In 2012, Dr. Anthony Fauci argued for the benefits of gain-of-function research, despite potential risks to public health.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin and Erasmus University Medical Centre engineered H1N5 avian influenza (bird flu) to pass between mammals, with Dr. Fauci’s support.

The biotechnology field was largely unregulated in the US, guided only by voluntary arrangements. And it’s not only bird flu that has been engineered using gain-of-function.  The covid virus was also made in a laboratory.

A couple of weeks ago, a second attempt to bamboozle the public into believing the covid virus came from an animal source was launched.  A study led by Kristian Andersen suggested covid came from the Wuhan Wet Market.  Andersen was also involved in the now discredited early attempts to dismiss the lab leak theory while also applying for an $8.9 million grant from NIH awaiting approval on Dr. Fauci’s desk.

Currently, there’s a “debate” in New Zealand about biotechnology deregulation, with a one-sided portrayal in corporate media.  Conveniently, New Zealand’s corporate media yet again spreading misinformation about the origins of covid, based on Anderson’s study, creates the wrong impressions about the safety of biotechnology deregulation.

Why Stopping the Deregulation of Biotechnology Matters So Much

By Dr. Guy Hatchard

In October 2012, Dr Anthony Fauci was writing for the American Society for Microbiology about scientists conducting gain-of-function research:

In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Many ask reasonable questions: Given the possibility of such scenarios, however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision? Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.

Research on Highly Pathogenic H5N1 Influenza Virus: The Way Forward, Anthony S. Fauci, ASM Journals, 9 October 2012

Dr. Fauci was Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (“NIAID”) charged with preventing infectious disease, but he was arguing in support of scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the Erasmus University Medical Centre in the Netherlands who were engineering H1N5 avian influenza (bird flu) to be able to pass between mammals carried by respiratory droplets.

Encouraged by Dr. Fauci, an international technical consultation convened by the WHO concluded that this work was an important contribution to public health surveillance of H5N1 viruses. The European Academies of Science Advisory Council (“EASAC”) concluded that all required laws, rules, regulations and codes of conduct are in place in several EU countries to continue this type of work responsibly. The regulations in the US were almost non-existent. Biotechnology experimentation was largely unregulated, guided only by voluntary arrangements and commitments made between researchers. Leading biotechnology advocates and researchers like Dr. Fauci wanted to make sure this lax situation continued.

You can see the parallels between this fateful historical misstep and the debate currently going on in New Zealand about biotechnology deregulation. I am using the term “debate” rather loosely here; corporate media has reported a very one-sided rosy picture of our biotechnology future. Our scientists seem to be channelling the reckless disregard for public health contained in the 2012 Fauci remarks. What could possibly go wrong?

We are standing on the threshold of a biotechnology future fraught with extreme risk and the biotech fraternity is determined that nothing and no one shall stand in the way. Their bottom line at this time is that no one should believe that covid-19 came from the laboratory. You may be aware of a range of articles that circulated widely around the globe based on a paper entitled ‘Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicentre of the covid-19 pandemic’ published in the journal Cell. The New Zealand Herald headlined ‘Covid-19: Scientists Narrow Down List of Pandemic Sparking Animals’. This wrongly described the Cell article as containing new evidence that bolstered the likelihood that covid came from the Wuhan Wet Market, rather than a laboratory.

What the article didn’t tell readers is that one of the lead authors of this paper, Kristian Andersen, was involved in the now discredited early attempts to dismiss the lab leak theory while also applying for an $8.9 million grant from NIH awaiting approval on Dr. Fauci’s desk. Andersen told the BBC last week that it is “beyond reasonable doubt” that the covid-19 pandemic started with infected animals. Don’t be fooled a second time.

The UK Daily Telegraph blew the whistle on this latest attempt to bamboozle the public into accepting the wet market theory. The Telegraph revealed it as a ruse to enable the biotechnology industry to escape regulation. The findings reported in Cell do not show that covid-19 came from Raccoon Dogs or any other animal in Wuhan. They did not find any covid-infected animal in the Wuhan market, nor any market vendor who caught covid-19 from an animal – the bare minimum to establish any kind of connection between animals and human covid-19.

The new paper’s reasoning demands that a single infected raccoon dog somehow souped up a bat virus enough to spark a global human pandemic without sparking even a single other case among, er, raccoon dogs – and then vanished into thin air.

Don’t fall for the Chinese wet market theory for Covid, The Telegraph, 21 September 2024

Moreover, the paper’s analysis relies on a November-December 2019 start date for covid-19 infection, which excludes now-confirmed cases which began some weeks earlier. The Telegraph article summarises:

The lab was doing risky experiments that made bat viruses more infectious in the years leading up to the pandemic. It had a reputation for being unsafe. It was planning to switch its focus to viruses precisely like this one the year before the pandemic. It worked on a close relative of SARS-CoV-2 in 2018. It was party to a plan to insert a special feature into a virus’s spike gene, a feature found uniquely in the virus that caused the pandemic.

Don’t fall for the Chinese wet market theory for Covid, The Telegraph, 21 September 2024

Leading independent scientists agree that the market theory is still highly implausible, such as George Gao, the man who led the investigation of the wet market, Ralph Baric, the world’s leading corona virologist, molecular biologist Professor Richard E. Ebright, evolutionary biologist Alex Washburne and many, many others. We have discussed these issues before in our article ‘A New Beginning or a Sudden End?’ or try The New York Times ‘Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points’.

Those biotechnology scientists rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of fat grants and a free hand to play god are not going to stop pushing the Wet Market theory, however implausible it seems, because their reputation and livelihood depend on it. If covid-19 came from a laboratory, it is a natural step to ask: Why is our government deregulating and legitimising biotechnology experimentation? In that case, the five long years of the pandemic spreading around the world, seemingly without limit, point to an alarming conclusion, biotechnology experimentation is not just risky, it is very dangerous and a threat to our very existence. But as Dr. Fauci argued in 2012, why should we let public health stand in our way?

About the Author

Guy Hatchard, PhD, is a New Zealander who was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a global food testing and safety company (now known as FoodChain ID). 

You can subscribe to Dr. Hatchard’s websites HatchardReport.com and GLOBE.GLOBAL for regular updates by email. GLOBE.GLOBAL is a website dedicated to providing information about the dangers of biotechnology.  You can also follow Dr. Hatchard on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.