I happened to be browsing through the Intercept document released under FOI from the US Department of Health and Human Services, “Understanding the risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence”, a (successful) 2013/14 grant proposal (for the rather ominous amount of $666,442) by Peter Daszak of Eco Health Alliance, who was heavily implicated in the alleged Wuhan Lab leak, having been listed on some studies done in Wuhan with the so-called Bat Lady, Shi Zheng Li, and I happened across a few links.
One of the links (see page 6 ) led to this document, a guidance manual on “dual use” research - which is, as far as I can understand it, biotechnology that can have a civilian use and a military use.
Gain of Function Guide
In that document, which was relatively brief and fairly uninteresting, I noticed a footnote that referred to another document, “Recommendations For The Evaluation And Oversight Of Proposed Gain-Of-Function Research”, published by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. I clicked on the link and found that it had mysteriously disappeared from the internet. However it so happens that it had been archived on the Wayback Machine so I managed to download it.
You too can download it here:
Or try this link if the above doesn’t work: https://web.archive.org/web/20170107112313if_/http://osp.od.nih.gov/sites/default/files/resources/NSABB_Final_Report_Recommendations_Evaluation_Oversight_Proposed_Gain_of_Function_Research.pdf
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity is an experts panel that is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States.
Now it so happens that in this document there are a few interesting and rather incriminatory facts. Could it be that the paragraph at the bottom of page 14 contains a rather interesting warning about the possibility of GOF studies into coronaviruses being possibly… a bit dangerous? This is the first possibility they mention in fact.
Well, gee, laboratory acquired infections - um… it kinda looks like this might have happened, considering the fact that SARS-COV-2 outbreak apparently began in the residential quarters of the Wuhan Lab, according to the well researched investigative reporting of Alina Chan and Matt Ridley in their book Viral.
The gain of function research handbook continues:
Oh, SARS is a small risk because most of the information of interest is already published… Would that be studies that were done with ‘outsiders’ in the Wuhan Lab gain-of-functioning in the ability to bond with human ACE2 receptors on humanised mice to bat coronaviruses like the one?
November 2013 Ge XY, Li JL, Yang XL, Chmura AA, Zhu G, Epstein JH, Mazet JK, Hu B, Zhang W, Peng C, Zhang YJ, Luo CM, Tan B, Wang N, Zhu Y, Crameri G, Zhang SY, Wang LF, Daszak P, Shi ZL. Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor. Nature. 2013 Nov 28;503(7477):535-8. doi: 10.1038/nature12711. Epub 2013 Oct 30. PMID: 24172901; PMCID: PMC5389864.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389864/
(Gee suddenly NIH won’t give me that one. Here’s the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20210811162944/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5389864/)
They were already swapping out the spike proteins in this study. But what I can’t find in the body of the study is the humanised mouse model - however they were using the humanised mouse model, as this 2013 study is listed in a 2018 study as one of the studies that used the humanised mouse model.
Or this 2015 study (complete with a now laughable disclaimer from Nature’s editors saying “30 March 2020 Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.”)
December 2015. Vineet D. Menachery, Boyd L. Yount, Kari Debbink, Sudhakar Agnihothram, Lisa E. Gralinski, Jessica A. Plante, Rachel L. Graham, Trevor Scobey, Xing-Yi Ge, Eric F Donaldson, Scott H Randell, Antonio Lanzavecchia, Wayne A. Marasco, Zhengli-Li Shi, and Ralph S. Baric. “A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence.” Nature Medicine 21 (12): 1508–13.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
This one is also one of the studies where they were using Ralph Baric’s humanised mouse model.
And here is why we know this: a 2018 Wuhan study lists their previous work with humanized mice and bat viruses, which began in 2013:
Our previous work based on cellular and humanized mouse infection studies suggest that these viruses are less virulent than SARS-CoV (Ge et al. 2013; Menachery et al. 2016; Yang et al. 2016). Masked palm civets appeared to play a role as intermediate hosts of SARS-CoV in the 2002–2003 outbreak (Guan et al. 2003). However, considering that these individuals have a high chance of direct exposure to bat secretion in their villages, this study further supports the notion that some bat SARSr-CoVs are able to directly infect humans without intermediate hosts, as suggested by receptor entry and animal infection studies (Menachery et al. 2016).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7
Wang, N., Li, SY., Yang, XL. et al. Serological Evidence of Bat SARS-Related Coronavirus Infection in Humans, China. Virol. Sin. 33, 104–107 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7
Back to the GOF (Gain of Function) guide where they give this little tidbit which counsels against making a mouse-adapted virus - which is not what they were doing above - the humanized mouse models were actually made to test human transmission - via the human ACE2 receptors Ralph Baric had inserted in the chimeric mice.
I think that might just be GOFROC (Gain of Function Research of Concern) - it certainly seems to trigger Attribute 2.
And Attribute 1 apparently, for the virus they were playing around with, SARS, was a lot more transmissible than MERS.
Here are the two attributes for research to be considered GOFROC:
I can kindof see why the NIH might have deprecated this document, tried to hide it from the prying eyes of the internet, can’t you?