EcoHealth funding was not related to the experiments, but the collection of samples.” This statement from an important newspaper cannot readily be squared with the May 2014 grant terms and the two papers under discussion. Another key issue is the People’s Liberation Army. Dr. Yan had fled Hong Kong in 2020 to reveal information about China’s coronavirus experimentation, and he asserts that the bat virus samples collected by Shi and her experiments advanced Chinese bio-weapon efforts, regardless of whether it involved a technical gain-of-function. According to Chang, “Chinese military researchers for at least a decade have published numerous articles and books describing the bioweapons China needs and will use.” Also, China has a notion of civil-military fusion, “meaning the military has access to, among other things, any technology it wants.” Major General Chen Wei’s job of heading the BSL-4 unit at WIV is also disturbing, as she is “China’s top biowarfare expert,” according to Foreign Policy magazine. Author Chang asks, why would she be at WIV if it was not, among other things, a practical bio-weapon laboratory?
Who is Author Gordon G. Chang?
According to his website, Chang is the author of The Great U.S.-China Tech War and Losing South Korea. His other books are Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World and The Coming Collapse of China, both published by Random House. In Hong Kong, he was a partner at the Baker & McKenzie law firm. His work has been in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Conservative, Commentary, National Review, Barron’s, and The Daily Beast. He is also a columnist for Newsweek. He has provided briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Pentagon. Chang has also testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.