US-Funded Lab Helped Chinese Army's Bioterrorism Program

In the featured video, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson investigates the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and reviews the U.S.-China ties with regard to gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is a prominent figure in this scheme, having funded several research projects where the money was being funneled into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) via the EcoHealth Alliance, which subcontracted grant work to the WIV.

In October 2020, Dr. Peter Breggin published the report,¹ “Dr. Fauci’s COVID-19 Treachery,” detailing Fauci’s “chilling ties” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its military.

Breggin is convinced Fauci “has been the major force” behind research activities that enabled the CCP to manufacture lethal SARS coronaviruses, which in turn led to the release — whether accidental or not — of SARS-CoV-2 from the WIV.

He claims Fauci has helped the CCP obtain “valuable U.S. patents,” and that he, in collaboration with the CCP and the WHO, initially suppressed the truth about the origins and dangers of the pandemic, thereby enabling the spread of the virus around the world.

In the executive summary of the report, Breggin documents 15 questionable activities that Fauci has been engaged in, starting with the fact that he funded dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, both by individual Chinese researchers and the WIV in collaboration with American researchers. This research, Breggin says, allowed the CCP and its military to create bioweapons, including SARS-CoV-2.

He points out that the American-Chinese collaboration was initially detailed in a paper written by two Chinese researchers, Botao Xiao (trained at Northwestern University and Harvard Medical School) and Lei Xiao back in February 2020. According to Breggin, the CCP forced them to recant and the paper was withdrawn.

Government Sources Have Discussed Bioweapon Link

Breggin is not alone in his suspicions that U.S.-funded research ended up in a Chinese bioweapons program. As reported by journalist Josh Rogin in a March 30, 2021, Washington Post article:²

“Declassified U.S. intelligence, confirmed by [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken’s own State Department,³ alleges that the WIV was conducting undisclosed research on bat coronaviruses, had secret research projects with the Chinese military, and failed to disclose that several lab workers got sick with COVID-like symptoms in autumn 2019.”

David Asher, former lead investigator for a U.S. State Department task force that looked into the origins of COVID-19, has also gone on record saying⁴ the WIV “was operating a secret, classified program,” which he suspects “was a biological weapons program.” He believes SARS-CoV-2 was a weapon vector that, during development, “somehow leaked.”

Most recently, an April 25, 2021, article by Ian Birrell published in the British Daily Mail⁵ reported there are “worrying new clues” suggesting “scientists at Wuhan lab helped [the] Chinese army in secret project to find animal viruses.”

Nationwide Project: Identify New Human Pathogens

According to documents obtained by the Daily Mail,⁶ China launched “a nationwide scheme … to discover new viruses and detect the 'dark matter' of biology involved in spreading diseases” in 2012. The project was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Two of the five team leaders listed on various documents are WIV virologist Shi Zhengli and Colonel Cao Wuchun, a government adviser on bioterrorism.

“The fact that such a virus-detection project is led by both civilian and military scientists appears to confirm incendiary claims from the United States alleging collaboration between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the country's 2.1 million-strong armed forces,” Birrell writes.

“Prof. Shi denied the U.S. allegations last month, saying: 'I don't know of any military work at the WIV. That info is incorrect.' Yet Colonel Cao is listed on project reports as a researcher from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences of the People's Liberation Army, works closely with other military scientists and is director of the Military Biosafety Expert Committee.

Cao, an epidemiologist who studied at Cambridge University, even sits on the Wuhan Institute of Virology's advisory board. He was second-in-command of the military team sent into the city under Major General Chen Wei, the country's top biodefence expert, to respond to the new virus and develop a vaccine …

In recent years, China's military has ramped up its hiring of scientists after President Xi Jinping said this was a key element in the nation's march for global supremacy.

Lianchao Han, a dissident who used to work for the Chinese government, said Cao's involvement raised suspicions that military researchers who are experts in coronaviruses might also be involved in bio-defense operations.”

According to Birrell,⁷ the documents in question refer to a large-scale project called “The discovery of animal-delivered pathogens carried by wild animals,” the purpose of which was to identify pathogens capable of infecting humans and study their evolution.

Interestingly, the project leader, Chinese diplomat Xu Jianguo, was the one who initially denied that SARS-CoV-2 could spread from person to person, and in mid-January 2020 insisted that the epidemic was “limited” and expected to be short-lived. Both statements turned out to be incorrect.

Was SARS-CoV-2 One of the Many New Pathogens Found?

According to Birrell, a project update issued in 2018 noted that the scientific teams had thus far identified four new pathogens, 10 new bacteria and more than 1,640 new viruses by using metagenomics technology in which genetic material is extracted from samples.

One such sample was collected by Shi from a copper mine back in 2013, after six miners who worked there had fallen ill with a mysterious respiratory infection the year before. The illness had marked similarities to COVID-19. The virus found in samples from the miners and bat feces from the mine itself was dubbed btCoV-4991, and its discovery was published in 2016.⁸

Shi published her discovery of RaTG13, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 (being 96% identical to it) in February 2020. But as reported in “The Search for SARS-CoV-2’s Origin Must Continue,” it has since emerged that RaTG13 was actually btCoV-4991. Shi simply renamed it, thereby obscuring its origin and previous history of causing COVID-like illness. Why?

Curiously, the WIV database of virus samples was also taken offline in September 2019 — the month before three WIV workers who worked with the RatG13 coronavirus fell ill with symptoms of COVID-19. According to Asher,⁹ these workers may actually have been the very first cluster of COVID-19 cases, although Chinese authorities have vehemently denied that any workers were sickened around that time.

Manmade Bioweapons Are a Most Serious Threat

We need to determine whether SARS-CoV-2 was a lab creation — not for the purpose of casting blame or causing geopolitical strife, but rather because the world needs to recognize just how serious gain-of-function research can be. If the virus turns out to be a laboratory creation, the answer would not be to demand reparations from the parties involved, but to ban this kind of research around the globe.

Not surprisingly, Gates-funded NPR¹⁰ and other Western media are issuing timely propaganda to prop up the importance of collecting, analyzing and experimenting with animal viruses, insisting that it’s crucial for predicting and preventing the next pandemic.

As the name implies, gain-of-function research is aimed at creating more virulent strains of pathogens by giving them new functionalities. The justification for this hazardous work is that viruses mutate naturally, and we need to be prepared for the kinds of mutations that might arise.

Yet in all the years this kind of research has been underway, not a single pandemic has been accurately predicted or properly prepared for, let alone averted. Several outbreaks have been created, however.¹¹ Biosafety incidents involving dangerous pathogens occur twice a week, on average, in the U.S. alone,^12,13 and virology labs accidentally released the original SARS virus on four separate occasions.^14,15

Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists¹⁶ in 2012, Lynn Klotz warned that, based on the number of laboratories handling virulent pathogens, there was an 80% chance that a leak of a pathogen with pandemic potential would occur within the next 12 years. Was COVID-19 the latest in a chain of manmade outbreaks?

As reported by the National Review¹⁷ in July 2020, American State Department officials who visited the WIV in 2018 wrote two separate memos — one in January and one in April — detailing safety concerns. This included “a shortage of the highly-trained technicians and investigators required to safely operate a [Biosafety Level] 4 laboratory and lack of clarity in related Chinese government policies and guidelines.”

And, as detailed in “New Engineered Coronaviruses Are Under Development” and “Bioweapons Labs Get More NIH Funding for Deadly Research,” scientists are now tinkering around with SARS-CoV-2, trying to see if it can be turned into an even more pathogenic version.

Gain-of-Function Research Poses Too Great a Risk to Continue

The same establishment that is drumming up panic by warning of the emergence of new, more infectious and dangerous variants are also busy creating them. They just never tell you about that part. Already, scientists have figured out a way to mutate SARS-CoV-2 such that it evades human antibodies. Were this mutated virus to ever get out, we’d be in quite a pickle.

Of course, the justification is that if it can be created in the lab, it might be created in nature, which is what we need to be prepared for. But again, history tells a different story. We seem to be creating our own outbreaks, while nature has a way of not mutating viruses into global killers.

This hypocrisy needs to end. World leaders need to realize that funding and defending gain-of-function research is the real threat here. If it’s true that SARS-CoV-2 was the product of a Chinese bioweapons program, the lesson ought to be crystal clear: You cannot control or assure containment of biological weapons.

You cannot control who they affect. Your own population is as at-risk as the designated enemy. And in truth, all pathogens manufactured to affect humans can be designated as biological weapons, whether the intent behind their creation is nefarious or not.