‘Lab leak’ in the biological warfare century – clear and present danger

by Brian Hanley

There is a yet another recent article on ‘lab leak’. This one is by Jane Qiu. In 2020 Jane interviewed Shi Zhengli, who was then Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WiV). This interview was published March 11, 2020 in Scientific American. This happened to be the day before I tested my SARS-CoV-2 vaccine on March 12^th of 2020. Mine was one of some 200-odd COVID vaccines produced, and only a few made it through the gantlet to market. I made this vaccine because I had subscribed to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) since 1995, and reports of a new respiratory virus in China got my attention. Videos of adults in the prime of life gasping for air, thrashing and dying, with panoramas of hallways filled with dead bodies raised my level of concern. When I saw a report that this virus had a 3-5 day period of high contagion with no symptoms, I knew what that meant. I had published Epiflex, an epidemic modeling system specifically developed to be able to model things like symptom latency of the virus. This virus outbreak in Wuhan was virtually certain to blow up. So when the sequence was posted January 10^th, I downloaded it and designed a vaccine expressing all four of the envelope antigens – I am not a fan of the groupthink that targets only the attachment protein.

January of 2020 was also when most everyone in the field asked, “Is it possible that this virus came from WiV?” As in an NCIS crime episode, the first suspect tends to be the guy that is found nearby who has guns matching the caliber of the victim. But like an NCIS episode, scientists have to collect samples and get them to Abby, to check if they match.

I was one of those that asked that question. I also wondered if it could have been engineered. I am one of the few people in the world that has worked on bioweapons scenarios. I got nudged into grad school because of that by Col. Mike Havey 20 years ago. And I was tapped to write a chapter on biodefense for West Point then as well. I spent a few weeks on Capitol Hill at that time, and was asked to do an assessment of relative risk from nuclear versus bioterrorism for then Senator Lugar’s office.

Pretty quickly, Shi Zhengli looked at the sequences recorded at WiV and did not find matches there. (Shi Zhengli repeated this more formally in 2024.) The SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Wuhan don’t appear in any database until the viruses from Laos/Cambodia/Japan showed up. And Shi Zhengli didn’t collect bats from the Laos Cambodia area caves where the putative wild progenitor of COVID-19 came from. So it’s pretty much a slam-dunk that COVID-19 could not have come from WiV. Sure, WiV was an obvious suspect, but that suspect was cleared.

“But, China hasn’t exactly been perfectly cooperative,” journalists point out. True enough. But that’s just China being its paranoid Chinese self. China is a country with an ancient continuous civilization that was brought low by the West, and has risen again. When in doubt, China’s bureaucrats clam up. (So do many of ours.) It’s kind of like a suspect that the cops don’t like. Being a jerk isn’t a crime even it is a liability. Conversely, being well mannered and likable isn’t proof of innocence, but it is a good asset to have. A former roommate, grandson of a Sicilian Mafia Don who was in the organization before he got religion in prison, talked about being schooled in good manners by his grandpa. Watching that guy deal with cops that came to shut down our noisy party was just amazing to watch. The cops loved him. I digress, but journalists need to differentiate their instincts for giving something the hard eyeball from actual evidence.

Once I had the sequence downloaded, and the vaccine design was shipped out, I examined the sequence. When humans design things, they use components that are known. COVID-19 has 5 genes that code for proteins that suppress immune system response (immune-modulator genes) and these genes were not understood back in January of 2020. Since then, we learned that there are probably 4 more genes that are involved in immune modulation. In addition, it didn’t have signs of human tampering. Humans cannot design the multiple use, overlapping genes that are naturally evolved, among other things. So, I concluded that it was of natural origin. This agrees with the assessment of the 2023 DNI report. This same 2023 DNI report also discounted the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis.

Like other scientists, I abandoned the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis. Not having a sequence match is like when the dashing NCIS agents collect samples, Abby sequences them and says, “Nope. Not the guy”. So that suspect (WiV in our NCIS metaphor) was free to go, and scientists didn’t waste time on it.

"Lab leak" reappeared for me May-June of 2021 with Jon Stewart. There had been another bump then in the Hong Kong protests after Biden had that press conference where he announced he would, "Stop China, by any means necessary." It must be noted that this is one of the stories that can be used to motivate Taiwan's opinion to reject unification with the mainland. May-June 2021 was when US politics started with ‘lab leak’.

Scientists were blind-sided. We had looked at ‘lab leak’ and there wasn't evidence for it. We thought it was put to bed, and then... it began popping up. ‘Lab leak,’ like a zombie rising from the dead, comes back. Far from not engaging with ‘lab leak,’ this story rides us, dead and stinking, hung around our necks like Captain Ahab’s albatross.

Among many journalists, ‘lab leak’ has become established as, "Everybody knows this is true." Bari Weiss has run stories multiple times in “The Free Press”. Margi Conklin made ‘lab leak’ the center of her article, as in “OMG. I just innocently posted this on Facebook!” It traumatized her to see this ‘theory’ not get the traction she thought it should. Suzy Weiss led with it. Far from being suppressed, this story just won’t die. Scientists have PTSD from seeing it again, and again, and again. RFK’s “Children's Health Defense”, is also a major publicist for ‘lab leak’ – of course CHD does this – anything that helps undermine confidence in medical science is a ‘win’ for RFK Jr.

Meanwhile, for the past 5 years, the scientists who actually know about this are mostly systematically excluded except for generic pieces on COVID. Few talk to Angie Rasmussen about anything. Angie has a pithy discussion of this article by Jane Qiu. I think that so far, zero journalists have talked to her or solicited an article from her recently, although Angie is on substack. Few talk to Hotez, although he gets mentions here and there Nobody talks to me, although to be fair, I tend to avoid journalists like I avoid bats. Who talks to Osterholm? Who seeks out authors of the papers about Covid origin? Their names and contacts are right there on these very difficult to publish articles. And that is quite odd. Usually, when there is a science topic, the experts are sought out. These days they are attacked and many get death threats.

So Suzy Wiess, Bari Weiss, Margi Conklin, Jane Qiu, Jon Stewart, why not? Why would you go off with this story, as if nobody could possibly have thought of anything you are saying before you? Yes, Redfield has something to answer for, because he should check facts better. But why would none of you seek out people who worked on the papers regarding origin? Why don’t you bother to contact them and learn? Why wouldn’t you platform Angie Rasmussen, Bari? You platformed some vile people in The Free Press. This matters. You might like each other.

Some of this is certain to be political interests finding ways to place stories. Sure, there are a few oddballs in science that I won’t name who say some very strange things. Some of those I think are sliding into dementia. Brilliant people have a long way to fall and it can get very weird. I have personal experience of this with a colleague. And of course, with an election, political consultants "shop the issues" and anything with traction gets exploited, regardless of merit. Political consultants aren’t paid for honesty, they are paid to win. Helping deliberate placements, grifting opportunists play the trolling for dollars, “you can’t look away” game. And, normies, nice enough people who don’t know, and aren’t good at decomposing arguments can join in – this covers most journalists – most of whom are terrible at math and science. Last is the homicidal folks who threaten to kill, or just go out and kill because they want to.

All of this is part of creating mistrust of science – it’s a propaganda cycle: Ask a question, get an answer. Ignore the answer. Ask the same question, get the same answer – repeat ad-infinitum. This strategy is used in court by attorneys to win awards, and it is used by attorneys and others in the court of public opinion. It is the method used to play the “just asking questions, why don’t you answer them?” game that RFK Jr has specialized in. Every question asked has been answered, over and over, in extreme detail and overkill. He still pretends his questions haven’t been answered. This is the same script as ‘lab leak’. The answers have been given and have not changed. “But why are you suppressing this important story?” “We’re not. We are just saying that it’s not true.” “But if it was, you would have to talk about it, right?” “But it’s not true so it’s not important.” “Why are you suppressing this important story?”

This is the same method used by RFK Jr.'s "Children's Health Defense", which has been the greatest originator and publicist of anti-vax lies that kill masses of children in this century. His reach is global. RFK Jr wants to sue vaccine makers for billions using jury trials. This strategy of pretending questions weren't answered will allow him to sue vaccine makers into oblivion under the banner of a righteous crusade. But RFK Jr’s actions have never been righteous, they have always been pursued with the long-term goal of making billions for himself. And this week, RFK has begun dismantling protections for vaccine manufacturers – this is the smoking gun for what I have said for years. I understand RFK Jr, and what makes him tick – it’s all about the money – and this action against the vaccine court is near the finish line for RFK Jr. The moment jury trials can be demanded, bypassing the vaccine special master’s court, RFK Jr’s organization will file lawsuits that are primed and ready. At the end of this road of RFK Jr demonizing vaccines, and thousands of dead children that resulted, is billions of dollars in settlements for himself and his cronies.

The USA has been here before – in the 1980’s when vaccine makers were shutting down due to these tactics in the courtroom. This is why the vaccine special master’s court was created in 1986 and the no fault insurance program enacted by Congress to protect pharma. Somehow this is left out by journalists and people like RFK Jr. These stories help each other with the “Why don’t you scientists ever answer our questions?” lie. That is why “Children's Health Defense” promotes any story that could undermine public trust in scientists, even ancillary ones like ‘lab leak’.

This nation is in grave danger – no fooling around

This 21^st Century should be the bio-warfare century. “The poor man's atom bomb” is what biological warfare has been called, and the technology is advanced. This phrase originated in Iran’s parliament in 1988, eight years after the Ayatollahs imposed an Islamic dictatorship on Iran. This should give readers pause.

If you want to see what biological warfare can do, look around in America, every bit of land you see was once held by native Americans. The common misconception is that warfare did it. But Europeans in India, China, or Africa made war, and that didn’t wipe out the native people. So what is the difference?

The difference is that native people of north America evolved for tens of thousands of years without urban diseases or contact with the Eurasian disease pool. Their immune systems became very vulnerable to viruses, and they died at rates exceeding 95% when exposed to European sniffles and influenza. Smallpox killed many, but it didn't kill entire villages.

Did you know that Plymouth Colony was founded in an Indian village that had crops in the fields? That village had been visited by a European ship and every villager had died except one – Squanto. This pattern repeated across North America. A settler with influenza or a cold visited a village, not thinking anything of his mild cold, and nearly everyone in the village died. It was this die-off of the native Americans that originated the phrase, "Manifest destiny". “Manifest destiny” first appeared in a sermon in the Puritan colony of New England citing the fact that god was yielding up the land to them, and it was their manifest destiny to take the land. That is what biological warfare could do.

I know directly that islamists want such weapons. The USA already had piss-poor surveillance against sophisticated biological attack before this administration. I laid out what we need to do in my chapter 20 years ago and we didn’t do it. Now? Because of the intentional harm done to CDC, we aren't even tracking measles properly. The slashing and burning of CDC by RFK Jr is not just insanity. This is deadly dangerous to this country.

Demonization of mRNA vaccines

The demonization of mRNA vaccines is also incredibly dangerous. Why? Because mRNA vaccines are a must have for biodefense. We knew it theoretically, but in 2020, Moderna proved it. January 10th, the sequence was posted. By the end of January, Moderna had designed, produced, and animal tested their vaccine. And Moderna had turned in their paperwork to FDA before close of the month. I designed and outsourced production of a DNA vaccine a bit slower. I wasn’t able to test until beginning of March. Moderna, and probably Pfizer, can design and make a vaccine ready for emergency rollout in 10-15 days.

If there is a real, sophisticated biological attack, and we detect it in time, if we don't have an organization that can start roll out of a vaccine in 15-20 days? We are done. The war will be over and we will lose, even if we upgrade our virus detection systems as I recommended at the end of my chapter. That attack is virtually certain to come from a non-state terrorist group, or a terrorist proxy for one of the few rogue states in the world.

But mRNA vaccines have another crucial factor for biodefense. If the materials are stockpiled, 5 million doses can be produced, per day, in a space the size of a kitchen table. Nothing else can touch that for speed of deployment.

Brian Hanley, PhD

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1202-2795

Citations on COVID origins

(2021) Closest known relatives of virus behind COVID-19 found in Laos. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02596-2

(2022) The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715

(2022) Bat coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 and infectious for human cells. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04532-4 – Laos bat cave sequences match.

(2023) What do we know about the origin of COVID-19 three years later? https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rceng.2023.02.010 – This article leaves the most room for a "lab leak" by saying it cannot be ruled out. But this article neglects to mention that all the sequences at WIV were far from COVID's sequence. That rules it out.

(2023) The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters. https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.20-0849 - This article concludes the evidence points to natural zoonotic origin.

(2024) Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.010 - This article is the closer. This article found the DNA of susceptible animals at the Wuhan wet market, together with COVID.

(2024) The Emergence and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-virology-093022-013037