Lies in Lancet

When the Covid pandemic erupted, 27 top virologists got together and wrote an article in the prestigious Lancet journal (19 February 20), absolving China of all blame and asserting that it was a natural zoonotic epidemic that had emerged from the wet markets of Wuhan. In the highly polarized presidential campaign in America, this scientific judgment was used to dismiss all strident claims of President Trump and his cabinet members, accusing China of generating this virus in a lab from where it appeared to have leaked out. These were then cynically branded as mere conspiracy theories.

With the heat and dust of the presidential campaign behind us, we have had time for more sober reflection and the picture that is emerging is not pretty. A number of disclosures have come under the Freedom of Information Act in the USA and the scientific community has taken a second hard look at the data. It now turns out that one of the lead authors of this defense of China in Lancet, was Peter Dasazak, head of the NGO, the Eco Health Alliance. He had a serious conflict of interest which should have disqualified him from commenting on issues pertaining to the Wuhan institute of Virology (WIV). It turns out that during President Obama’s tenure, the gain of function research was being undertaken in some virology labs in US. This had been initiated by DARPA as part of its pre-empt programme (to anticipate nature and hostile counties) by producing souped up viruses (before nature could) and developing medicines and vaccines to counter them. Primary establishment was the US Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. There were serious concerns of leakage and all such research was halted for two years. It was then that Dr Fauci of the NIH decided to offload all such research to foreign countries thru NGOs. As part of this, $3.7 million was given to Peter Dasazk’s Eco Health Organisation. He, along with the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology, had jointly funded the gain of function research at the Wuhan institute. Subsequently, he was part of the WHO Team sent for investigations to Wuhan. He did not…