At this moment I haven’t included the (extremely copious and complete) footnotes except for the first few pages; it is a little too difficult and time-consuming to transfer them from the original document to substack.
TRANSGENIC: Humanised Mice, Chimeric Viruses, and synthetic mRNA
The hidden history of SARS-CoV2 & the Covid vaccines.
firstfactcheck.substack.com
Published by
Submarine Media Pty Ltd
Perth, Western Australia
Copyright ©
Submarine Media 2022-2023
imprint:
First Fact Check
Written by Andrew P Partington
Some sections of this book were first published (albeit in a less polished form) on firstfactcheck.substack.com
This is a non-fiction work of historical and scientific research and is not to be construed as health advice.
For health advice please see a qualified medical practitioner.
Dedicated to Dr LD,
who saved my life
by pointing me to Jesus Christ.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C S Lewis
“That story would replay in my mind: For such a time as this I put you here, and you are my servant, and until I say otherwise, you are going to do what I’ve asked you to do, what I’ve called you to do, to be the truth, to be the light in this place.” Nurse fired for being unvaccinated in British Columbia; she is referring to Esther 4:14.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12
CHAPTER ONE Tess Lawrie and Andrew Hill
The suppression of Ivermectin.
In March of 2022, a short documentary film by Oracle Films was released on Vimeo called “A Letter to Andrew Hill,”1 about a dramatic behind-the-scenes Zoom call between two members of a committee who had been looking at recommending repurposing the very safe2 anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-193.
Tess Lawrie, a doctor of medicine and a research consultant in Britain with a high standing in public health4, who has published 122 studies and has 6,673 citations5 (a large number), had initially shared her rapid review of Ivermectin6 with a senior research fellow at Liverpool University, Andrew Hill7, and they had shared data and agreed to collaborate to try to get Ivermectin approved by the Western governments and the World Health Organisation as soon as possible.
In October of 2020, Dr Andrew Hill had been given the task of reporting to the World Health Organisation on a series of new studies from around the world that suggested that Ivermectin would be an effective treatment for COVID-19. Dr Hill had been talking to two American Doctors as well, Dr Paul Marik and Dr Pierre Kory, and they all agreed with Tess Lawrie that the data looked good; they were all excited about the positive findings and the possibility of saving thousands of lives every day.
Dr Hill was enthusing about the new drug; in Tweets later deleted from Twitter, he said that if his brother, who is 58 and a smoker, was ill with Covid, he would try to get some Ivermectin into the country to give him.
I’ll give you an example. My brother, he’s 58, he’s a smoker. And if he was hospitalized with COVID-19, I don’t know that there isn’t a way to get supplies of Ivermectin into the UK. If I could and I knew it was good quality. I would want my brother to be taking it8.
Preempting Tess Lawrie’s recommendations to the British Government on the efficacy of Ivermectin by just a few days, however, Dr Hill published his own findings on a pre-print server on January 18th 2021.
The original pre-print version of his study9, which Tess Lawrie read and is rather hard to ferret out on the internet, is puzzling and contradictory; as though the author is in two minds.
Here were the results, very positive:
Results: Ivermectin was associated with reduced inflammatory markers (C-Reactive Protein, d-dimer and ferritin) and faster viral clearance by PCR. Viral clearance was treatment dose- and duration-dependent. Ivermectin showed significantly shorter duration of hospitalization compared to control. In six RCTs of moderate or severe infection, there was a 75% reduction in mortality (Relative Risk=0.25 [95%CI 0.12- 0.52]; p=0.0002); 14/650 (2.1%) deaths on ivermectin; 57/597 (9.5%) deaths in controls) with favorable clinical recovery and reduced hospitalization.
There is a bizarre contrast between these positive statements in the results and the ‘discussion’ section immediately following:
Discussion: Many studies that were included were not yet published or peer- reviewed and meta-analyses are prone to confounding issues. Furthermore, there was a wide variation in standards of care across trials, and ivermectin dose and duration of treatment was heterogeneous. Ivermectin should be validated in larger, appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities.
Tess Lawrie read Hill’s paper on the day it was published. Shocked by his turnaround, she contacted Andrew Hill immediately on Zoom and recorded the conversation. If you put this book down after reading this page and never read another word, please, just do one thing: watch that video. It is not hard to find on the internet, and I have given the link below10.
In the zoom call Andrew Hill’s demeanour tells a whole story that words on a page cannot capture. Guilt seems to be written all over his face.
Apparently trying to justify his turnaround, Hill stammers nervously, “As I said, there are a lot of different opinions about this. Some people…”
Lawrie replies, “We are looking at the data. It doesn’t matter what other people say. We are the ones who are tasked, with the – and we have the experience to look at the data and reassure everybody that this cheap and effective treatment will save lives. It’s clear. You don’t have to say, ‘Well so and so says this, and so and so says that.’ It’s absolutely crystal clear. We can save lives today if we can get the government to buy Ivermectin.”
Lawrie challenges him to tell her who the unacknowledged second author in the study is, “Whose conclusions are those on the review that you’ve done?”
Andrew Hill says, “It’s very sensitive.”
Lawrie challenges him again, “Who’s not listed as an author, who’s actually contributed?”
Andrew Hill hesitates, “Well, I mean – I don’t really want to get into it, I mean…”
Lawrie keeps pushing. “I think it needs to be clear. I would like to know. Who are these other voices that are in your paper that are not acknowledged? Does Unitaid have a say? Do they influence what you write?”
Andrew Hill reluctantly admits, “Unitaid has a say in the conclusions of the paper, yeah.”
Lawrie says, “Okay. So who is it in Unitaid, then? Who is sharing the.. the.. ? Who is giving you opinion on your evidence?”
Hill replies, “Well, it’s just the people there. I don’t think we need to start naming–”
Lawrie says, “I thought Unitaid was just a charity, Is it not a charity? So they have a say in your conclusions?”
Andrew Hill admits that it’s true. “Yeah.”
Hill’s research team looking into Ivermectin at the University of Liverpool was being funded by Unitaid, which, according to their website in 2021 has received over $US 2.5 billion in contributions from donors. Unitaid’s core donors are France, United Kingdom, Norway, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Brazil, Spain, the Republic of Korea, Chile and Japan. Hill’s employer is the University of Liverpool, which, like Unitaid, has coincidentally also received quite a lot of money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since April of 2020, Unitaid has also funded an HIV research program to allow it to accommodate Covid-19 research at the University of Liverpool, as part of the Unitaid/WHO ACT Accelerator program. Andrew Hill’s specialty is HIV research.
Hill reassures Lawrie that he’s not going to let it last for long. She asks him how long he is going to let people die unnecessarily. Hill says the stalemate won’t last for long, that he will push for it to last for as short a time as possible.
Lawrie asks Hill how long the stalemate will go on for. “How long do you think, your, your, Unitaid is going to allow the stalemate to go on for?”
Hill replies, “Well okay from my - from my side, OK, from my side, every single new trial that comes through, we’re going to be aggressively adding it on. And I think end of February will be there. Six weeks.”
Lawrie asks him, how many people are dying every day?
Hill replies defensively, “Well, there is a whole group of people who think that Ivermectin is complete rubbish.”
She replies, “I’m not talking about them. I’m saying we know the evidence; how many people die?”
Hill says, “Oh, sure. I mean, 15,000 people a day.”
Lawrie says, “15,000 people a day, times six weeks?”
Hill snaps, “Yeah, sure. No, I get it!”
Lawrie says, “We have to try and get it into the UK, Because at this rate, all other countries are getting Ivermectin, except us.”
Hill replies, “My goal is to get the drug approved and to do everything I can to get approved.”
Lawrie says, “Well you’re not doing everything you can, because everything you can would involve saying to those people who are paying you, ‘I can see this prevents deaths, so I’m not going to support this conclusion anymore, and I’m going to tell the truth.’”
Well, Andrew Hill never did tell the truth. The lie still stands.
The reader may well ask, what profit has Andrew Hill gained from this episode? He now works as an advisor for the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so he appears to have gained a great deal.
Yet a person can gain much, yet profit nothing.
An old rhetorical question comes to mind:
“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Ivermectin’s Safety
During the movie, they show a montage of media articles on Ivermectin from 2021, saying things like, “This Ivermectin… It’s a horse dewormer,” and an oft-quoted Twitter thread from the FDA from August 21, 2021, saying, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously Y’all, stop it.”
Public health bodies in many Western Countries repeated these false claims. In Australia the Therapeutic Goods Administration went so far as to ban Doctors from prescribing Ivermectin for Covid, using the ridiculous excuse that it might cause a shortage of medication for those who needed it to treat scabies, and that, “There are a number of significant public health risks associated with taking Ivermectin in an attempt to prevent Covid-19 infection rather than getting vaccinated.”
Yet claims that Ivermectin is unsafe for humans are completely untrue according to the TGA’s own assessment report of 2013, which is glowing in its recommendations:
Evaluator’s overall conclusions on clinical safety
The sponsors have only provided one new study (066) in 40 healthy subjects which showed good tolerability and no safety concerns at doses ranging from 30 to 120 mg, that is, up to 10 times the proposed dose of 200 µg/kg for treatment of scabies. The PSUR (providing safety data from April 2010 to April 2011) did not identify any new safety concerns for ivermectin.
Ivermectin has been used extensively to treat 6 million people in 30 countries for onchocerciasis caused by the filarial worm Onchocerca volvulus. Ivermectin also has proven effective for the human diseases, loiasis, strongyloidiasis, bancroftian filariasis and cutaneous larva migrans. Several studies have now evaluated ivermectin for human scabies. There were no significant safety concerns reported with the use of ivermectin in any of the scabies studies to date, except for one report of fatal complications in patients from a long-term care facility but these were not confirmed in other studies.
It may be objected that while Ivermectin is safe as an anti-parasitic medication, it is not intended to be used for viruses, however, the repurposing of drugs is a common practice: most people would know that aspirin, originally a painkiller, has been repurposed as a blood thinner. Sildenafil (Viagra) was originally developed for treating hypertension and angina, and has been repurposed to treat erectile dysfunction. Metformin, an anti-diabetic medication is being developed as a cancer therapeutic, and there are many, many other examples of repurposed drugs; indeed, 30% of US FDA approved drugs are actually repurposed drugs.
An April 2021 letter to the editor of the British Medical Journal from independent Perth researcher Geoffrey A Taylor draws attention to the other side of the Ivermectin issue, that was not being given any attention either in the media or in the journals:
Re: Covid-19: Ivermectin’s politicisation is a warning sign for doctors turning to orphan treatments
Dear Editor
There is no reference in Bibi Aisha-Wadvalla’s article to the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Panel headed by Dr Tess Lawrie in Bath, and its metaanalysis of the human trials, as well as its response to the EMA assessment of the drug.
Or to its approval under varying conditions for covid by the governments of Belize, Honduras, Colombia, Panama, Czechia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Macedonia, South Africa, and the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Goa, Uttarakhand and Punjab.
Of the more populous states, UP and Bihar have the best per capita figures in India.
There is the study of the nine Peruvian states that adopted it, and there are two studies now showing that African countries who mass use it for parasites are also doing better with covid.
There are a huge number of studies now showing Ivermectin’s effectiveness for Covid.
Nobel Prize from a soil sample near a golf course.
Ivermectin was discovered in 1975 by William Campbell and Satoshi Amora.
Satoshi Amora, a dedicated scientist, whose habit was to always carry wherever he goes – along with a picture of his wife and daughter – a small plastic specimen bag, collected a soil sample from woods near a golf course on Kowana, near the south east coast of Honshu, Japan, in 1970.
Omura isolated and cultured an unknown species of Streptomyces bacteria, NRRL-1865, and tested it for anti parasitic effects. It turned out to be very successful against Heligomosoides polygyrus infections against mice.
After this, they isolated the active natural compounds, which they called Avermectins, then developed an analogue of one of the Avermectins suitable for being manufactured, Ivermectin.
Since then, as a drug for fighting parasitic infections, Ivermectin has a long track record of safety and efficacy, so much so that in 2015 Amora and Campbell’s discovery of Ivermectin earned them the Nobel Prize.
Endectocide - treats both internal and external parasites
Ivermectin was first used in animals to treat parasitic nematodes, but was soon found to be effective against ticks and lice as well, and the term endectocide was coined to describe its action.
Merck and Co introduced it to the market in 1981 as an animal drug, for controlling gastrointestinal roundworms in sheep, dogs, horses and cattle and the canine heartworm, in which it is particularly useful because IVM targets the larvae but not the adult worms, and so does not risk the catastrophic effects of dead and dying mature adult worms in the heart.
In 1987, after it was found to be useful against human diseases onchocerciasis (river blindness, an African disease that causes blindness if not treated, caused by a parasitic worm, Onchocerca volvulus. The adult worms cause bumps on the skin, then the larvae emerge from the eye. The worm is spread by the bites of a black fly, Simulium yahense, which live near rivers, hence the name of the disease) and lymphatic filariasis, which causes elephantiasis (the main character of the 1980 movie Elephant Man had this disease). The CEO of Merck & Co., Dr Roy Vagelos, set up the Mectizan Donation Program to donate as much Ivermectin ‘as was needed, for as long as needed, to anyone who needed it’. Since then, billions of doses of Ivermectin have been given away. Ivermectin was subsequently found to be useful against soil-transmitted roundworms and scabies as well.
Like many repurposed drugs such as aspirin, Ivermectin has been found to be useful for other applications.
The article by Laing, Gillan and Devaney, “Old drug, new tricks” lists some uses being explored:
Ivermection has… been used successfully for symptomatic treatment of severe muscle spasticity in patients with spinal cord injuries… Ivermectin was shown to induce intracellular chloride flux in human leukaemia cells in vitro… leading to cell death in leukaemia cells, but not in normal haematopoetic cells. Ivermectin was also effective at slowing tumour growth in vivo in three mouse models of leukaemia, suggesting promise as a cancer chemotherapeutic.
Proteins are the messengers in the body. One intercellular signalling protein that is important for embryonic development is WNT-TCF: it signals cells to grow by telling particular genes to turn on. In some cancers, the signalling protein WNT-TCF has gone awry, and turns the genes on for uncontrolled growth, telling the cells to reproduce as if in an embryo, essentially. Apparently Ivermectin is able to target the WNT-TCF proteins and stop the uncontrolled growth of the cells. Because of this property, it turns out that Ivermectin may be useful for treating cancers of the colon, skin, lung, breast, ovary, and prostate, as well as gliomas.
In fact, the list of diseases where Ivermectin may help is ridiculously long. Including the ones I’ve mentioned already, it may also help treat diabetes, dermatitis, flaviviruses include those causing Zika, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus, Hendra, Newcastle, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, chikungunya, Semliki Forest, Sindbis, Avian influenza A, Human immunodeficiency virus type 1, herpes, tick borne encephalitis, tuberculosis, the tsetse fly, and could (with a higher dose than normal) possibly kill the mosquitoes responsible for spreading malaria.
Ivermectin has a very wide safety margin.
The dose recommended by the FLCCC front line doctors protocol at present for treatment of Covid-19 is 400 μg (micrograms) per kilogram of body weight.
A metastudy, Navarro et al, looking into the safety of high dose Ivermectin says that 3 doses of 600 μg/kg and single doses of up to 800 μg/kg of body weight are safe and have few adverse events.
They say:
Widespread use has demonstrated that ivermectin is a very safe drug with infrequent and mostly mild Adverse Events.
And
With over 30 years of ample use and over 300 million people using it annually, ivermectin is, through its use in MDA campaigns, among the most relevant public health interventions in the developing world…. recently published PK data from children receiving ivermectin for T. trichiura infections showed lower exposure profiles than adults receiving similar doses of 200 μg/kg, therefore suggesting that higher doses might be necessary in this age group.
Ivermectin has also been studied in Australia for treatment of scabies, a parasitic skin condition, on children, and is considered safe for children from 2-4 years old, and upwards.
In one study including a limited number of healthy volunteers receiving doses up to 2000 μg/kg (10 times the recommended doses), Ivermectin was well tolerated.
Later on in this book, I’m going to look at more of the excellent evidence from South America that Ivermectin is useful in treating Covid-19, but for now, I’m just going to show some charts from Dr Pierre Kory’s Testimony before the US Senate, showing deaths and cases in Mexico. Dr Pierre Kory highly qualified: he is the former Chief of the Critical Care Service and Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin.
Cases and deaths in Chiapas, the only state in Mexico that distributed Ivermectin to treat Covid 19 in July 2020: Chart used with permission of Juan J Chamie.
Why did they ban it?
And I will end the chapter with one simple question: if there was even a possibility that it might help, why didn’t our public regulators allow this cheap, safe and effective drug to be used?
CHAPTER TWO RNA, DNA and the amazingly intricate workings of the cell.
In order to understand how viruses work, it is necessary to have an inkling of the process by which information is encoded and decoded by the molecular mechanism within living cells.
On Darwin and the amazing intricacy of what we now know about the operation of the cell.
Until we have some insight into the amazing workings of the molecular machines inside cells, I believe we can easily underestimate how far science has come in the last one hundred and fifty years.
Darwin’s theory of evolution has attained the status of gospel truth in our modern culture of scientism; yet Darwin only understood a miniscule fraction of what scientists know now about the intricate workings of living cells. Indeed, everything Darwin thought he knew about cell biology was incredibly wrong: it is hard to overestimate how inadequate and primitive the Nineteenth century understanding of cell biology was.
In the science of Charles Darwin’s day, they believed the cell had only three parts: membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.
Darwin and his contemporaries believed that the main element of life was something called protoplasm, a jelly-like substance that inherently contained within itself the ability to reproduce. The nucleus was considered to be an inessential part of the cell. In fact, Darwin fully approved of an article by G.H.Lewes that outlines his scientific views and explained how Darwin’s hypothesis fit into the science of the day.
G.H.Lewes described the protoplasm as the “simplest form of organic life… a microscopic lump of jelly-like substance… entirely destitute of texture, and consequently destitute of organs”.
We know now that the cell contains amazingly complicated molecular machines that transport proteins and amino acids and manufacture RNA molecules, enzymes and other biomolecules. There is indeed a nucleus and a nucleolus, but where Darwin saw mere protoplasm outside the nucleus of the cell, this is actually where the transportation and manufacturing system of the cell is, called the endoplasmic reticulum, an amazingly intricate mechanism that can fold proteins and make lipids and cholesterol. And the outer face of the rough endoplasmic reticulum is studded with ribosomes, which are machines for manufacturing proteins, and beyond this is another machine called the Golgi apparatus that fits proteins out so that they can travel outside of the cell and take messages to other parts of body, as well as various other organelles each with their own function.
The cell nucleus, which G.H.Lewes said was “no longer to be regarded as a necessary constituent, but only an accessory”, has turned out to be the control centre of the cell, containing billions of quarter-bytes of information encoded in DNA, and which is able to turn on and off functions within the body, telling the body to fight infections or to raise or lower blood pressure in response to particular events, to manage the use of energy in the body, respiration, and every other function of a living being.
The world of the cell as it is known today is the home of incredibly intricate molecular machinery: Darwin had only an abstract idea of how the cell operates. Today, we know much, much more about the nitty gritty details, but still, we certainly don’t know everything.
DNA: The instructions of life.
Every living creature on this planet is composed of cells: plants, animals, fish, insects, worms, and amoeba. The instructions for all these life forms are encoded in DNA, a very long strand of molecules, arranged in a double helix, that sits neatly folded up within the cell.
Because of the mRNA ‘vaccines’, you would probably have heard of RNA. RNA is an amino acid, like DNA, which encodes information, however whereas DNA has the structure of a double-stranded helix, RNA is a single strand that folds in on itself. RNA is the tool within our cells that performs the essential functioning of mediating between the DNA in the cell nucleus and the proteins that are needed within the cells and the organs of the body in order to perform various functions.
DNA sits enclosed within the cell nucleus, and is surrounded by a set of molecular machines, by which the cell functions, and has been compared to computer code.
I am sure you have heard that DNA encodes life’s instructions. Well, amazingly, every kind of life on the earth has its instructions encoded using the same ‘alphabet’.
Just as computers use symbols called ‘bits’ to encode all the information in every computer, that are really electrical impulses that signify either 1 or 0, (the computer ‘alphabet’ is just two symbols long), RNA and DNA use four different molecules as symbols by which information is encoded.
The RNA and DNA ‘alphabet’ is each four letters long.
These four molecules are called nucleotides and are named Cytosine, Guanine and Adenine; the fourth is called Thymine in DNA, and in RNA is a slightly different molecule, Uracil.
In the case of DNA, the information encoded by these four nucleotides includes not only the instructions for building, growing and reproducing, but also contains all the instructions for proper functioning of all the individual cells and the maintenance of the whole body under all the varying circumstances of life.
The incredibly complex operation of the cell’s machinery
The process by which DNA controls the functions of the cell and the whole body is truly amazing and intricate.
First the template DNA is unzipped from the helix, and an RNA polymerase tries to copy the DNA template, but if it cannot get past approximately 10 nucleotides it tries again and again until it passes this threshold. The kinetic energy of the ‘escape’ helps the polymerase to move along the DNA, moving along and creating a new combined RNA/DNA pair; once the RNA reaches the end of the strand, it is ejected from the nucleus as messenger RNA (mRNA) and the DNA rezips itself back together with the other strand of DNA, settling back into the helix.
This whole procedure has multiple error detection mechanisms; proof readers, in other words, to make sure that the transcription is accurate and complete, analogous to the error detection procedures computer programmers put into computer programs to ensure that files being copied are complete and accurate; however, the processes in the cell are many times more economical than the most economically written human computer code.
The mRNA or messenger RNA is then translated into a sequence of amino acids - in other words, the amino acids zip off the RNA in another intricate molecular mechanism - inside a ribosome in the endoplasmic reticulum - where the amino acids are combined to make a protein, which is finally folded up into a container called a vesicle and then carried to the place where it is needed in the cell by yet another molecular machine called the Golgi apparatus. Altogether this process has about 120 steps.
When the helix structure of DNA was discovered by James Watson and Francis Crack, and scientists began to decode the various genes, seeing that they appeared to be positioned randomly – a bit of the eye over here - another bit somewhere else – next to a gene that regulates say kidney function - scientists said, “now, see, the randomness of the positioning of these genes is proof of the random origin of life in natural selection.”
However, more recently the structure of DNA in three dimensions has been mapped. The DNA within the cell nucleus is not arranged randomly at all, rather, the organisation is highly controlled and determines which genes are turned on and off. DNA within the cell nucleus, rather than being random, actually folds up into a tight spherical structure.
On the surface of this ball of DNA the genes arranged together on the surface by function. The 46 chromosomes are grouped together on the surface of the ball, and within the chromosomal areas, the genes that regulate a particular function in the cell are also grouped together.
Human genome structure - areas shaded differently indicate different chromosomes.
The structure of this sphere is dynamic: when genes are turned off, they fold back into the sphere, and another gene comes to the fore and replaces the one that has been turned off; and there is a to and fro, where the genes being expressed interact with the genome to determine its three dimensional shape on the small scale.
Amazingly, the structure of the genome in different cells has a different structure, according to the function of the cell. Indeed, in a stem cell, the three dimensional structure of the genome reorders itself completely when a new cell is formed. The title of a recent seminar on the structure of the genome was perhaps only partly tongue-in-cheek: “The three-dimensional architecture of the human genome: it’s nuclear physics!”
Consider the vast organisational feat of engineering such an amazing molecular machine represents.
It is so far beyond the ability of even the most intelligent human mind to design something as complex as this. This is vastly more complex than the most complex computer.
If you think this is completely incredible, so do I. Life is far more intricate and complex than anyone in the past could have ever thought, and the fact is, it must have been designed by an intelligence vastly, infinitely, superior to our own.
Richard Dawkins, the renowned atheist, eventually admitted that this must be so, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit that the designer might be God. Instead he surmised that we must have been designed by aliens:
BEN STEIN: How did it get created?
DAWKINS: By a very slow process.
BEN STEIN: Well, how did it start?
DAWKINS: Nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event that it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.
BEN STEIN: And what was that?
DAWKINS: It was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule.
BEN STEIN: Right, and how did that happen?
DAWKINS: I told you, we don’t know….
BEN STEIN: What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in Darwinian evolution.
DAWKINS: Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilisation evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Um, now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer…
And that Designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself have had to have come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable process. It couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That's the point.
Dawkins said this in 2008, but we know so much more now about the amazingly tight organisation within the cell. The likelihood that the cell could have simply sprung into existence is vanishingly small. Even the creation of a single protein molecule, able to fold in the particular way needed to be used in a cell, is an extremely unlikely event, a miracle, really.
It is my belief that a mechanism that encodes information in a symbolic form could never arise by chance. Any representation of reality in the form of symbols - which is essentially language - inherently implies intelligence - the logos - the mind of a thinking being - but DNA, representing life in such an information-rich yet amazingly economical form, could only have been designed by a vastly superior intelligence, the infinite God.
Logos, the ancient Greek word meaning ‘word’, also carries the meaning of rationality, intelligence: the irrational were the ‘alogoi’, without the word. You cannot see the logos with a microscope, but only with a rational mind. The logos is found not in the DNA itself or in the body, but in the fact that the DNA encodes instructions and blueprints means it irrefutably points to a rational designer.
Surely, this ought to give scientists pause to think, before they start messing about with the inner machinery of the cell?
CHAPTER THREE Viruses.
And what are Viruses?
Unlike living cells, viruses cannot replicate on their own. A virus is a simple package containing DNA or RNA, with a mechanism for inserting that DNA or RNA into the cell of a host, where it hijacks the RNA translation process, causing the host cell to produce copies of the virus.
The Peplomers, of which Spike Proteins are one subset, are proteins on the surface of the virus that protrude from the lipid envelope and interact with host cells. They are like keys, and the proteins on the surface of the host cell are like the lock - using the Spike protein the virus unlocks the door of the cell, and the cell allows the virus to slip inside.
Once inside the cell, the virus hijacks the RNA translation process and tricks the cell into making copies of itself and spreading them throughout the body. Scientists still don’t really understand how this works.
The similarity of this process to the way that mRNA vaccines work is not an accident. In fact, the mRNA is encased in a lipid nanoparticle, which essentially has the same function as the lipid envelope of the virus.
In the order of creation, Viruses seem like a puzzle. Why do they exist? They certainly seem to have been designed with a specifically diabolical intent. One can hardly see how a good God could create viruses; unless they were not part of the world as God had originally intended it? In the end, Christians believe the reasons for such things existing will ultimately glorify God.
Not all viruses are harmful, however: there exist symbiotic viruses that are helpful to their hosts. Endoparasitoid wasps have polydnaviruses that are essential for life, for when they lay their eggs in a live caterpillar, the virus protects the eggs of the wasp from the caterpillar’s immune system. This is not so good for caterpillar, of course.
Endogenous retroviruses, viruses that originate internally, are abundant in mammals and are helpful. In fact, endogenous retroviruses make up 8% of the human genome. The koala retrovirus protects koalas from retrovirus-mediated diseases such as lymphomas and leukaemias and makes the koalas immune to infections from exogenous koala retroviruses, that is, retroviruses that do not originally internally.
A strain of Hepatitis, Hepatitis G, is protective against HIV, scientists believe.
Killer Yeasts have viruses that protect them by killing off competitors. Plants also have protective retroviruses; the tomato plant in particular has been studied in this respect.
Some fungus viruses are helpful to protect the plants that host the fungus. Chestnut blight is caused by the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, and when that fungus is infected by Cryphonectria hypovirus, the damage to the chestnut plant is greatly reduced.
But if some viruses are helpful, some are also very harmful.
Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
According to the book of Genesis in the Bible, after the flood of Noah, humankind only spoke one language. Men built the tower of Babel and the Lord looked down from heaven and said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
Today, science has progressed to the point where scientists are able to understand and decode the very mechanism of life, DNA and RNA, and to comprehend the intricate workings of the cell and the mechanisms by which viruses infect and spread.
And because of the ubiquity of English and the ready availability of google translate and other online services, for the first time in human history since all people spoke one language, the language barrier is no longer an impediment to scientists understanding one another.
Science has become truly international.
We are again living in a time in history when the Lord might well be looking down and saying, “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”
But not everything that can be done, should be done.
CHAPTER FOUR Transgenic Mice and Chimeric Viruses: the Horrors of Wuhan
The Wuhan Institute of Virology: a hub of international gain-of-function research
Long before SARS-CoV2’s first human infection, which occurred in the residential district where people who worked for the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were housed, scientist Zhengli Shi had been overseeing experiments on bat Coronaviruses in the WIV. The modernisation of the WIV was a truly international project, and subsequent projects were just as international. As we shall see, scientists from Australia, US, and China are implicated in the creation of chimeric viruses: gain-of-function viruses created to be more infectious to humans.
In Zhengdian Scientific Park, a few kilometres away from the Yangtze River in the Jiangxia District, Wuhan City, Hubei Province, is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a series of buildings that includes one Biosafety Level 4 laboratory (the highest level of biosecurity), one BSL3 and two BSL2 labs as well as facilities for molecular diagnosis and cell culturing, operational research and animal rearing. The BSL-4 laboratory is an independent building within a total area of 3266 m2.
Part of the agreed collaboration was that the laboratory staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology would be trained in the US, Canada, France and Australia.
France actually helped build the most advanced Laboratory in the WIV.
The Wuhan P4 Laboratory
The full title of the laboratory that France helped build was the Wuhan National Biosafety Level 4 (P4) Laboratory in Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The lab was a truly international effort: it was built with the technical assistance of the French government and the financial assistance of a French billionaire, Alain Merieux.
The opening was a huge international event.
On Feb. 23 2017, French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited the opening and more than 100 Chinese and French dignitaries were present from organisations as diverse as CAS, China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).
Prime Minister Cazeneuve attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and paid a visit to laboratory interior, then made a speech declaring how proud France was of building jointly with China their first national P4 Laboratory. He said, “As epidemics know no borders, a united world society is a must to conquer challenges to public health such as the recent Ebola epidemic. The Wuhan P4 Laboratory will be the front line of emerging infectious diseases prevention and control. France will join hands with China, firmly dedicating ourselves to operating top-notch scientific research in response to diseases.” He thanked the Chinese government and the other contributors and expressed the desire that more P4 lab projects might come into existence around the world.
Meanwhile, French diplomats and the DGSE (the French version of the CIA) had long been expressing expressed repeated concern at the lack of international control over Chinese laboratories and issues with ‘transparency’. A DGSE source told the French Newspaper Le Figaro: “What you have to understand is that a P4 high-level bio-security laboratory is like a nuclear reprocessing plant. It’s a bacteriological atomic bomb. The viruses that are tested are extremely dangerous – diving suits, decontamination airlocks etc must be followed to the letter.”
And their fears were not unjustified. Contemporaneously with the lab opening, 50 French scientists who were supposed to travel to China to supervise the laboratory had been unexpectedly made unwelcome by the Chinese government, before they had even stepped foot on the plane. This caused a major rift with France that has not healed even to this day.
The agreement between the French and the Chinese actually began in Spring of 2003, when the Chinese Academy of Sciences sent a request to the French Ministry of Research, led by former French astronaut Claudie Haigner, for help building a P4 lab so that they could study coronaviruses in case of another SARS outbreak. A senior French official recalled, “We were faced with a terrible dilemma. On the one hand, it was normal to help a country regularly affected by epidemics. On the other hand, Chinese opacity in the field worried us a lot.” Fears raised by the French and American intelligence services about increasing the ability of the Chinese to conduct virological research were supported at the time by strong suspicions that a Chinese offensive biological program existed. France had ratified the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and did not want to be accused of helping another country develop offensive biological weapons.
The French government reluctantly agreed, on the condition that French scientists would be present at all research.
Alain Merieux, the billionaire who funded the lab from its inception in 2004, actually dispensed with the project in 2015, saying, “I am giving up the co-chairmanship of P4, a Chinese tool. It belongs to them, even if it was developed with technical assistance from France.”
A French diplomat with intimate knowledge of the deal told the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, “We knew the risks involved and thought that the Chinese would control everything and quickly eject us from the project. We believed that providing this cutting-edge technology to a country with an endless power agenda would risk exposing France in return.”
Indeed, right from the beginning there were concerns. A French security services source involved at the time said: “The Chinese laboratories were not inspiring a great deal of trust, but the government had its own reasons for progressing with this.”
Interestingly, in 2009, Pfizer partnered with Chinese company Fosun to make a research hub in China in three cities, one of which was Wuhan. Fosun invested $100 million in this project. This becomes relevant later on.
In 2009 as well, a secret cable from Hilary Clinton preparing for the Australia group plenary meetings in Paris between US, Australian and European interests expresses concern about the lab and queries French officials on security. And in 2015, China’s implementation of the new policy of ‘dual use’ technologies which allowed their armed forces to use any civilian technology for military purposes caused great concern among the French.
By then, four mobile P3 labs that were also supposed to be supervised joint activities with the French had already gone missing.
Biosafety level 1 must controlled access, a hand washing sink, a sharp hazards warning, personal protective equipment, a lab bench, and an autoclave (image below), which is a machine for sterilising equipment using high pressure and temperature.
Biosafety level 2 must have a physical containment device (image below), as well as all the requirements from BSL1.
P1 and P2 labs obviously conform to BSL1 and BSL2 respectively.
P3 labs (BSL3) must be airtight, with self-closing double-door access, sealed windows and controlled airflow with filters to clean the air before it is recirculated. Laboratory personnel must wear solid-front protective clothing and goggles and gloves at all times. All work must be done in a Class II or Class III cabinet, that is, cabinets that have filtered, controlled airflow. Class III cabinets are airtight and have rubber gloves installed; they are also called ‘glove boxes’. In P3 labs, eye, face and respiratory protection must be used in rooms with infected animals. There must be hands-free sinks and self closing doors.
Until the P4 laboratory was opened in 2017, all the Wuhan Institute of Virology research was conducted in P2 and P3 labs.
P4 labs (BSL4) must be completely airtight and are used for particularly infectious and lethal pathogens. P4 is the highest biosecurity level, and involves Class III biosafety cabinets that are airtight, positive pressure suits, self-closing airlock access, sealed penetrations (e.g. water pipes and electric fittings must be sealed), an effluent decontamination system, chemical showers for decontamination, and tightly controlled, filtered airflow using HEPA.
French military intelligence and the foreign ministry had opposed the P4 lab project in Wuhan because it could be used for biological warfare. The US also opposed construction of the lab. Journalist Antoine Izambard wrote in his book, “France-China, Dangerous Liasons”, that a French scientist was rebuked by the US scientific attaché in Beijing, saying, ”No P4, no P4. It's forbidden. You can't do that!”
Zheng-Li Shi’s research
One of the main personalities of the Wuhan research is Zheng-Li Shi, the famous Chinese virologist, who has been dubbed the “Bat Woman”, because of her efforts at isolating and identifying bat Coronaviruses. Zheng-Li Shi is the director of the Center for New Infectious Diseases of WIV, deputy director of Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory ( Level 4 ), and the director of the Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory.
Her research has brought her fame as well as notoriety, particularly since the outbreak of SARS-COV-2.
Born in May 1964 in Xixia County, Henan Province, Zheng-Li She received a bachelor's degree in genetics from Wuhan University in 1987, a Master's degree in viral science from Wuhan Institute of Virology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1990, and a Doctorate in virology from the Montpellier University, France in 2000. Since her Master’s degree, with the exception of her time in France, she stayed at the institute and built a successful career studying viruses.
The first SARS Coronavirus outbreak, in 2002, which began in November 2002 in the province of Guangdong in China and spread to other countries, resulting in 8,422 cases with 916 deaths, a case fatality rate of 11%, led to many wonderful opportunities for virologists to practice their science.
In the years soon after this outbreak, Zheng-Li Shi led teams from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the caves of Guangdong province, looking for bats that might harbour SARS. A biography of Zheng-Li Shi on a Chinese science site says this:
At that time, the experimenters needed to go to the field to collect bat samples, and the whole process was very difficult. Ms. Shi not only participated in the whole venture, but led the team to climb the mountain and enter the cave. Assistant researcher Zhang Huajun recalled that in order to prevent the transmission of the virus carried by bats, "every time before departure, Ms. Shi would repeatedly remind everyone to wear gloves, masks, wear work clothes, and put on their full protection.”
They didn’t find the actual SARS virus in any of the cave bats, but they did conclude that the bats were essentially reservoirs of a very wide range of coronaviruses, and hypothesized that fruit-bats might have been the intermediate hosts that spread the disease to humans.
Zheng-Li Shi’s research in 2005 concluded that the bat coronaviruses they found would actually be quite difficult to transmit to humans. The main barrier is something called the Spike protein. You see, bats’ cells are completely different from human cells. A virus must enter a cell wall by essentially latching onto a cell receptor protein on the outside of the cell wall. And part of the Spike protein they found in the bats, S1, involved in binding to cell receptors, was less similar to the human version of SARS than other bat viruses, even though the rest of virus was more similar.
In 2008, ZhengLi Shi’s team was already doing Gain of Function research, constructing chimeric Spike proteins by combining the backbone of some of the SARS-like-bat-Coronaviruses they had found in their travels with parts of the Spike protein of SARS, and found that with minimal editing they could make these more infectious to humans.
A few years later, a Master’s Thesis by a Li Xu at Kun Ming Medical University alerted scholars to another more recent outbreak that might have been SARS: six patients with viral pneumonia who had been admitted to hospital after working at the same mine in Yunnan province in April-May 2012.
Only three of the six miners survived.
The type of bat in the mine where the men had been working was Rhinolophus sinicus, the Chinese Rufous Horseshoe bat, which was the same type of bat from which scientists had extracted SARS-like coronaviruses after the 2002 SARS outbreak; the very bats that Zheng-Li Shi had looked at and was experimenting upon.
Li Xu made the link between the deadly pneumonia in the miners and the bats; he said more research was needed, and in his conclusion said that Zheng-Li Shi was wrong: the bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans, and this meant they should keep studying the bats. I am not sure that he was characterising Zheng-Li Shi’s position correctly here, however.
Nevertheless, his thesis made waves, apparently, and provided a justification for Dr Shi to revisit her earlier research. Ever intrepid and adventurous, Dr Shi led teams from the WIV to the Yunnan caves again, collecting more faeces and animal swabs in order to identify and study the bat coronaviruses.
And science, especially genetics, had moved forward in the interim: with the help of Western scientists and in the spirit of international cooperation, they were able to do things with these specimens no one had never done before.
The main questions they were looking at in the Wuhan Institute of Virology were:
Can a bat coronavirus be transmitted to humans?
How does this occur?
What would make a pathogen like that more infectious, more lethal?
One of the most convenient cell receptor proteins for virus Spike proteins latch onto in both humans and other mammals is the ACE2 receptor, which has a role in regulating blood pressure; you may have heard of ACE2 if you know anyone who has high blood pressure, as they may well be taking an ACE2 inhibitor. ACE2 receptors are all throughout the human body.
One of Zheng-Li Shi’s theories was that genetic exchanges were taking place, wherein RNA segments from other viruses were being spliced into bat coronaviruses, making them more infectious to humans.
Chimeric Viruses
This was fair enough, but what scientists started doing was splicing in these segments themselves, then testing these newly created chimeric viruses to see if they were more infectious; in other words, to find out if it was possible that a worse virus might arise, they were making it more infectious and/or lethal themselves.
You may think that my using the word “chimeric” to describe these viruses is overly dramatic, however, this is not my term, but theirs.
A 2015 study by Zheng-Li Shi and her American colleagues Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric called “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” states their methods and aims completely overtly in the description at the beginning of the study, which is called the ‘abstract’:
Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.
Transgenic Mice
But the really significant part of the abstract is a few sentences later:
The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis.
In Vitro means in the test tube, essentially, and what this section means in English is that they found that this chimeric virus they had created replicated in primary human airway cells.
Let’s just put this more plainly: they were trying to make a bat virus more infectious to humans, using the excuse that this would prove that this might happen in nature, so that we can protect ourselves.
Let me make it clear that the 2013 study, at least as it exists online at present does not mention explicitly that they were infecting humanised mice with their chimeric virus. This study was revised several times, once in 2015, and later in 2020, however, and the earlier versions are unavailable online, even in the various archiving websites.
But what is even more disturbing than the fact that they were creating chimeric viruses, is that when you look at the grant application by EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak to the NIH in 2014 is that they were also infecting chimeric mice with their chimeric viruses.
That is, mice that had been given human characteristics, mice that had human DNA spliced into their DNA.
And here we come to one of the main collaborators with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in creating chimeric viruses, Peter Daszak.
I outline the evidence for Ivermectin’s safety later in this chapter; Lawrie’s July 2021 testimony to the UK Parliament is available online, as an indication of what was known at the time about safety and efficacy. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36858/pdf/
The Australian TGA approved it in 2013 for treating head lice https://web.archive.org/web/20230324080400/https://www.tga.gov.au/sites/default/files/auspar-ivermectin-131030.pdf
At the time. Subsequently her reputation was attacked, undermined and effectively destroyed because of her stand for truth.
47 papers on cochranereview.com a key source of high quality research for evidence based medicine, at least 6 on the British Medical Journal, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Theresa-Lawrie; on google scholar a search for TA Lawrie throws up a huge number of results; the first ten pages at least are Theresa Lawrie. https://web.archive.org/web/20230416141122/https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=TA+Lawrie&btnG=
Lawrie, Theresa. (2021). Ivermectin reduces the risk of death from COVID-19 -a rapid review and meta-analysis in support of the recommendation of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. (Latest version v1.2 - 6 Jan 2021). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348230894_Ivermectin_reduces_the_risk_of_death_from_COVID-19_-a_rapid_review_and_meta-analysis_in_support_of_the_recommendation_of_the_Front_Line_COVID-19_Critical_Care_Alliance http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27751.88486
“Dr. Andrew Hill, MD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in the Pharmacology Department at Liverpool University. His main research is on antiretroviral treatment for developing countries. He is an advisor to the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, designing clinical trial programmes of dose optimisation for antiretrovirals.” https://web.archive.org/web/20210127094110/https://academicmedicaleducation.com/andrew-hill-md
https://www.oraclefilms.com/alettertoandrewhill [00:12:02.240]
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-148845/v1_covered.pdf?c=1637584849 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-148845/v1 My what a tangled web we weave! The original pre-print version of the study referenced in the movie is rather hard to find on the internet; it does not come up in searches easily and had to be ferreted out. But it’s real and quite bizarre. The published version, of which there are at least two different historical versions that are not linked to at the publisher’s website, has since been retracted; the authors themselves prompted the retraction, saying that one of the studies the meta-analysis was based on was fraudulent. https://web.archive.org/web/20211116210431/https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/8/11/ofab358/6316214 https://web.archive.org/web/20211124001019/https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/8/11/ofab358/6316214 Andrew Hill now works as an advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.