Have we learned nothing like ever?
Researchers at Boston University decided to combine the original COVID and Omicron strains in mice.
The new strain “killed 80% of the mice infected with it.” From The Daily Mail:
In the new research, which has not been peer-reviewed, a team of researchers from Boston and Florida extracted Omicron’s spike protein — the unique structure that binds to and invades human cells.It has always been present in the virus but has become more evolved over time. Omicron has dozens of mutations on its spike protein that made it so infectious.Researchers attached Omicron’s spike to the original wildtype strain that first emerged in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic.The researchers looked at how mice fared against the new hybrid strain compared to the original Omicron variant.When a similar group of rodents were exposed to the standard Omicron strain, however, they all survived and only experienced ‘mild’ symptoms.Writing in the paper, they said: ‘In…mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent.’The researchers said it signaled that while the spike protein is responsible for infectivity, changes to other parts of its structure determine its deadliness.
Experts slammed the researchers, even mentioning it’s “an example of gain of function research.” Gain of function research is typically not allowed in America:
[Rutgers University chemist] Dr [Richard] Ebright told DailyMail.com: ‘The research is a clear example of gain of function research of concern and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (ePPP) research.’It is especially concerning that this new US-government ePPP research – like the previous US-government ePPP research on chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology that may have caused the pandemic – appears not to have undergone the prior risk-benefit review mandated under US-government policies.’If we are to avoid a next lab-generated pandemic, it is imperative that oversight of ePPP research be strengthened.’It is imperative that the existing polices [sic] mandating prior risk-benefit assessment of ePPP research be followed, and it is imperative that officials at US-government agencies who repeatedly have placed the public at risk by repeatedly violating the existing policies be held accountable.’Prof David Livermore, a professor of microbiology at the UK’s University of East Anglia told DailyMail.com: ‘given the strong likelihood that the Covid pandemic originated from the escape of a lab-manipulated coronavirus in Wuhan, these experiments seem profoundly unwise.’
Gain of function research is a touchy subject since it’s “when viruses are purposefully manipulated to be more infectious or deadly.”
We’ve heard a lot about it during Senate hearings when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
Fauci did not like it when Paul reminded everyone that taxpayer money funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where many believe Chinese scientists engineered COVID-19.
The NIH admitted to funding gain of function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan institute.
It turns out gain of function research has been “largely restricted” in America until 2017. Officials stopped the research “from 2014 to 2017 over concerns that it could lead to the inadvertent creation of a pandemic.”
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