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According to documents provided by the nonprofit public health research group U.S. Right to Know, U.S. researchers planned to work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to develop new coronaviruses like COVID-19 in 2018. The DEFUSE plan sought to create novel coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 a year before the virus surfaced. The U.S. Right to Know suggests that SARS-CoV-2’s genome fits the research proposal’s viruses.
Photo from Nature
EcoHealth Led DEFUSE Project with DARPA Rejection
Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance, led the DEFUSE grant submission to DARPA, which was rejected. According to the documents, Professor Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina tried to build spike proteins using unpublished viruses.
The DEFUSE suggestion proposed inserting furin cleavage sites at the spike protein’s S1/S2 junction, where SARS-CoV-2 is. The idea aimed to find up to 25% coronaviruses different from SARS, including SARS-CoV-2, by assembling viruses in six segments like COVID-19.
Unlike other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 possesses a furin cleavage site, which has prompted concerns about lab engineering. The DEFUSE records show scientists’ interest in viruses like SARS-CoV-2 but need to explain how they were created.
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Call for Subpoenas: Unveiling Potential COVID-19 Data in US-China Interactions, EcoHealth’s Role Under Scrutiny
The documents show that China and the U.S. may have COVID-19 pandemic data. According to the U.S. Right to Know, subpoenas are needed to investigate WIV’s 2018 and 2019 interactions with U.S. collaborators.
EcoHealth, formerly related to COVID-19, earned almost $3 million from the NIH for bat coronavirus research between 2014 and 2019. Field investigations in China collected bat and wildlife samples for coronavirus transmission analysis.
The expose concerns the origins of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, and emphasizes the need to investigate WIV and its U.S. partners’ interactions and exchanges throughout the relevant period. The U.S. has recorded around 110 million infections and 1.19 million deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic as of January 19.
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