Madison Area Lyme Support Group

The same people who went out of their way to convince us that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through natural evolution in the wild were privately saying they were convinced it came from a lab.

Now, were SARS-CoV-2 to be publicly acknowledged to be a genetically engineered lab-escape, the obvious conclusion would be that we need to shut down much of the gain-of-function research that led to its creation. Needless to say, that would be a significant setback for the biosecurity agenda, which needs pandemics to justify the centralization of power and decision-making.

Zoonotic Transmission Is Not the Threat It’s Made Out To Be

The fact of the matter is, zoonotic transmission is extremely rare, and most if not all global pandemics with lethal outcomes can be traced back to lab experiments. As just one example, USA Today¹ recently reiterated the debunked claim that the 2013 Ebola outbreak in West Africa was caused by infected bush meat. (Another widely circulated hypothesis is that it emerged from infected bats.)

However, as detailed in “Turns Out, Ebola Likely Leaked From a Lab as Well,” there’s compelling evidence linking that outbreak to a U.S.-run research laboratory in Kenema, Sierra Leone. And, curiously, many of the same individuals, companies and organizations involved in the Ebola epidemic have also been linked to the alleged creation of SARS-CoV-2.

The idea that pathogens will jump species and kill humans is a useful scare tactic, however, and it’s now being pushed like never before under One Health — a global agenda that will allow unelected bureaucrats at the World Health Organization to centralize power and make decisions relating to diet, agriculture and livestock farming, environmental pollution, movement of populations, health care and much more, for the entire world.

Report Predicts Next Pandemic May Come From Meat

To that end, a report² from the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School and the Center for Environmental & Animal Protection at New York University now predicts that the next pandemic is likely to emerge from the U.S. meat supply — or the fur trade, or a petting zoo, or from pets.

It basically reviews all the different areas of life and commerce that involve animal and human contact, however brief or rare, and the subsequent hypothetical zoonotic transmission chains. Not surprisingly, One Health documents are repeatedly referenced in this report.

Overall, the One Health agenda calls for minimizing or eliminating certain animal-human contact, sterilizing areas where animals are kept or butchered, and/or increasing the use of antibiotics and vaccines in animals across the board. It also calls for massively increased biosurveillance and testing.

In contrast, the report in question primarily focuses on legislative and regulatory actions to curtail zoonotic disease, including the potential banning of certain animal practices that “present great risk but relatively little value, economic or otherwise.”

Will the warnings in this report be used to justify the transition to fake meat? It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. The fake meat industry wants you to believe that their cell-based lab-concoctions are the answer to today’s environmental woes, and that includes the threat of zoonotic disease transmission, as lab-grown meat is grown in highly hygienic and sterile (supposedly) conditions.³

Basically, the One Health narrative is that the natural environment poses countless risks to human health and must therefore be controlled. Meanwhile, it’s mankind’s efforts to control and replace nature in the first place that is causing most of the problems.

The ‘Proximal Origin’ Scandal

While the One Health narrative is that pandemics are caused by animals, there’s little doubt that the next pandemic will come from a lab, just like most previous pandemics, including COVID-19. Over the past several months, more and more evidence has emerged showing that the scientists who wrote “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”⁴ intentionally misled the public.

“Proximal Origin,” which became the most-cited paper (a Letter to the Editor mischaracterized everywhere as a serious scientific review), claimed SARS-CoV-2 emerged through natural evolution and spread via a wet market in Wuhan, China, and that there was no evidence to suggest genetic engineering or a lab origin.

Private communications, however, reveal they suspected the virus had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and had been genetically engineered to infect humans.

Mounting evidence also suggests this act of misdirection (to put it diplomatically) was done at the behest of Dr. Anthony Fauci (then-director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID), Dr. Francis Collins (then-director of the National Institutes of Health, NIH) and Sir. Jeremy Farrar (then-head of the Wellcome Trust).

As noted in a July 20, 2023, Public Substack article by independent journalists Alex Gutentag, Leighton Woodhouse and Michael Shellenberger:⁵

“The documents … show [Kristian] Andersen and his co-authors, Andrew Rambaut, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry, conspiring — by which we mean they made secret plans to engage in deceptive and unethical behavior and — to spread disinformation.

Their conspiracy included coordinating with their ‘higher-ups’ in the U.S. and UK governments to deceive journalists … We … today … release the full cache of Slack messages and emails covering the discussions between Andersen et al. as they wrote their influential ‘Proximal Origin’ paper, which Anthony Fauci and others in the U.S. government used to dismiss the lab leak hypothesis.”

While Fauci’s role in the creation of this paper has garnered the most attention, a more central culprit in this coverup may actually be Farrar — and he’s now the chief scientist for the WHO, a fact that hardly inspires confidence in the WHO’s future adherence to scientific truth and fact. The email exchange below between Andersen and Farrar (with other authors cc’d) suggests Farrar was a key decision-maker.

Proof of a Conspiracy

A 140-page PDF containing the “Proximal Origin” author’s Slack messages and a 163-page PDF of emails can be downloaded from the Public article,⁶ in which Gutentag, Woodhouse and Shellenberger go on to highlight some of the takeaways from this correspondence.

For starters, in “Proximal Origin,” the authors insisted natural evolution was the most likely scenario, but in private, they thought a lab leak was the most likely origin.

In “Proximal Origin” they claimed “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus” and that “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” Behind the scenes, however, Andersen wrote:

“I think the main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”

Andersen also stated that “The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory.” Farrar and the other authors expressed similar views:⁷

• February 2, 2020, Dr. Robert Garry wrote, “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario … I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature … Of course, in the lab it would be easy …”
• February 2, 2020, Dr. Michael Farzan wrote he was “bothered by the furin site” and had “a hard time explain[ing] that as an event outside the lab … I am 70:30 or 60:40 [lab].”
• February 2, 2020, Dr. Andrew Rambaut wrote, “From a (natural) evolutionary point of view the only thing here that strikes me as unusual is the furin cleavage site.”
• February 4, 2020, Dr. Edward Holmes indicated that he was “60-40 lab,” and Farrar wrote, “I am 50-50 [lab].”

Holmes also commented: “No way selection could occur in the market. Too low a density of mammals: just small groups of 3-4 in cases,” and Garry wrote:⁸

“Transmitting a bat virus-like RatG13 in HeLa cells and then asking your graduate student to insert a furin site … would get you there. It’s not crackpot to suggest this could have happened given the Gain of Function research we know is happening …

I’m thinking mostly about the PRRA to generate the furin site. Relatively easy to drop 12 bases in. The proline is the hang-up — why add that? Makes me think the cell culture passage scenario is possible/probably assuming this has in fact been observed before by Farzan and Fouchier.”

The following graphic, created by @RAEMKA1 and reposted by KanekoaTheGreat on Twitter summarizes the scientific consensus among the “Proximal Origin” authors:

Truth Took Backseat to Self-Preservation

Indeed, Andersen called Fauci February 1, 2020, specifically because he was concerned that the virus showed signs of being engineered. Immediately after that phone call, Fauci contacted Farrar and raised the possibility of taking the concern to the FBI in the U.S. and MI5 in the UK.

Instead, Farrar organized a conference call that led to the creation of “Proximal Origin.”⁹ From the emails, we know that the genetic engineering aspect of SARS-CoV-2 was discussed. However, concerns about harm to science apparently weighed heavier. After the call, Ron Fouchier wrote:¹⁰

“An accusation that nCoV-2019 might have been engineered and released into the environment by humans (accidental or intentional) would need to be supported by strong data, beyond reasonable doubt.

It is good that this possibility was discussed in detail with a team of experts. However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.”

In a February 9, 2020, email, Christian Drosten also confirmed that the group had been “convened to challenge a certain theory,” and if possible, “drop” or eliminate that theory (i.e., the lab leak theory) from the public and scientific conversation. As recently as the day before, February 8, Andersen had made a case for keeping the possibility of a lab leak open, stating:¹¹

“Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory, but we are at a crossroad where the scientific evidence isn’t conclusive enough to say that we have high confidence in any of the three main theories considered.”

Authors Never Believed in the Pangolin Theory

In “Proximal Origin,” the authors went on to blame pangolins as an intermediate host between bats and humans, but in private, they remained unconvinced. The conclusion in “Proximal Origin” reads:¹²

“The presence in pangolins of an RBD [receptor binding domain] very similar to that of SARS-CoV-2 means that we can infer this was also probably in the virus that jumped to humans.”

However, shortly before the “Proximal Origin” pre-print was published, Andersen wrote: “For all I know, people could have infected the pangolin, not the other way,” and the day after the pre-print, he commented: “Clearly none of these pangolin sequences was the source though.”

Authors Thought Lab Leak Was Likely Months After Publication

The authors also clearly thought a lab leak was possible months after publishing the “Proximal Origin” paper. In mid-April 2020, a month after the paper was officially published and two months after the preprint was posted, Andersen wrote to his coauthors:

“I’m still not fully convinced that no culture was involved … are we absolutely certain that no culture could have been involved? What concerns me here are some of the comments by Shi in the SciAm article (‘I had to check the lab’ etc) and the fact that the furin site is being messed with in vitro …

Finally, the paper that was shared with us showing a very similar phenomenon (exactly 12 bp insertion) in other CoV’s has me concerned … We also can’t fully rule out engineering (for basic research).”

In fact, the authors — like so many other independent scientists, researchers and journalists — suspected Shi Zhengli’s work at the WIV could have produced SARS-CoV-2. As reported by Public:¹³

“Andersen discussed some of her papers in early February and noted his concerns about gain-of-function experiments on MERS and SARS viruses. In mid-April he noted that Shi’s work was ‘the main reason I have been so concerned about the ‘culture’ scenario.’

Cell culturing is a method through which viruses can be passed multiple times through cells in order to render them more infectious and is exactly the kind of ‘laboratory-based scenario’ the authors ruled out in their paper.”

Conspiracy Driven by Obedience to Higher-Ups

Finally, the correspondence shows that the conspiracy to misdirect, if not outright deceive, the public was driven by obedience to higher-ups within the U.S. and UK governments, including Farrar, Fauci and Collins, but also, potentially, other unnamed individuals within various government agencies and/or the intelligence community.

While Andersen has publicly denied that Fauci had any involvement in the publication, in an email to the journal Nature, Andersen specified that the paper had been “prompted” by Fauci, Collins and Farrar.¹⁴ If you want to take a deeper dive into how the “Proximal Origin” paper was created, check out U.S. Right to Know’s timeline.¹⁵

Scientists Call for Retraction of ‘Proximal Origin’

Based on all the evidence now in the public domain showing that the authors of “Proximal Origin” did not believe their published conclusions, Biosafety Now! has launched a petition¹⁶ calling on Nature Medicine to retract the paper. As noted by Biosafety Now!:

“Email messages and direct messages via the messaging program Slack among authors of the paper obtained under FOIA or by the U.S. Congress and publicly released in full in July 2023 … show, incontrovertibly, that the authors did not believe the conclusions of the paper at the time the paper was written, at the time the paper was submitted for publication, and at the time the paper was published.

They thus show that the paper was, and is, the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct. It is imperative that this clearly fraudulent and clearly damaging paper be removed from the scientific literature.”