Louis Anders is a journalist for Politique Magazine. It lists the book
Sars-Cov-2, the origins of evil
(ed. Belin) by Brice Perrier, author and independent journalist.
Where does Sars-Cov-2 come from? From this very simple question it was practically forbidden to discuss from the start of the epidemic. As early as January 30, 2020, the leading science magazine
Nature
published an article claiming that a bat virus with very similar characteristics had been found in caves in the Yunnan region of China. Signed by Zhengli Shi, the specialist in the question at the Institute of Virology of ... Wuhan, the publication suffered from a huge omission: the genome of the two viruses described in the paper stopped exactly at the sequence that makes Sars- Cov-2 a unique coronavirus (in the current state of knowledge).
After disclosure of personal emails, we now know that the Lancet platform was initiated by an epidemiologist, Peter Daszak, president of the Eco Health Alliance.
This NGO specializing in research on pandemics has been working for a long time with… the Wuhan Institute of Virology!
Louis anders
On February 7, 2020, in a press conference, the South China Agricultural University announced a discovery that will be relayed by all the media: the pangolin is the intermediate host between the bat and the man, and it is in this animal that the genome of the virus would have mutated and found a perfect adaptation to human cells. "
The information is immediately relayed by the journal Nature
" notes Brice Perrier. On February 19, when most countries in the world were still unaware of the epidemic risk, a column was published in
The Lancet
, one of the most prestigious journals in the world of medical research: the 27 signatories "
strongly condemn the theories of the plot suggesting that the Covid-19 has nonatural origin
".
Throughout 2020, the journal
Nature
will publish articles in this direction and will refuse to cite contradictory studies submitted to its reading committee.
Read also The origins of Sars-CoV-2 still mysterious
An NGO at the heart of controversies
Thus scientific discussion and consequently information to the public were immediately locked. But water has flowed under the bridges and the revelations have been linked for 18 months. After disclosure of personal emails, we now know that the
Lancet
platform
was initiated by an epidemiologist, Peter Daszak, president of the
Eco Health Alliance
. This NGO specializing in research on pandemics has been working for a long time with… the Wuhan Institute of Virology! Peter Daszak has published around twenty joint studies with his Chinese counterparts. This will not prevent the World Health Organization (WHO) from appointing Daszak in the commission of inquiry which will go to Wuhan in January 2021 ...
More recently, a group of multidisciplinary researchers - Drastic - which has multiplied the uncontested revelations since the start of the crisis, released a document indicating a funding request made in 2018 to the American agency in charge of R&D for new technologies. military (DARPA);
the partnership proposal was for the manufacture of an "improved" coronavirus.
According to the document, it was conducted by Peter Daszak, with the collaboration of several researchers including Zhengli Shi, but the grant was refused.
Zoonosis (infection transmitted from animals to humans) was obviously the most likely hypothesis, since viruses have been emerging in this way since the dawn of time.
Brice Perrier
Function gains on coronaviruses
This potentially explosive news should come as no surprise given the many studies carried out over the past twenty years on coronaviruses.
In the remarkable investigation by Brice Perrier, which gives voice to many different opinions, the reader discovers indeed that manipulations on the coronaviruses have been undertaken for almost 20 years! In 1999, an article by the Dutch virologist Peter Rottier showed that the creation of a chimeric coronavirus could allow a species barrier to be crossed with feline cells. In 2002, researcher Ralph Baric succeeded in creating an existing coronavirus clone in the laboratory. Then Baric will team up with a Chinese researcher, Zhengli Shi from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The latter succeeded in producing eight genetically transformed coronaviruses and published the results of its work in the journal
PLOS Pathogens
in 2017. Several chimeras created succeeded in replicating efficiently in human cells
in vitro
and in humanized (!) transgenic mouse cells
in vivo
.
Read alsoOrigid-19 Covid-19: China opposes a new WHO investigation on its soil
From American public money to Wuhan labs
As the journalist demonstrates, genetic manipulation of coronaviruses intended to make them more dangerous is therefore practiced in a few laboratories, and the result of this work is sometimes published in specialized journals. For the supporters of this method, called "function gains", genetic transformations are the only way to discover the transmission system of a possible emerging virus, and thus to know one step ahead of the means to fight future ones. potential epidemics, in particular through the rapid creation of new vaccines.
Among the main funders, we find in particular Anthony Fauci, the “Mr. Epidemics” of American presidents, who has headed for nearly forty years the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIH).
The man is often quoted in conspiratorial speeches, after claiming on January 10, 2017 in a forum devoted to pandemic preparedness that the Trump administration would face "
a surprise outbreak
".
If a rabies epidemic occurred in Paris in the Institut Pasteur district, what would we think?
Jean-Michel Claverie, virologist
Conversely, other researchers oppose these costly genetic manipulations.
They believe that they generate a new unnatural risk, and rightly point out that the practice of function gains has in no way made it possible to avoid the present crisis.
The White House had also decreed a moratorium in 2014, but this virological research has never slowed down.
"
In the world, only a few dozen researchers use the function gains with viruses with pandemic potential, almost exclusively funded by the NIH, which has continued since 2012 to maintain their support for these risky experiments
," notes the journalist.
The zoonosis thesis
Sars-Cov-2, laboratory virus, or natural virus? A zoonosis (infection transmitted from animals to humans) was "
obviously the most probable hypothesis, since viruses have been emerging in this way since the dawn of time.
», Emphasizes Brice Perrier.
A bat coronavirus could thus have directly infected humans venturing around their areas of habitat, or more likely affected an animal with a respiratory system similar to ours, such as mink, into which it could have transformed before to spread among men.
To prove it, the sulphurous Peter Daszak's NGO has been devoting all its research efforts since the beginning of the year in caves located on the borders of the Sino-Laotian border.
And the Pasteur Institute announces promising discoveries there, with the sampling of viruses with genomes close (but not analogous) to that of Covid-19.
Read alsoCovid-19: viruses cousins of Sars-CoV-2 in Laos relaunch the hunt for the origins
However, we cannot forget that the epidemic started in Wuhan, in central China, 2,000 kilometers away. A city that concentrates no less than six research organizations working in particular on coronaviruses, as revealed by Brice Perrier in his book. “
If a rabies epidemic were to occur in Paris in the Institut Pasteur district, what would we think?
“Asks one of the best French virologists, Jean-Michel Claverie. "
However,
explains the scientist to the journalist,
the Wuhan institute is responsible for a third of publications on coronaviruses and specializes in those of bats which could be dangerous, as mentioned by its American funding by the NIH
".
There would still be a lot to say about this dense, nuanced and somewhat disturbing investigation, which prompts us to take a new look at the world of epidemiology.
Because it is an undeniable fact: for 20 years at least, scientists with sometimes vague ambitions manipulate or manufacture dangerous viruses in official laboratories, unbeknownst to the general public and most politicians.
SARS-COV-2, At the origins of evil
, Brice Perrier éditions Belin