University of Texas Under Investigation for Possible Ties to Wuhan Laboratory
“substantial contractual relations”
I suspect we will be seeing more investigations like this in the coming years.
Campus Reform reports:
U. Texas under investigation for possible ties to Wuhan biolab
The Department of Education sent a letter to the University of Texas requesting all records pertaining to its dealings with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Department of Education’s Office of the General Counsel sent a letter to University of Texas Chancellor James Milliken on April 24 requesting records related to the University’s dealings with Chinese state-owned companies and universities.
The letter states that the University of Texas had “substantial contractual relations” with a Wuhan based maximum biocontainment laboratory (Wuhan MCL) also called the Wuhan Institute of Virology. MCLs “operate at the highest level of biological containment to diagnose, perform research on, and validate cures for life-threatening diseases.”
The U.S. laboratory involved, the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL), one of America’s fourteen Bio Safety Level 4 laboratories, is operated by the University of Texas’ Medical Branch Institute for Human Infections and Immunity.
On November 28, 2019, GNL revealed in a press release in SCIENCE magazine that the lab “engaged in short- and long-term personnel exchanges focused on biosafety training, building operations and maintenance, and collaborative scientific investigations in biocontainment” with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to an editorial in SCIENCE magazine, the establishment of the Wuhan MCL was a response to the outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018. There are more than fifty MCLs across the world, the leaders of which are moving toward establishing an MCL network with shared best practices in order to gain public trust.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
