An American molecular biologist warned that research on mutant Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) strains funded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will set off the next pandemic.
Dr. Richard Ebright, chemistry and chemical biology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, blasted a study conducted by researchers from Gates-funded Imperial College London (ICL) in the British capital. According to the Daily Mail, ICL researchers wearing hazmat suits reportedly “infected hamsters with two chimera COVID hybrids” during an experiment conducted in the institution’s Biosafety Level 3 laboratory.
The researchers combined aspects of the original SARS-CoV-2 strain that emerged from Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, with aspects from the omicron and delta variants. The B16172 delta strain first discovered in India exhibited traits of evading vaccine-induced immunity. Meanwhile, the B11529 omicron strain was more transmissible than earlier variants, but has milder symptoms.
According to the paper’s abstract, the experiment raised “the concerning possibility that future [COVID-19] variants” could have more severe effects than those “seen during omicron infection.”
Twenty scientists, including a member of the British government’s COVID-19 advisory panel, were involved in the research. An ICL spokesperson told the Mail that the study, partially funded by taxpayers’ money, was safe and adhered to appropriate regulations.
But this did not sit well with Ebright, who quickly denounced the research. (Related: American scientist slams researchers at Bill Gates-funded university for mutating COVID strains.)
“This is insanity, both in terms of the redundancy and waste,” he told the Mail. Ebright argued that such research presents a “risk of triggering a new pandemic wave upon accidental or deliberate release of the lab-generated viruses. Moreover, he added that the experiment was devoid of any “foreseeable practical applications” and instead posed too great a risk for too little a reward.
Manipulating mutant COVID strains “playing with fire”
“If the world wishes to avoid new pandemics caused by lab-generated pathogens, then it is urgently necessary to restrict high-risk, low-benefit research that creates enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to implement oversight, with force of law, on such research,” Ebright continued.
The molecular biologist found an ally in the person of Shmuel Shapira, former head of the Israel Institute for Biological Research. Shapira agreed with Ebright, calling for an outright stop to research endeavors such as the one by ICL. According to the Israeli expert, such studies are akin to “playing with fire” because of the risk of a lab leak.
Incidentally, ICL had previously received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation amounting to $140,041 back in October 2020. The 24-month grant sought to “model the potential impact of rapid diagnostics for COVID-19.”
But months before receiving this money, ICL published the notorious COVID Report in March 2020. The said report warned that in the “absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behavior,” the U.K. would see 510,000 COVID-19 deaths and the U.S. would see a bigger COVID-19 death toll of 2.2 million.
The report’s prediction sent shock waves throughout the world, and was used to justify COVID-19 lockdowns that caused more harm than good. A March 2022 piece published by the National Review zeroed in on this report.
According to the article, ICL’s death estimates in its reports over the years – including those for COVID-19, bird flu and swine flu – had three things in common: flawed modeling, hair-raising predictions of disaster that missed the mark and no lessons learned.
“[ICL] should certainly face an audit now, and it should focus on the inadequacies of [its] team’s models and on how faulty policy recommendations were derived from them,” the article noted.
Watch “The HighWire” host Del Bigtree and Jefferey Jaxen discuss COVID-19 experiments done at Boston University that are similar to the ICL experiment.