Watchdog group U.S. Right to Know obtained the 2018 grant proposal and related documents through a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request which reveal that an American virologist working with the Wuhan lab planned to engineer a virus that resembles SARS-CoV-2 as part of a U.S.-China research collaboration called “DEFUSE.”
National Review reports that it was to be led by EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based research nonprofit funded by the NIH, the project aimed to perform gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in bats at the Wuhan lab.
While the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected the funding request, the proposal outlined plans to engineer a virus resembling SARS-CoV-2. EcoHealth Alliance insists that the proposed research never took place, but the information indicates a keen interest in coronaviruses with similarities to the one causing the global pandemic.
New Zealand data scientist Gilles Demaneuf suggests that accumulating data and predictions point towards the accidental release of SARS-CoV-2 during research, marking a significant step in that direction. The DEFUSE proposal detailed the insertion of furin cleavage sites and the assembly of synthetic viruses, both contributing to increased transmissibility to humans.
Critically, the use of restriction enzymes BsaI and BsmBI, common in genetic engineering, raises eyebrows. Although these enzymes can occur naturally, their presence in a pattern similar to SARS-CoV-2 has less than a 1 percent chance of occurring naturally, according to scientists. Alex Washburne, a co-author of a preprint on Covid’s origin, emphasizes strong evidence suggesting the virus’s assembly with a known lab protocol.
Contrary to the belief that the virus originated from an infected mammal at Huanan Seafood Market, newly released documents challenge this theory. The FBI and U.S. Energy Department lean towards a lab-leak hypothesis. Rutgers University professor Richard Ebright sees the 2018 EcoHealth proposal as a “smoking gun,” aligning with the genome sequence evidence.
Recent findings by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee add weight to suspicions. Documents reveal that Chinese researchers sequenced the Covid virus structure in a U.S. database two weeks before sharing it globally, with Chinese officials describing the outbreak as a viral disease of “unknown cause” initially.
