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Bioscience Resource Project News and Views
Delete, Deny, and Destroy: Chinese and Western Strategies To Erase COVID’s Origin Are Being Exposed By Independent Research
Published Thursday, April 21st, 2022 in Independent Science News: Delete, Deny, and Destroy: Chinese and Western Strategies To Erase COVID’s Origin Are Being Exposed By Independent Research by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD.
Synopsis: On Feb 25th this year, George Gao, head of China’s CDC, published a scientific preprint co-authored with 38 other Chinese virologists (Gao et al., 2022). Using previously unpublished evidence, this preprint concluded that the Huanan market in Wuhan played no role at all in the appearance of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019. These authors then implied that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 was not even in China. Within hours, two other preprints appeared. The authors of these included many prominent Western virologists but none from China (Worobey et al., 2022 and Pekar et al., 2022). The two ‘Western’ preprints assessed the Huanan market evidence (though without including the new Gao et al. data) and concluded the exact opposite–that the COVID-19 pandemic began in late 2019 with multiple zoonotic spillovers at the market in Wuhan. This latter interpretation was widely covered by the Western media as discrediting the lab leak possibility.
Neither of these viewpoints is an objective scientific analysis of the relevant data, however. Rather, they reflect an emerging scientific struggle. It is between Western-affiliated scientists on one side and their Chinese counterparts on the other. Each side is trying to twist the COVID-19 origin story to fit their local political needs, which are really those of their respective government funders and other backers. What the combatant camps did not anticipate, however, was the appearance of an innovative and much superior methodology for the genetic dissection of COVID-19 origins, along with researchers willing to use it. Consequently, the data manipulations and stratagems of both sides–the Gao establishment in China and the Western virologists ginning up a market zoonosis–are being revealed for what they are.
Read full article at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/delete-deny-and-destroy-chinese-and-western-strategies-to-erase-covids-origin-are-being-exposed-by-independent-research/
The Mojiang Miners Passage Theory and The Lab Origin Question
Phylogeographic Mapping of Newly Discovered Coronaviruses Pinpoints the Direct Progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 as Originating from Mojiang, China
Published on Monday 2nd August 2021 in Independent Science News: “Phylogeographic Mapping of Newly Discovered Coronaviruses Pinpoints the Direct Progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 as Originating from Mojiang, China“, by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD.
Synopsis: Many scientists are now openly considering whether a lab leak best explains the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Yet it is frequently also suggested in the media that the data ‘hasn’t changed’, only people’s opinions. This is far from the truth. One data set that has grown substantively since the pandemic broke out is the number of wild virus relatives of SARS-CoV-2 that have been identified and sequenced. In all, twelve isolates have now been described, ten obtained from bats and two from pangolins. All 12 isolates were found in Asia. These viruses constitute what we know of the SARS-CoV-2 reservoir population in its bat hosts. For most of these viruses, both their sampling location and their genetic similarity to SARS-CoV-2 are known. We therefore conducted a phylogeographic analysis of these viruses. It revealed that the SARS-CoV-2-related viruses form a coherent group, with a geographically ordered genetic structure. Because of this geographic ordering, the location from which human SARS-CoV-2 originated, i.e. the locality where its direct ancestor jumped from the bat reservoir, could be identified with high confidence. Using two different approaches, which gave the same result, this location was determined to be a comparatively small region of south-central Yunnan, China.
Positively locating the jump from bats represents an advance with major implications for understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2. While a south-central Yunnan source does not rule out either a lab or a zoonotic origin in principle, the result compels all candidate hypotheses to incorporate a plausible link with that locality. Indeed, some well-known origin theories are clearly not compatible with this finding. They therefore appear to be non-viable. Perhaps even more importantly, a south-central Yunnan origin is a highly suggestive finding because at the centre of that region is the Mojiang mine. This mine has been the focus of most lab origin theories, in particular, the Mojiang Miners Passage theory, which posits that SARS-CoV-2 derives from tissue samples taken from miners who were infected in a novel coronavirus outbreak in 2012. This theory specifically predicts that Mojiang in south-central Yunnan was the site where the jump from bats occurred. For these reasons, this new analysis should transform the origins debate about COVID-19.
Read the full article at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/phylogeographic-mapping-of-newly-discovered-coronaviruses-pinpoints-direct-progenitor-of-sars-cov-2-as-originating-from-mojiang/
By Investigating Itself the US Can Answer Many Of The Key COVID19 Origin Questions
A Chinese PhD Thesis Sheds Important New Light On The Origin of the COVID-19 Coronavirus
Published on Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 by Independent Science News: “A Chinese PhD Thesis Sheds Important New Light On The Origin of the COVID-19 Coronavirus,” written by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD
An Interview with Richard Ebright: The WHO Investigation Members Were “participants in disinformation”
Published Wednesday, March 24th, 2021 by Independent Science News, “An Interview with Richard Ebright: The WHO Investigation Members Were “participants in disinformation.” Interviewed by Jorge Casesmeiro Roger.
Synopsis: In this exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Prof. Richard Ebright, the long-time critic of risky pathogen research is asked about the merits of the WHO investigation, its personnel, and its forthcoming report. The interview also asks about Gain-of-Function (GoF) research and the surprising silence of the Cambridge Working Group. In the interview Dr. Ebright describes how US scientific leaders deliberately circumvented the GoF research pause placed on them. The directors of NIAID and NIH even stymied risk-benefit assessment of such research.
Read the full article at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/an-interview-with-richard-ebright-anthony-fauci-francis-collins-systematically-thwarted/