The Chimera of Arezzo, an Etruscan bronze. Thanks to Wikipedia
Chimera (genetics)
Another way that chimerism can occur in animals is by organ transplantation, giving one individual tissues that developed from a different genome. For example, transplantation of bone marrow often determines the recipient's ensuing blood type.[citation needed]
Wuhan lab origin July 17, 2021
Bio-weapon
One early source of the bio-weapon origin theory was former Israeli secret service officer Dany Shoham, who gave an interview to The Washington Times about the biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.[52][53] One scientist from Hong Kong, Li-Meng Yan, fled China and released a preprint stating the virus was modified in a lab rather than having a natural evolution. In an ad hoc peer-review (the paper was not submitted for traditional peer review as part of the standard scientific publishing process), her claims were labelled as misleading, not scientific, and an unethical promotion of "essentially conspiracy theories that are not founded in fact."[54] Yan's paper was funded by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, two non-profits linked to Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist, and Guo Wengui, an expatriate Chinese billionaire.[55] This misinformation was further seized on by the American far-right, who have been known to promote distrust of China. In effect, this formed "a fast-growing echo chamber for misinformation."[35] The idea of SARS-CoV-2 as a lab-engineered weapon is an element of the Plandemic conspiracy theory, which proposes that it was deliberately released by China.[51]
In response to the propagation of theories in the US of a Wuhan lab origin, the Chinese government promulgated the conspiracy theory that the virus was developed by the United States army at Fort Detrick.[56]
Dr. Li-Meng Yan may have been wrong; however, her claims were rejected by Western media because they President Trump supported them. Thus she was attacked "as misleading, not scientific, and an unethical"
The problem, for Wikipedia, is that once again they cry conspiracy theory even though the lab leak hypothesis does not have to involve any conspiracy whatsoever. All it takes is for one nice scientist to make a little boo-boo, and off goes the world.
Unseemly, is the passion of Wikieditors and of established science. It leads them to become unconcerned about facts, and to concentrate on party affiliation instead. In a discussion of accusations of responsibility about a catastrophic event, the winning argument is that whether a scientist has "American far-right" connections. In the search for the truth, the relations of people who propose a hypothesis is irrelevant.
Some facts remain: dangerous reckless research was authorised by some important people, and Wikieditors have a bad habit: anyone who presents an unpleasant hypothesis is called conspiracy theorist.
I agree that claiming that the virus was "intentionally released by China" is absurd. Why release the virus in China? Why not block it in Wuhan, immediately? Why allow it to spread throughout China? Was China suicidal? However, even evidence provided by a friend of Steve Bannon should be given fair hearing.
Gain-of-function research
A 2017 study of chimeric bat coronaviruses at the WIV listed NIH as a sponsor; however, NIH funding was only related to sample collection. Based on this and other evidence, The Washington Post rated the claim of an NIH connection to gain-of-function research on coronaviruses as "two pinocchios", representing "significant omissions and/or exaggerations".[62][61]
One idea used to support a laboratory origin invokes previous gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Virologist Angela Rasmussen writes that this is unlikely, due to the intense scrutiny and government oversight gain-of-function research is subject to, and that it is improbable that research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses could occur under the radar.[57] The exact meaning of "gain of function" is disputed among experts.[58][59]
It is unseemly for Wikieditors to suggest that the U.S. government was not involved in gain-of-function research because all we did was collect samples and then stepped aside while others did the experimenting.
It is unseemly for Wikieditors to present Jeff Bezos' Pinoccchios as evidence.
It is unseemly to claim that the "exact meaning of "gain of function" is disputed among experts," just as it is unseemly to claim that the exact meaning of the word "is" is disputed among experts.
In 2014 an H1N1 flu virus was created using genes similar to those from the 1918 pandemic strain, to show how such a dangerous flu could emerge. The engineered H1N1 was transmissible amongst mammals and more harmful than the natural strain--which killed at least 50 million people at the end of WWI. Doing this kind of research is exciting, and allows a biologist to feel as if he was working on the Manhattan Project, in WW2.
THE INTERNATIONAL BAT CORONAVIRUS RESEARCH PROJECT
After a series of lab accidents at the CDC, in 2014, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy stopped funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible, called "gain-of-function" research. In December 2017 the funding prohibition was voided.
One such project involved an international team including scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology in Zurich, Harvard Medical School, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Their research, published in 2015, regarded the modification of bat coronavirus to allow it to infect human cells. They engineered a chimeric virus combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus successfully infected human cells.
The event was discussed on Nature Medicine in November 2015. "Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. .. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. .. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations...if SHC014 spike–containing viruses recombined with virulent CoV backbones (circles with green outlines), then epidemic disease may be the result in humans... further testing in nonhuman primates is required to translate these finding into pathogenic potential in humans." https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
A smart conclusion would have been to agree to leave bats alone and to finance the hiring of Asian trappers as forest guards, banning the sale of bush meat in Asia and Africa. Instead, the scientists proposed infecting primates, thus increasing virus escape opportunities, to find possible cures for a new virus.
Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
20 November 2015. In the version of this article initially published online, the authors omitted to acknowledge a funding source, USAID-EPT-PREDICT funding from EcoHealth Alliance, to Z.-L.S.Study and cataloguing of bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology continued, and was funded again by NIH in 2019. It was canceled on April 24, 2020, when The Wuhan Institute of Virology became the target of opportunity, as Western nations attempt to pass onto China, the blame of their own COVID-19 mismanagement and total inability to control it, while East Asia had eradicate the virus on their territory. https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
In May 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Anthony Fauci of having "funded the creation of COVID" through gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).[58] Citing an essay by science writer Nicholas Wade, Carlson alleged that Fauci had directed research to make bat viruses more infectious to humans.[60] In a hearing the next day, US senator Rand Paul alleged that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, accusing researchers including epidemiologist Ralph Baric of creating "super-viruses".[58][61] Both Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins have denied that the US government supported such research.[58][59][60] Baric likewise rejected Paul's allegations, saying his lab's research into cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses did not qualify as gain-of-function.[61]
Accidental release of collected sample
Another theory suggests the virus arose in humans from an accidental infection of laboratory workers by a natural sample.[63] Misinformation and confusion about the weight of evidence and likelihood of this scenario has been widespread.[28]
In March 2021, an investigatory report released by the WHO described this scenario as "extremely unlikely" and not supported by any available evidence.[64] The report acknowledged, however, that the possibility cannot be ruled out without further evidence.[63] The investigation behind this report operated as a joint collaboration between Chinese and international scientists.[65][66] At the release briefing for the report, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated the report's calls for a deeper probe into all evaluated possibilities, including the laboratory origin scenario.[67] The study and report were criticised by heads of state from the US, the EU, and other WHO member countries for a lack of transparency and incomplete access to data.[68][69][70] Further investigations have also been requested by some scientists, including Anthony Fauci and signatories of a letter published in Science.[71]
Since May 2021, some media organizations softened previous language that described the laboratory leak theory as "debunked" or a "conspiracy theory."[72] On the other hand, scientific opinion that an accidental leak is possible, but unlikely, has remained steady.[73][27] A number of journalists and scientists have said that they dismissed or avoided discussing the lab leak theory during the first year of the pandemic as a result of perceived polarization resulting from Donald Trump's embrace of the theory.[72][36][74][75]
ARGUMENTS AGAINST GAIN-OF-FUNCTION RESEARCH
<<Simon Wain-Hobson, virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, pointed out that the researchers created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says. Wain-Hobson disapproves of the study because, he says, it provides little benefit, and reveals little about the risk that the wild SHC014 virus in bats poses to humans.
“The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,” agrees Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University.>> https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787
ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF GAIN-OF-FUNCTION RESEARCH
Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIAID, on December 30, 2011, explained, in a letter to The Washington Post, that "determining the molecular Achilles' heel of these viruses can allow scientists to identify novel antiviral drug targets that could be used to prevent infection in those at risk or to better treat those who become infected."
In 2020, NIH explained that "most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic.... scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory." https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741
Dr. Ralph Baric, infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Nature that <<without the experiments, the SHC014 virus would still be seen as not a threat. Previously, scientists had believed... that it should not be able to infect human cells. The latest work shows that the virus has already overcome critical barriers, such as being able to latch onto human receptors and efficiently infect human airway cells. Dr. Baric added, “I don't think you can ignore that.” >> https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-riskyresearch-1.18787
Regrettably, they did ignore that, and they will certainly persist ignoring it.
JUST TO KEEP EBOLA AWAY, MIGHT BE SMART TO END ANIMAL TORTURE
Forest viruses are imported into populated areas by bushmeat traders, who hunt wildlife like gorillas. It is believed that this is the way that Ebola came to us. In North America we love venison. However, it is illegal to sell wild dear meat, so deer are plentiful.
In most Western countries, to capture a deer and to torment it to death would not be cool, we only torture to death wild fur-bearing animals and domestic animals. In Asia, instead, tormenting wild animals is still cool, and it may have brought Covid-19 to us.
In Africa, hunters become traders in "bush meat," and the gorillas are disappearing. Next, they might bring another virus as deadly as Ebola, but spread by airborne droplets, like COVID-19.
A solution to the problem of emerging viruses is readily available to us: financing conservation and turning hunters into forest guardians. That would give the West much more security than all those F35's.
A corollary solution, most unlikely to be adopted, would be a ban on torture at factory farms, a reform to be started here at home. Animals are born and are fattened in factory farms; they live under torturous conditions in cramped spaces, requiring massive use of antibiotics--which create antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
In such factory farms, diseases like swine flu develop. For example, in the state of Vera Cruz in Mexico, the swine flu that killed more than 100 people, appears to have begun in the vicinity of a Smithfield subsidiary pig factory. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mexican-lawmaker-factory_b_191579?
Of course, to shut down factory farms is unthinkable, just as it is unthinkable to outlaw any of our destructive insane activities, such as nuclear weapons, or anti-personnel mines, or payday loans.