Existential Threat | Opening Statement of Steven Quay, MD, PhD (18 Jun 2024)
Existential threat
Opening Statement of Steven Quay, MD, PhD (18 Jun 2024)
Finally, include what I call “gain of opportunity” research in new oversight efforts. Going into caves where humans are seldom found, taking a bat fecal sample containing thousands of viruses, bringing those viruses back to a laboratory and culturing the specimens, where a virus that might be controlled in a diverse natural environment but is now able to grow unrestricted in pure culture provides an immense increase in opportunity for potential pandemic risk, even without genetic engineering.
This is the goal of the Global Virome Project, a Gates Foundation funded, EcoHealth Alliance associated effort.
Their stated goal: collect the estimated 500,000 unknown viruses that are capable of infecting humans and bring them back to a laboratory near you. What could go wrong?
Unpublished dangerous research being done at the WIV on a MERS virus, 30% lethal to humans,
and a Nipah virus, more than 70% lethal to humans.
My preliminary analysis is that any epidemic with a 15% or greater lethal virus will cause a civilization collapse that will last longer than 250 years.
March 31, 2019
A shipment of deadly pathogens from Canada's National Microbiology Lab was sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The shipment was routed from Winnipeg to Toronto and then to Beijing on a commercial Air Canada flight.
The list of shipped viruses seven varieties of Ebola virus, the Hendra virus and two strains of Nipah virus, Malaysia and Bangladesh.
These are the top three most deadly human pathogens on the planet. Shipped on a commercial airline full of unsuspecting passengers.
Reforms
While I find no actual benefit of gain-of-function research, I believe efforts to ban it, given the vested interests of literally the entire virology community, and maybe others, is a hill too steep to climb.