Who is approving all these crazy virus experiments?

his week it emerged that a group of virologists at Boston University re-engineered SARS-CoV-2. They played around with the spike protein, putting the spike protein from a deadly strain onto a more virulent strain, creating a new form of Omicron that was as deadly as the original Covid but potentially more transmissible. Unbelievably, they defended their actions, saying it was “only” 80% fatal to their mice, much safer than the the original, which was 100% fatal in their hands.

Another group led by Bernard Moss at the intramural program of NIAID swapped genes from different strains of monkeypox and created a new form that was up to 1000 times more deadly. They too defended their actions, saying they're only swapping parts of one virus with another, as if that made a difference.

Electroanatomy research lab

There are already many people out there who are suspicious of all science thanks to Covid and that dreadful vaccine. Despite attempts by some science magazines to turn the debate into another political fight by blaming racism, it is now widely believed—though not yet proven—that SARS-CoV-2 was released from a lab in Wuhan. It seems to have human fingerprints all over it.

The mainstream American press seems uninterested, but the science press and the UK tabloids are taking notice, and there is no doubt that the PRC government will “pounce,” as the popular term goes, on this story to shift the blame onto the NIH.

So, what role does the NIH play in all this? For extramural projects, there are two levels of oversight for new projects: the local IRB or Institutional Review Board and the NIH's grant review panel. But intramural projects appear to have fewer safeguards. According to Science magazine, a safety panel exempted the monkeypox research from review in 2018 because monkeypox did not meet their review criterion known as P3CO (potential pandemic pathogen care and oversight).

Grant writing as an exercise in conformism

The Science article reflects researchers' concern that they are already struggling with the enforced conformism caused by the grant review process.

When we ask who is allowing all these dangerous virus experiments, the answer is not one specific person, no matter how arrogant, bureaucratic, and politicized he or she may be. It is the entire culture of how grants are funded. Writing a grant is a six-step process:

I'm not exaggerating here. I keep dated backup copies of each grant I write. I've been on step four since September 6. A grant is a work of art, where every word and every acronym is scrutinized to make sure every ‘t’ is dotted and every ‘i’ is crossed. But it also has little relationship to how we actually do science.

The reason is simple: if you wrote what you were really going to do, you wouldn't get funded. Not because we're being dishonest, but because real science is mostly a series of “How in the hell am I going to explain that?” moments.

Of course, if we said that in a grant it would just get thrown away. Grants get rejected not due to the potential danger, which is easily wished away, but for (1) going against the current dogma and (2) forgetting to say something obvious, like the fact that you will do the controls, calibrate your equipment, and plug it in before starting. If you propose some experiment, you must make sure to say you have every piece of equipment needed, no matter how basic, or the reviewers will nail you. For instance, if I said I'd sonicate a sample but then forgot to say I had a sonicator, they'd throw the grant away.

This nitpicking is how they enforce conformity at NIH. I've reviewed more grants from colleagues and on panels than I can remember, and I've never seen one that strayed from the dogma or deliberately took a scientific risk, let alone a public health risk. Only a tiny minority had any innovation at all. Researchers know that despite what the NIH repeatedly tells us, theirs is the bureaucrat's definition of innovation.

Oh sure, very often I find things in grants that would likely kill the patients. Usually it's due to the researcher not understanding the disease they're trying to treat or not knowing anything about molecular biology and so not recognizing the danger of what they're proposing to do.

This is why we always hear these nutty ideas in the press, like the idea that picking your nose causes Alzheimer's disease. Those researchers are just trying to generate publicity for their grant so the reviewers will think it's a fashionable topic and therefore recommend funding.

The tendency will be to think that more rules are needed, perhaps an expansion of the Biohazards Page where we write down all the precautions we plan to take with our viruses. But what's really needed is a re-thinking of the entire process starting with the most basic questions of who pays for it and whether it is really worth doing.

As Yoda would say, bad experiments lead to danger. Danger leads to fear. Fear leads to bureaucracy. Some people are even calling for “international entities” to regulate the research, thereby opening the door for globalist zealots who will use it to enrich themselves. The new rules would be applied across the board, not just to virologists in basement labs with giant electrical-code-non-compliant 25kVA DPDT knife switches and Van der Graaf generators and assistants suffering from idiopathic cervical kyphosis, but to any research involving cloning parts of one abnormal thing into some other abnormal thing.

If virologists are worried about red tape now, wait until a disaster happens. Red tape will be the least of their problems. They're on a course to mess it up for everybody. The last thing they should want to see is a mob of angry molecular biologists on their doorstep.

* This is why the hate mail I receive from running this site is so valuable. Keep it coming!

nov 03 2022, 6:12 am