This research, carried out in labs that did not have maximum level of biosafety, was increasing the infectivity of laboratory-created diseases by constructing chimeric coronaviruses — despite strong denial of such practices by the key Chinese scientists. And the bio-engineering was being funded by United States taxpayers — channelled through a charity run by a British scientist — despite similar denials from America’s most senior public health officials that they supported such science fiction activities in Chinese labs.

The details have been confirmed by the latest batch of documents emerging under US freedom of information rules — which unlike in Britain, actually assist attempts to break through walls of official obfuscation. The Intercept obtained 900 pages of documents detailing two research grants in 2014 and 2019 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to EcoHealth Alliance. This is the charity headed by Peter Daszak, the controversial Briton who led efforts to squash “conspiracy theories” about a possible lab incident after spending years hunting viruses with Shi Zhengli, the now-famous “Batwoman” expert at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Some of these grant details have emerged previously — but these documents include the original proposals along with project updates, so significantly flesh out what we knew. They highlight how US funding bodies outsourced risky gain-of-function research to China, even over a three-year period between 2014 and 2017 when it was banned in their own nation. They also show, with new clarity, the kind of work taking place in secretive Wuhan labs. These disclosures fuel the mystery over the pandemic origins, while also sparking fresh concerns over top scientists in both China and the West who sought to suppress inquiries into the lab leak hypothesis.

A $3.1m grant, according to the documents, was awarded to understand “the risk of bat coronavirus emergence” through screening thousands of samples collected from the nocturnal creatures. This included a chunk of funding worth $599,000 for WIV. Bear in mind that three months ago, Shi, director of its Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, angrily protested over the world “pouring filth on an innocent scientist” when emphatically refuting that they carried out gain-of-function work. “My lab has never conducted or co-operated in conducting GOF experiments that enhance the virulence of viruses” she told the New York Times.

Suggested reading

Did the New York Times stifle lab leak debate?

By Ashley Rindsberg

According to NIH “the term gain-of-function research describes a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent”. Analysis of these papers show US funds supported construction of new chimeric Sars-related coronaviruses, which combined a spike gene from one with genetic material from another — and then showed the resulting creation could infect human cells and mice engineered to display human-type receptors on their cells.

One new virus had increased pathogenicity over the original virus and three new viruses increased viral load in lung tissues up to ten thousandfold, which is most definitely “enhanced activity.” As scientists pointed out to me, these results demonstrated increased pathogenicity of SARSr-CoVs with different spike proteins in humanised mouse models. And similar construction work was proposed to be done with another type of deadly pathogen — the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, which first flared up in Jordan nine years ago after spilling over from camels and has since cropped up in 27 countries, causing 858 deaths.

So yet again it seems Shi — probably under intense pressure from the Communist regime — has been manipulating not just bat viruses but the truth over her lab’s activities. Just like when she claimed a database containing 22,000 virus sequences and samples was taken offline due to hacking in the pandemic when it disappeared on September 12, 2019 — several weeks before infections emerged in Wuhan and months before global attention turned on her lab. Or when the name of the most closely-related virus to Sars-CoV-2 — the strain of virus that causes Covid-19 — was changed in a key scientific paper, thus masking ties to three miners who died in 2012 from a strange respiratory condition while clearing out a copper mine in southern China.

Suggested reading

Did scientists stifle the lab-leak theory?

By Ian Birrell

Yet she is not the only key player in this drama telling porkies. Anthony Fauci, the US infectious diseases expert and presidential adviser, insisted earlier this year that his country “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology”. His stance led to a furious clash in Congress with Senator Rand Paul, who gleefully tweeted after The Intercept published its article on the papers: “Surprise surprise – Fauci lied again. And I was right about his agency funding novel coronavirus research at Wuhan.”

Paul was backed by Richard Ebright, the bio-security expert and professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, who has long been a fierce critic of such work since he argues that the risks of creating new diseases in laboratories vastly outweigh any potential benefits. “The documents make it clear that assertions by Anthony Fauci and the NIH Director, Francis Collins that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful,” he said.

There are many fascinating nuggets in these papers such as discussion  of isolating coronaviruses using “transformed bat cell lines” from nine different species. “We have used these for virus isolation, infection assays and receptor molecule gene cloning.” Monali Rahalkar, an Indian microbiologist, said it was clear after combing through the details how such collaborative research could lead to something such as Sars-Cov-2. “And these are just two projects,” she said. “There were other projects and additionally the ones going on in China sponsored by their government.”

Buried in the documents are two more intriguing details. First, the experimental work creating mutant chimeric coronaviruses was carried out at WIV’s biosafety level 2 lab and then the work analysing them in humanised mice performed at the biosafety level 3 Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, not at the new maximum level 4 WIV lab built with French assistance. The cluster of labs at the university hospital, incidentally, includes a breeding centre that created at least 1,000 types of genetically engineered animals from mice to monkeys. So this means the details in the papers accord with a previous statement by Shi that their coronavirus research is “conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories” — although a level 2 lab has, some say, barely higher safety standards than a dental clinic and certainly few safeguards against an lethal airborne virus.

Yet this is where the puzzle intensifies. For six months ago David Asher, who led State Department investigations into the origins, told a Washington seminar the first “known cluster that we’re aware of, of victims of what we believe to be Covid’ were three people who fell sick at a BSL 3 lab within a week of each other.

Suggested reading

Why we should welcome the lab leak hypothesis

By Bret Weinstein

“There is a possibility it was influenza,” he said. “But I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in a hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything with the coronavirus. That’s highly hard to believe. From that point forward, it certainly seemed to have started to spread within their community.”

Second, while Daszak has been condemning supposed conspiracy theories and defending his friends in China with whom he has collected thousands of samples, his own charity was pointing out the major risk of accidental infection faced by researchers when collecting such specimens in a project he led. “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled. There is also some risk of exposure to pathogens …while handling bats, civets, rodents or other animals, their blood samples or their excreta.”

It is, at last, largely accepted that there are two plausible theories behind this public health catastrophe, so perhaps these revelations have more political than scientific consequence. Even Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food scientist who led the dismal World Health Organisation study trip to Wuhan earlier this year, recently admitted the possibility that a field incident sparked the pandemic was “a likely hypothesis”.

He told a documentary there might have been “human error” somewhere but this could not be admitted inside China’s repressive autocracy. “The whole system focuses a lot on being infallible, and everything must be perfect. Somebody could also wish to hide something. Who knows?” The engima has not been cracked but these are small steps forward in the search for the pandemic origins.

Since the pandemic started, China has promoted various narratives on its possible origins. First, the country’s top scientists blamed a Wuhan market selling wild animals, which was rapidly cleaned up and all the samples kept secret. Then officials suggested the devastating disease might have come from outside the city, even pointing the finger at a possible laboratory leak — from a United States military base in Maryland rather than within their own borders. More recently, following the slaughter of infected mink at farms in Europe, prominent figures focused on these furry mammals as hosts of the virus, while pushing hard with another theory that Covid might have been imported on chilled or frozen food.

These ideas have been knocked down or failed to fly. Several studies showed Sars-CoV-2 — the strange new strain of coronavirus — was unlikely to have come from the market, leading to formal dismissal of this suggestion by Beijing’s top expert last May. More recent research by molecular epidemiologists assessed thousands of samples from infected patients to conclude the “progenitor” emerged in China in late October. Other scientists say there is no evidence of origin in mink. And even Kristian Andersen, a prominent US professor of immunology and microbiology who is dismissive of lab leak theories, said he does not find the data linking the virus to frozen foods to be “credible”.

Yet when the World Health Organisation (WHO) held its press conference in Wuhan to announce the surprisingly quick initial results of its inquiry into the origins, there was much talk of the market — although it stated this was not the birthplace — along with floating of that idea that mink might be linked. There was discussion of frozen food, musings that this disease might have emerged outside China, strong focus on the need to find the intermediate animal source as the “most likely” source. Yet they also confessed to a failure to find any clues backing this popular theory, even admitting that testing thousands of samples from scores of different species did not produce positive results.

Suggested reading

The WHO has failed us again

By Ian Birrell

The speakers said, rightly, there is much work to do in tracing the source. This is a vital quest to help guard against future — and potentially worse — pandemics. Yet these scientists were certain on one aspect of their investigation: this disease did not leak from one of the three laboratories in Wuhan studying bats and bat-borne coronaviruses. Never mind the extraordinary coincidence of an outbreak almost certainly connected to creatures living hundreds of miles away in the caves of southern China occurring in the city that was host to Asia’s top research centre into such viruses. The experts were adamant: there is no need for further inquiries into this concept since it is “extremely unlikely” to be the cause of this global catastrophe.

It was no surprise to hear such claims from Liang Wannian, the Chinese professor on the podium. He is, after all, head of the Covid-19 panel at their National Health Commission who led Beijing’s response to the crisis. He has defended his government’s “decisive” approach, despite the silencing of doctors trying to warn their fellow citizens, the denials of human transmission, the deletions of key data and the reluctance to share genetic sequencing. This Communist apparatchik was never going to be the most dispassionate person probing the pandemic origins. Predictably, he pushed from the outset an unproven idea this disease might have started beyond his country’s borders. He also claimed the earliest confirmed cases were December 8 2019, conflicting with his own nation’s main health body, a key early study by Chinese scientists in The Lancet and a well-sourced leak in the South China Morning Post that dated the first incidence back to November 17.

Yet how shameful to see the WHO — a branch of the United Nations tasked with protection of public health — diminish itself again by kowtowing to China’s dictatorial regime in such craven style. Beijing fiercely resisted this mission for months, even imposing sanctions on Australia after it called for such an inquiry. It gave consent after considerable haggling in return for the right to vet the team of scientists. Lo and behold, those picked included the British charity chief Peter Daszak, who has worked with Wuhan scientists for years on their controversial experiments and led efforts to dismiss claims of any lab leak as “baseless”. Now suddenly this is a “WHO-China Joint Study” — and it seems the chosen experts see their task as selling China’s story to the planet.

Suggested reading

China is not the hero in this darkest hour

By Ian Birrell

So why is WHO so dismissive of a possible lab leak? After all, Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety scientist leading its mission, explained that all the work to identify the origin of Covid-19 continues to point towards a natural viral reservoir in bats — but accepted they were unlikely to have been flying over Wuhan. He said his team held a “very long, frank, open discussion with the management and the staff” at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), listened to their description of research carried out, accepted assurances that they did not posses Sars-Cov-2 in their virus banks, examined health data they were given, took the view such leaks are rare and then decided that microscopic pathogens could not escape from such a high-secure unit. “It was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place,” he said firmly.

It is sweet these international scientists are so trusting of their Chinese colleagues, despite all the evidence of cover-up with the previous Sars epidemic soon after the turn of this century and then again in initial weeks of this pandemic. But this hardly sounds the most forensic, evidence-based approach given the seismic importance of their conclusions. We know the controlling nature of Chinese state repression. We know there have been many leaks before from labs, including 11 Sars infections from a top-security Beijing research centre in 2004. We know there were safety concerns since they were admitted by WIV’s head of security in a journal shortly before the outbreak. We know databases of unpublished viruses were hidden from outsiders. And we know that for all the WHO team’s faith in the WIV security, much of their Sars research was carried out at lower security labs in the city,

We also know scientists in Wuhan initially feared the novel coronavirus leaked from their lab. We know they were performing risky “gain of function” research that forces evolution of viruses, which some scientists have long feared might spark pandemic. We know they were combining snippets from different strains of bat coronaviruses and creating chimeric diseases using cloning techniques that display no sign of human manipulation. We know they were injecting viruses into “humanised mice” and trying to determine how bat diseases jump the barrier between species. We know also this new disease was well adapted to human transmission, possessing a mutation that allows its spike protein to bind to many human cells that is not found on similar types of coronaviruses. And we know two Chinese scientists in February claimed “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan” before their paper was hastily deleted.

Suggested reading

China's plan for medical domination

By Steve Boggan

Then there are the issues swirling around Shi Zhingli, Wuhan’s famed expert known as “Batwoman” for her sample-gathering trips in southern China, that have raised suspicions after being winkled out by Drastic, a group of researchers and scientists. Her actions include claiming three miners died of a fungal infection in 2012, when it later emerged they died from a respiratory disease similar to Covid that they caught clearing bat droppings in one of those caves. She obscured a link to their fatalities when publishing an influential Nature paper about the closest known relative to Sars-Cov-2 — and altered the name of this virus without mention of her action in that paper, widely taken as indication of natural transmission. Now she pushes ideas of transmission by mink and, yes, frozen food.

None of this amounts to proof. Science, like journalism, should rely on evidence and facts. And it is entirely possible that — as a majority of scientists believe — this cruel new virus emerged naturally from Mother Nature’s bosom, even if both China and the WHO experts have failed so far to find any animal source. There is also no doubt that Donald Trump’s botched intervention injected this important debate with lethal toxicity. Yet the US government in a sober statement from the State Department claimed it has “reason to believe” WIV researchers fell sick with Covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019 “before the first identified case of the outbreak”. We see also a growing number of highly-credible experts putting heads over the parapet to say that a leak is a plausible hypothesis deserving investigation. I have even spoken to senior figures in WHO who freely accept the leak possibility. Yet, instead, we are getting this patsy inquiry that accepts possibility of direct infection from bats but discounts the chance of infection during collection of their faeces or research into their diseases.

That charade of a press conference — after 12 days wandering around Wuhan that included visiting a propaganda exhibition celebrating China’s recovery — was simply embarrassing. There is also a major flaw in the logic expressed at the event. The WHO stance is based on placing faith in China, despite all the evidence that this is a state that cannot be trusted — whether lying about its horrific treatment of minorities in Xinjiang, breaking a historic deal with Britain to protect freedom in Hong Kong or silencing noble doctors trying to alert the world to looming disaster. Yet if a leak was covered up, is it possible to trust such a government? So if WHO is ruling out the likelihood of a laboratory accident, it must immediately release all data and evidence supporting its case.

“An investigative process should be transparent, collaborative, international and, to the extent possible, devoid of political interest,” wrote David Relman, a biosecurity expert at Stanford University, in a superb analysis of the origin scenarios. “Without these features it will not be credible, trustworthy or effective.” This renowned scientist has raised the coincidence of the world’s largest repository of bat coronaviruses being in the city that gave birth to global pandemic. “A more complete understanding of the origins of Covid—19 clearly serves the interests of every person in every country in the planet,” he said succinctly. Instead, we seem no closer to understanding the arrival of this new disease, which remains a perplexing mystery, while witnessing a grotesque display of appeasement of China’s dictatorship by an increasingly discredited UN body.