Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading A genomic perspective on the origin and emergence of SARS-CoV-2 by Yong-Zhen Zhang and Edward Holmes, Cell 2020; 181:223-227.

And a little more.

Some people simply can’t stop writing. Shakespeare comes to mind exploring all sorts of genres, with rarely a dull moment.

Specialist science papers are accompanied by review articles that try to sum up a whole rather than a hole, bringing sense to a field. Eons ago, they were long, dense pieces for the initiated. They still exist, but today they tend to be short, to the point and accessible to a more general readership. They go by the names of commentaries, news & views, perspectives and other creative formulas.

Unlike papers and staid reviews, they are, by and large, not subject to peer review. The journal considers its editorial staff more than capable of sizing them up. As we saw, when topicality is the order of the day, standards plummet, yet such opinions are even more important to the journals. The result is Phil Space. This is why On reading is not sure journal editors handle topicality at all well (Cowards die many times).

Here we explore a trilogy from Eddie Holmes of the University of Sydney. He’s been analyzing viral genomes for ages and is a key author of the infamous Proximal origin paper dismissing out of hand the COVID virus lab-leak hypothesis.

#1 is entitled, We shouldn’t worry when a virus mutates during disease outbreaks, was published on February 18, 2020 in the high-profile journal Nature Microbiology. The main thesis, that the COVID virus wouldn’t significantly mutate into new forms with altered pathology, they got wrong - bigly. We’ve been there, done that (What we should worry about).

#2, The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 was published in Nature Medicine dated March 17, 2020, even though an earlier version was available February. It’s been dissected by many and should have been retracted. A scientific analysis was proffered in the essay Distal truths.

#3 came out in the top journal Cell dated April 16, 2020. That’s compact. Bear in mind that first SARS2 genome sequences were available by January 11, that lab leak fears surfaced by late January, that good writing takes time; that’s more like a sonic boom.

By the second paragraph of #3 we read Given that SARS-CoV-2 undoubtedly has a zoonotic origin, the link to such a ‘‘wet’’ market should come as no surprise. However, as not all of the early cases were market associated, it is possible that the emergence story is more complicated than first suspected.

The first part is clear although undoubtedly is an odd word to use given there was not enough data around in the first quarter of 2020. However, the latter sentence immediately throws into doubt their affirmations. With such a qualifier nobody can come off the fence. However, given the performance in #1 & #2 this should come as no surprise. #3 is full of contradictions. Importantly, although many of the early COVID-19 cases were linked to this market, its role in the initial emergence of SARS-CoV-2 remains uncertain. Yet not so uncertain that the link to such a ‘‘wet’’ market should come as no surprise. Go figure.

We learn that the bat viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were sampled from animals in Yunnan province, over 1,500 km from Wuhan. There are relatively few bat coronaviruses from Hubei province, and those that have been sequenced are relatively distant to SARS-CoV-2 in phylogenetic trees. The simple inference from this is that our sampling of bat viruses is strongly biased toward some geographical locations.

An inference, certainly. But do go on, flesh out competing hypotheses like a good scientist. For example, animals being shipped from farms to the Huanan wet market. Or bat samples being shipped to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), some of which had SARS2 like viruses in them, RaTG13 to name but one, published by the WIV.

They go on to say that It is therefore almost a certainty that more sampling will identify additional bat viruses that are even closer relatives of SARS-CoV-2. A key issue is whether these viruses, or those from any other animal species, contain the key RBD [receptor binding domain] mutations and the same furin-like cleavage site insertion as found in SARS-CoV-2. That’s exactly what On reading thought back in early 2020. Six years on, SARS2 like bat coronaviruses are less numerous in genome databases today than SARS1 like bat coronaviruses. This is stunning given the impact of the two: 782 dead from SARS1, greater than 25 million dead from SARS2 …and nobody is asking questions?

It’s been said here more than once, this dearth indicates ongoing resistance to getting to the bottom of COVID origins. It’s to avoid digging up evidence that could help others apportion blame. That overrides ‘pandemic preparation’. So much for public health and the much touted One Health.

The paper moves on to a pet theme of Holmes, that of zoonosis in the Huanan wet market. Although bats are likely the reservoir hosts for this virus, their general ecological separation from humans makes it probable that other mammalian species act as ‘‘intermediate’’ or ‘‘amplifying’’ hosts, within which SARS-CoV-2 was able to acquire some or all of the mutations needed for efficient human transmission.

To an urban reader that may make sense but where’s the data? Peter Daszak’s group published a paper in 2021 that addressed this issue. They looked for antibodies to bat coronaviruses in people from SE Asia. They estimated that a median of 66,280 people are infected with SARSr-CoVs annually in Southeast Asia.

The first rider is that there are not enough studies of this sort. They could have easily missed a few hotspots. Second, while a small number compared to the population in this region, these are all spillover infections, like those of avian flu viruses, where the virus multiplies enough to induce antibodies. The big fear is efficient human to human transmission which has been attained only once – dixit COVID-19. And as readers know, once can be harrowing. Third, in China and SE Asia primarily fruit bats, but also insectivorous bats, are hunted for food, perceived medical value, for hide or teeth, or for sport. Indeed, bats are most vulnerable to overhunting in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and islands of Oceania and the Indian Ocean.

Conclusion: humans are interacting directly with bats in a big way in some parts of SE Asia. It took less than 30 seconds of browsing to get to this Wikipedia page. As always, check, check, check again.

In short, the need for an intermediate host is wanting, although that does not make it false. That said, they bang on, it is imperative to perform a far wider sampling of animals from wet markets or that live close to human populations and on: While our past experience with coronaviruses suggests that evolution in animal hosts, both reservoirs and intermediates, is needed to explain the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in humans… Remember, this paper was published in April 2020. There was no data either way to have any opinion as to the origins of the COVID virus nor make the deduction emphasized in bold font.

Within its entrails there are some interesting sentences, notably it cannot be excluded that the virus acquired some of its key mutations during a period of ‘‘cryptic’’ spread in humans prior to its first detection in December 2019. Specifically, it is possible that the virus emerged earlier in human populations than envisaged (perhaps not even in Wuhan) but was not detected because asymptomatic infections, those with mild respiratory symptoms, and even sporadic cases of pneumonia were not visible to the standard systems used for surveillance and pathogen identification. During this period of cryptic transmission, the virus could have gradually acquired the key mutations, perhaps including the RBD and furin cleavage site insertions, that enabled it to adapt fully to humans.

Exactly. Both Drs. Morens and Baric said this in their testimonies to Congress. It occurred for HIV/AIDS. We know that the Andes hantavirus is capable of setting up small chains of human-to-human transmission although it has not yet gone bigtime. And while not settled law, it should be on the table, a hypothesis to be addressed with data rather than rhetoric.

The piece ends with some more urban platitudes not requiring expertise in virology; …arguably the simplest and most cost-effective way to reduce the risk of future outbreaks is to limit our exposure to animal pathogens as much as possible. …stronger action against the illegal wildlife trade and removing all mammalian (and perhaps avian) wildlife from wet markets will provide an important buffer.

They must know that China is the largest consumer of chicken in the world with demand steadily increasing. Major bird flyways crisscross China, the US and Brazil, the three largest consumers of chicken. Bird flu viruses are endlessly falling to earth in guano (Skyfall). Bat coronaviruses too.

Can we have vets and those with detailed knowledge of these animals to advise us how we can live with them, exploit them more humanely – once a highly pathogenic flu virus gets into a broiler house every bird is gone in days – with the inherent dangers of the viruses they carry? Snapping photos in wet markets without supplying any data on the frequency of spillovers to humans is not the sort of thing we expect from the top journal Cell.

Holmes is the lead author in another paper in Cell a little more than a year later - The origins of SARS-CoV-2: A critical review. The author lineup includes three other Proximal origin authors.

They start with the evidence for a zoonosis. Fine. However, as what really matters is how they handle competing hypotheses, we’ll home in on the section Could SARS-CoV-2 have escaped from a laboratory.

The 1977 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic, that most likely originated from a large-scale vaccine challenge trial, is the only documented example of a human epidemic or pandemic resulting from research activity. No epidemic has been caused by the escape of a novel virus, and there is no data to suggest that the WIV—or any other laboratory—was working on SARS-CoV-2, or any virus close enough to be the progenitor, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. All scenarios are anchored on past examples, while the last part just means the authors, like everybody else, had no access to what is unpublished.

The WHO has said many times that China has not been forthcoming with information (WHO wordplay on COVID origins) which is unfortunate. Furthermore, we know there were biosafety issues at the WIV in 2019. Arguments that the WIV were not working on a virus close enough to be the progenitor is such a lame argument and one we’ve handled a number of times, if only in the last essay (Cowards die many times). Once again, way below the level Cell should be tolerating.

Under the rubric Evidence from genome structure and ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 we read those Recurring mutations in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein… similarly enhance viral infectivity, refuting claims that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was optimized for binding to human ACE2 upon its emergence. This is glorious for in Proximal origin we were told that SARS-CoV-2 appears to be optimized for binding to the human receptor ACE2 (Distal truths). This illustrates the dangers of inventing conclusions to fit the hypothesis – they need walking back as data comes in. Of course, this is neatly solved by coming up with a new COVID origin paper every year or two. Lol.

Combined, these findings show that no specific human ‘‘pre’’ adaptation was required for the emergence or early spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the claim that the virus was already highly adapted to the human host, or somehow optimized for binding to human ACE2, is without validity. Preadaptation is an allusion to the virus having been grown on human cells in the lab. The reference is to a preprint of Alina Chan who went on to write a book about the lab leak hypothesis.

They mention the polybasic furin cleavage site, although there is nothing new. The sequence alignments in Figure 1b are shoddy and reveal the hand of man, much like on a previous occasion, back in 1985, where there was an overriding need to show sequence homology between the AIDS virus and human T cell leukemia viruses. Things didn’t pan out this way.

Let’s stop for you get the message; anything but critical.

Conclusions

• More science fiction that has zero impact on the virus origins issue.

• Words matter hugely in science. If you tolerate ambiguity, move out.

• Top scientific journals publish this stuff to align with the funders of science, their benefactors, espousing the credo that COVID-19 was/is just another zoonosis. It’s still open. In doing so, they align with learned societies who say the same to ‘protect’ science.

• Funding organizations the world over pay journals to publish work they have funded yet don’t insist on reason when it comes to discussing controversy.

• Who oversees the journals? Nobody. And when they go rogue, then what? Funding organizations and learned societies should come down on them like a ton of bricks. You see the problem.

• The best lack all conviction.

• A boycott would change things fast.

Aside 1

Some quickies about writing gleaned over the years.

• The essence of writing is rewriting. Aka it needs time, something scientists no longer devote to writing.

• Easy reading is hard writing while hard reading is easy writing. An International Herald Tribune editor eons ago.

• If you copy from one it’s called plagiarism, if you copy from two it’s called research.

• When a scientist boasts they wrote a paper in an afternoon, it shows.

• Publish it which mustn’t be confused with publishit.

Aside 2

Couldn’t resist borrowing …and nobody is asking questions? from John Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Aside 3

Let’s break for the summer. Rendez-vous September. Bonnes vacances.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Why are so many scientific articles wrong about the disease I study? By Georgios Pappas, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 4, 2026

and

The Origin of COVID-19 and why it matters by David Morens and nine others, American Journal of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 2020; 103:955-959

Dr. Pappas is a physician from Greece, whose research focuses on zoonoses. Brucellosis is a bacterial disease that causes fever, arthritis, and other symptoms. You can get it through contact with animals, drinking raw or unpasteurized dairy products, or eating undercooked meat. Because it can transmit through the air, it has been studied as a biological warfare agent in the past. Brucellosis is notoriously difficult to treat and eradicate. It’s the most common zoonotic bacterial infection in the world, with a 2023 estimate putting annual global incidence at 2.1 million cases. My country, Greece, has the highest caseload in the European Union. A good reason for not drinking raw milk.

He knows his scientific literature so well he can spot trends, notably a false claim that brucellosis is actually circulating in 170 countries. He investigated how this claim got into the literature. It took off in 2020 presumably amplified by AI programs that are increasingly used to help scientists write papers, notably from China.

He found that the 170 figure got used more often than not without being referenced.

Is the overflow of shoddy publications, many now likely written with a heavy dose of AI, innocent? Even if journals retract such articles, do AI chatbots cease to reference them? A recent study showed that ChatGPT more often than not persisted in supporting information with retracted articles or studies with other concerns. In fact, ChatGPT rated many retracted studies as being “world leading, internationally excellent, or close.”

This fascinating article, well worth reading by any scientist, ends with a blunt observation: It is up to scientists and academia to guard the truth: Everything written in an article, every scientific interaction with the public, every peer-review we perform, every editorial we publish has to be thorough and based on facts. Emphasis added.

Which bring us to virology.

The paper under the lens here hails from September 2020 and is entitled The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters. It’s billed as a Perspective Piece indicating that it contains no new data, just considered thoughts. The author line up is excellent among whom are Peter Doherty, Nobel Prize for Medicine 1996 whose flu immunology papers On reading always enjoyed; Beatrice Hahn who knows the HIV origins story backwards; Jeffrey Taubenberger, notable flu researcher who went on to become acting NIAID Director and a few more. There is, however, Charles Calisher of the highly contested COVID lab leak denial paper published in The Lancet.

We’re treated to an erudite discussion of coronaviruses and where and when they have spilled over to humans (think SARS1 and MERS) and the threats they represent. All good stuff but peripheral. What about the origins of the COVID-19 virus?

In the section ‘Was COVID-19 predicted?’ we read SARS-CoV-2 emerged essentially as predicted: a natural event associated with either direct transmission of a bat coronavirus to humans or indirect transmission to humans via an intermediate host such as a Malaysian pangolin (Manis javanica) or another, yet-to-be-identified mammal.^28-31.

It should be clarified that theories about a hypothetical manmade origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been thoroughly discredited by multiple coronavirus experts.^21,28,29 Emphasis added.

The numbers at the ends of the sentences refer to previously published papers which is required for scientific papers, which in this context are called references. The problem is that reference 28 is the notorious ‘Proximal origin’ paper which should have been retracted years ago. Gilles Demaneuf and USRTK have highlighted the weakness in the paper while an essay, Distal truths, showed that it didn’t have any content that could help the reader form an opinion either way.

References 21 says no more than we found that SARS-CoV-2 is likely derived from a clade of viruses originating in horseshoe bats. Everyone agrees that once upon a time the virus crossed over from bats. When, how, perhaps via another mammal are the questions needing answers, yet there is nothing.

Reference 29 is another opinion piece from Eddie Holmes in the top journal Cell. Off the bat we learn that Given that SARS-CoV-2 undoubtedly has a zoonotic origin… Of course, once upon a time; like in reference 21. In addition, although sequence similarity values of 96%–97% make it sound like the available bat viruses are very closely related to SARSCoV-2, in reality this likely represents more than 20 years of sequence evolution (although the underlying molecular clock may tick at an uncertain rate if there was strong adaptive evolution of the virus in humans). It is therefore almost a certainty that more sampling will identify additional bat viruses that are even closer relatives of SARS-CoV-2. Couldn’t agree more. Basically, they didn’t know much then and things are no better today.

Reference 30? It dates from February 2020 so no data were around to resolve the origins question. 2019-nCoV is most closely related to other betacoronaviruses of bat origin, indicating that these animals are the likely reservoir hosts for this emerging viral pathogen. They can’t do be better than likely. Once upon a time for sure; hardly the high burden of scientific proof.

Finally reference 31. While the SARS- and MERS-originating strains have been found in civets and dromedary camels, respectively, so far, efforts to identify a similarly close link in the original pathway of SARSCoV-2 into humans have failed. So there is nothing definitive here too on COVID origins.

These references have not thoroughly discredited the lab-leak hypothesis. If you indulge in creative referencing, unsuspecting outsiders and journalists end up believing that references 21 etc. have done a demolition job.

Repeat enough times and the hypothesis becomes fact. Utter nonsense, of course. Spin doctoring by doctors.

Back to Morens & Co.

Engineering such a virus would have required 1) published or otherwise available scientific knowledge that did not exist until after COVID-19 recognition; 2) a failure to follow obvious engineering pathways, resulting in an imperfectly constructed virus; and 3) an ability to genetically engineer a new virus without leaving fingerprints of the engineering.

Let’s take these one by one.

1) What if a novel coronavirus genome sequenced at the WIV was not available to others for they were putting together a scientific manuscript and didn’t want the details to be known before submitting it to a scientific journal? Building up a good manuscript can take 2-3 years, sometimes more. Scientists the world over know this backwards. Then what? The authors admit this possiblity for later on they write Because we have only just begun to sample, sequence, and study bat/mammalian coronaviruses, we can be certain that what we now know is but the tip of a very large iceberg.

2) What does Engineering such a virus would have required… a failure to follow obvious engineering pathways, resulting in an imperfectly constructed virus mean? If you attempted to engineer a virus, you’d obviously follow obvious engineering principles. You engineer to succeed, not fail.

3) Ralph Baric, collaborator of WIV scientists, has developed so-called ‘seamless’ coronavirus cloning methods. Clever stuff.

China’s laboratory safety practices, policies, training, and engineering are equivalent to those of the United States and other developed countries, making viral “escape” extremely unlikely… Nope, everyone knows there were biosafety issues at the WIV.

SARS-CoV-2 shares genetic properties with many other sarbecoviruses, lies fully within their genetic cluster, and is thus a virus that emerged naturally. The first two statements are correct. However, the conclusion doesn’t follow on from them. Period. Take the Fouchier and Kawaoka H5N1 bird flu viruses. How many mutations were needed to permit ferret-to-ferret transmission? A handful. Such a small number wouldn’t shift them out of their genetic cluster. Accordingly, these novel human viruses would share genetic properties with many other related viruses and lie fully within their genetic cluster.

This is all the more surprising for we read a little further down that We now know that the viruses causing SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 are all members of enormous groups of bat coronaviruses distributed globally, and that many of these viruses are functionally preadapted to human emergence. We’ve had a look at preadaptation recently (Natural COVID crowd miss target). This preadaptation can be thought of as “accidental” because it must have occurred in nature in the absence of human infection… Wordsmithing. In the mind is of the authors.

To resume. They cite other papers to debunk the lab leak hypothesis which do nothing of the sort. The few arguments, 1 thru 3, do not hold up. Nothing new is provided in this manuscript, yet it is one of many allowed into print to discredit the lab leak hypothesis, this time with big names from outside the coronavirus field.

If this paper, Proximal origin and more contained overwhelming arguments, then how come that in 2026, nearly 6 years after this paper was published, more papers emerge that try to debunk the lab leak, or add another nail in it’s supposed coffin? (Natural COVID crowd miss target).

It ends with many feelgood sentences, not to mention yet another appeal for more funding as per Unless we reset the equation; invest more in critical and creative laboratory, field, and behavioral research; and start finding ways to prevent these emergences, we will soon see additional coronavirus pandemics, as well as global spread of other types of infectious agents not yet imagined, caused by some of the millions of viruses in the natural world, many of which we have not yet had the time and funding to identify and study.

COVID-19 was the first coronavirus pandemic in more than a century, outbeaten regularly by flu. Yet they are courageous to predict that we will soon see additional coronavirus pandemics. Where’s the data beyond some sunny day? Plus, other types of infectious agents not yet imagined so as not to be outdone by the WHO and its Disease X. Sentences without meaning.

One further point, note the expedited review: Received July 3, 2020. Accepted for publication July 13, 2020. Published online July 22, 2020. No doubt this has something to do with the late Joel Breman, then President of the American Society of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, being an author. AKA an insider job.

Let’s step back a little in time. Back to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World published in 1932; notably the line Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. In contemporary virology, that number is down to low single digits.

It is frightening that some academic scientists have crossed the Rubicon into a world where making novel human viruses is normal, where writings reflect traits of authoritarianism, the farthest point from scientific method. Our modus vivendi is experimentation, thinking and discussion, iterated until things hold up, until there is a consensus, until there are no nagging details remaining.

Yet nobody speaks up.

Conclusions

• Cite the same thing a few times from high and many will fall for it, even top scientists. Dangerous.

• Not thorough. Not guarding the truth.

• Orwellian science on display (Two plus two).

Aside 1

Reference 29, Genomic Perspective on the Origin and Emergence of SARS-CoV-2, published in the top journal Cell, is by Eddie Holmes of Proximal origin infamy. Here, SARS2 is clearly a zoonosis while there is no mention of a lab leak. The publication date is April 16 while that of infamous paper is March 17. Holmes got much wrong in yet another paper in Nature Microbiology dated February 18, 2020 (What we should worry about). A hat-trick of virological commentaries in just two months. Why? Topicality. Every journal wanted their piece, even though there was nothing new. Anything was better than nothing (Cowards die many times).

Aside 2

Web browsing suggests that Orwell wrote on the idea that the truth would be censored, while Huxley described a world where the people would have the truth drowned out by trivialities. The 21^st century reality is the double whammy.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On wondering why so many virologists remain silent.

There’s still so much unsaid.

Everything comes down to people. It’s not merely institutions and rules although they are important – for example, why is the discussion taking place in the US and almost nowhere else?

Why did virologists the world over not question the resurrection of the Spanish flu virus? Or the DGOF papers of Fouchier and Kawaoka? Or the DGOF on coronaviruses coming from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Or the hit job, no, endless hit jobs on the COVID lab leak hypothesis way before data was in?

To pass on anyone may be regarded as a misfortune; to pass on all looks like utter weakness. This must be rooted out, or else virologists will pass on more issues until a huge error is made by which time ‘Sorry’ will be a lightning rod. Lawmakers will move in with blunt instruments and mess up virology for years.

Virology has had a wonderful run from the late 70s. As many viruses have small genomes they featured prominently in the explosion of gene cloning in the 70s. Indeed, the two were inseparable. The sequence of the first genome published was that of the humble RNA bacteriophage (bacterial virus) MS2 – a mere 3567 building blocks were enough. The first human genome libraries were made curtesy of the DNA bacteriophage lambda.

The power of Sanger sequencing – the brilliant realization of controlled stopping of DNA copying – was on display for the PhiX174 and G4 bacteriophage genome sequences. The top was the combination of shotgun cloning (smashing up DNA with ultrasound) into bacteriophage M13 DNA followed by Sanger sequencing. It swept in the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) genome in 1982 and DNA sequence assembly using computers. Order from fragmentation. Wild!

From then on, the flood gates were wide open.

Add to that ever faster and cheaper DNA synthesis, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that discombobulated biology, the genomics revolution and use of viruses to transfer DNA into human cells and the reader can see how we got to where we are so fast.

In parallel, AIDS burst upon the world. A mere handful of cases in Los Angeles and New York were spotted even though the pandemic had been ramping up for two decades in Eastern Central Africa.

With polio on its last legs due to massive vaccination campaigns, there was a debate about what to do with lab stocks of poliovirus. Should they be destroyed? Eckard Wimmer realized there was another dimension to the poliovirus eradication debate - the plethora of poliovirus genome sequences in the databases. He set about the first chemical synthesis of any genome. Once done his group was able to make poliovirus particles a finding published in 2002 (Going places).

This made many think. As genetic information alone was enough to make a virus, how the hell was eradication possible? Eradication now depended on responsibility and goodwill, not just vaccination as was the case before.

Given this, might things even go backwards? Yes. They quickly did.

It required some ferreting around in permafrost for cadavers of victims to 1918 Spanish flu virus, the determination of the gene sequence and, hey presto, the resurrected virus was upon us by 2005. In response to a simple ‘Why?’ question from a US Congressman, a last-minute editorial in Science reassured us it would help with the development of flu drugs and vaccines.

The problem is, we’ve seen no evidence of any help these past 20 years.

The editor of Science magazine, the top in science publishing, wrote So would I, given our own convictions, the timing, and what we had learned from our consultations… have published the paper even if the NSABB had voted otherwise? Absolutely—unless they had it classified.

Evident is the gung-ho, we know best, leave it to us to peddle science fiction. We’ve seen this before. Back in the 80s we were reassured by the US Department of Justice that the first US strain of the AIDS virus used to make the diagnostic test was not that of the French group at the Pasteur Institute. Subsequent work showed that it was.

From 2005 on the science disinformation machine has been blocked in the on position.

A few years later papers emerged where a furin cleavage site was engineered into human and bird flu viruses with little effect for some on disease. For others the result was clearly a DGOF outcome. Yet these were not enough.

It took the Kawaoka and Fouchier experiments on the H5N1 bird flu virus to set off the DGOF controversy. Virologists avoided it like the plague. Why? Because of the December 30, 2011 Op Ed in the Washington Post by Drs. Fauci, Nabel and Collins promoting the work. Basically, folks, move along. This had a global chill; an omerta ensued. Just to make sure that everybody had heard the word, it was backed up by a piece in the top scientific journal Science six months later.

This second shot tried to calm the troubled waters with feel-good sentences such as The public, which has a stake in the risks and the benefits of such research, deserves a rational and transparent explanation of how decisions are made. Readers will know by now that the only benefits were private, aka for the researchers, while the risks were always public/global. Also, no transparent explanation was ever forthcoming. We do learn that research that could enhance the transmissibility of H5N1 viruses clearly is DURC. In today’s parlance that means DGOF which is no longer possible.

For info, the DURC issue had been flagged up clearly in post 9/11 America by way of the 2004 Fink Report. Biologists paid lip service, yawned and moved on.

Then there was a moratorium on DGOF flu and coronavirus research for a few years. This is not surprising as Ron Fouchier had been saying publicly that he wanted to do DGOF experiments on the SARS1 coronavirus. As a result of the flu virus uproar, it appears comparable work on coronaviruses was outsourced to China by way of the NGO EcoHealth Alliance in New York City. In the end it was done by Dr. Ralph Baric with collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

An obviously DGOF paper on chimeric coronaviruses was published in Nature Medicine in 2015, although many in the NIH claimed it was not. Next up was the 2018 DEFUSE project submitted to the USG agency DARPA which describes making bat coronaviruses with a variety of cleavage sites in the Spike protein, a design that has a canny resemblance to SARS-CoV-2. DARPA refused the proposal citing DGOF concerns.

And then there was COVID-19. Shortly. After.

The exhilarating, whirlwind adventure ushering in the genomic era of virology saw a singular, albeit tiny offshoot in the early 21^st century. Mainstream racked up unprecedented knowledge in virology, novel targets for therapies, some new vaccines and PCR being performed in tents on street corners around the world during COVID. It was a force for good that continues to deliver.

The offshoot went the way of revving up viruses making agents indistinguishable from biological weapons of mass destruction – care to recall the toll of COVID?

And so, just as at school, the whole class (virology) suffered due to the wayward, tangential ideas of a tiny minority (the DGOFers). What is stunning is the silence of the majority who, if they dare to venture an opinion, which is rare, support DGOF research and a natural origin for the COVID virus. Yet in private, or if quoted anonymously, more than a few clearly have concerns (High risk research and public trust).

They were and are afraid of getting embroiled in messy issues they are not well versed in like ethics, DURC, risk/benefit analyses as well as discussing with the public. They were and are afraid of a small but vocal contrarian group who consider DGOF research on viruses necessary, dixit key members of the American Society for Microbiology. Above all, given the chill from the top of the NIH, they were and are scared that any contradictory comment might result in their grants not being funded or renewed. Above all.

The same went for COVID origins. The number of hatchet jobs that appeared in the scientific literature in the first half of 2020 is amazing. Why? A lab leak would hurt the science establishment, the NIH and perhaps create geopolitical tension if the finger was pointed at China. While it is important to understand a catastrophic event like the Covid-19 pandemic, all of us, perhaps, should be careful what we wish for. Suppose that the western world collectively concluded that the leak of a virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for the pandemic but was unable to provide sufficient proof to convince the Chinese government. The likely outcome would be a diplomatic and trade war that could drive a global economic depression - or worse.

Since when has geopolitics been a part of textbook virology? What is this veiled threat be careful what we wish for? With nonsense like this, facts quickly became dispensable. Anything other than a viral zoonosis was trashed yet there were no data anywhere back then. Many of these hatchet publications were mired by conflicts of interest and double talk.

A colleague has called it evidence-free knowledge, an oxymoron and spoof on the scientific mantra of evidence-based knowledge, which is a pleonasm.

Let’s be blunt; evidence-free knowledge is a belief. People have a right to their beliefs in their own homes. They don’t have a right to ram them down the throats of others and certainly not publish them in scientific journals. They’re allowed to be ignorant, in the sense of the verb to ignore. That said, ignorance can never become fact.

They are permitted to do so because topicality is important to high-profile journals. Some people need to know, some want to know while others are just curious. Topicality also helps with sales and subscriptions. Sssh!

For the COVID pandemic provoked by a novel virus we were s… scared. Journals turned to specialists - they were not experts because the virus was novel. What they got was a lot of talk about coronaviruses, the SARS1 virus, which is fine, but told us little useful.

Yet when it came to COVID origins, anaphylactic shock ensued. That such nonsense was and still is published is proof that journal standards go down, sometimes abysmally, when topicality is concerned.

Journals are part of the science establishment and take themselves seriously. Yet it turns out that topicality is their Achilles heel. Their track record on DGOF and COVID origins, areas On reading knows well, is deplorable.

The vocal minority has transgressed. For them scholarship is meaningless. Get a paper into a top journal and your career will get a fillip, no matter if your findings or opinions are questionable. Papers feed into getting more grants which beget more papers. As this vocal minority has spotted that topicality is the Achilles heel of scientific publishing, they home in on it. Endlessly.

A vocal few are chewing up taxpayers’ money for themselves. Accountability? Zero. Oversight? If you dare.

This is dangerous for it comes with huge financial, human and societal costs. Slowing down science by failing to engage with the hard questions. Slowing down science via obfuscation and waste of grant money. Setting students and post docs on worthless research – they too have careers to make and are set off on the perilous paths. How can you remain excited when you’re pushing 2+2=5 at the behest of your lab boss?

Does anyone need reminding of the >25M dead, long COVID, the grief passing to lingering sadness at not being able to go to Mum’s funeral?

Yet the virologists remain silent, despite the fact that the NIH hierarchy has changed.

Virology is too important to be imperiled by nonsense and cowardice. Which is why we’ll keep hollering.

Aside 1

Please click on the cowardice hyperlink to a short video that says a great deal.

Aside 2

Speaking out when you’re young and looking for a job is not easy. You must be careful. Understand, got it. On reading was young in the last millennium and experienced from the inside the hardball of the Franco-US dispute over HIV-1. By the by, the most complete work on this subject is ‘Science Fictions’ by John Crewdson, Pulitzer Prize winner.

What is unacceptable is the silence of those with tenure.

In these essays, whenever ‘science fiction’ shows up it is a hat off to Crewdson, a remarkable gent; courage from head to toe. Particularly the head.

Aside 3

Comments above are confined to biology something On reading knows well. Many of the same ills undoubtedly hinder other fields. For example, colonizing space is a belief. Nowhere in our Solar System is there such a colorful planet with water omnipresent. Do explore space as much as possible says this unconditional fan of the US Gemini, Apollo and Voyager programs, but colonize space? Give us a break. The rocket is the least efficient form of human transport.

Aside 4

Fortunately, AIDS is a treatable disease today. It is unique among transmissible human viruses in that it kills >99% of those infected. This is possible given that it is a slow remorseless infection requiring some 5-10 years to destroy the immune system which puts up a heroic struggle.

The death toll is between 38 to 53 million people. Nearly 41 million are infected and need therapy or else all will succumb. It’s far from whipped.

Aside 5

Cowards die many times before their deaths,

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar, Act 2 scene 2

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On rereading Gain-of-function experiments on H7N9 by Ron Fouchier, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and 20 others, Science 2013; 341:612-3

The same piece was published in Nature 2013 500:150-1

Limited airborne transmission of H7N9 influenza A virus between ferrets, by Mathilde Richard and 16 colleagues. Nature 2013; 501:560-3.

Lookback can be useful. Some of the unknowns are now known while much of the angst has subsided. In the case of disease, some threats have come and gone. So let’s look at bird flu viruses again, albeit another strain.

Since the end of March 2013, avian A influenza viruses of the H7N9 subtype have caused more than 130 human cases of infection in China, many of which were severe, resulting in 43 fatalities.

The specter of a novel human flu pandemic galvanized public health specialists the world over. We’ve been here, done that. H5N1 bird flu they felt would go pandemic, one day, yet we’re still waiting. But H7N9? The above lines are from an appeal for DGOF experiments on this novel H7N9 virus to see if it could indeed be efficiently transmitted between ferrets by the aerosol route, a trait synonymous with human-to-human respiratory transmission of flu viruses.

They propose to perform the following experiments that may result in GOF (emphasis added):

(i) Immunogenicity. To develop more effective vaccines… We’ve seen this before; fold vaccines into the discussion to neuter dissent. Anyway, a DGOF outcome is very unlikely.

(ii) Adaptation. To assist with risk assessment of the pandemic potential of field strains and evaluate the potential of A(H7N9), viruses to become better adapted to mammals. Pandemic potential is very hard to assess and even harder to quantify. If these viruses are not passaged extensively on human cells and in large volumes, the experiments may yield qualitative results that are worth having.

(iii) Drug resistance. Another red herring. Move on.

(iv) Transmission. To assess the pandemic potential of circulating strains and perform transmission studies to identify mutations and gene combinations that confer enhanced transmissibility in mammalian model systems (such as ferrets and/or guinea pigs). A DGOF outcome is certain. The word enhanced says it all.

(v) Pathogenicity. To aid risk assessment and identify mechanisms, including reassortment and changes to the hemagglutinin cleavage site, that would enable circulating A(H7N9) viruses to become more pathogenic. Emphasis added. Ring a bell? (Cleavage sites in the SARS2 Spike protein as per the DEFUSE project). Will result in some DGOF outcomes.

They close with The risk of a pandemic caused by an avian influenza virus exists in nature. As members of the influenza research community, we believe that the avian A(H7N9) virus outbreak requires focused fundamental and applied research conducted by responsible investigators with appropriate facilities and risk-mitigation plans in place. To answer key questions important to public health, research that may result in GOF is necessary and should be done.

The difficulties of designing lab experiments To answer key questions important to public health have been addressed in many essays. But one of them will be mentioned here (Limits to lab simulated virus evolution).

For the record, the same appeal was published simultaneously in Nature (August 7, 2013) and Science (August 9, 2013), the top two journals who compete for the best papers from around the world. Most unusual.

Readers will have spotted that the lead authors are none other than Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka of H5N1 bird flu fame. Yep, the ones who ignited the DGOF controversy back in 2011. They want more novel human respiratory viruses morphed from bird flu strains. Here, they are supported by 20 top flu researchers from around the world. Perhaps the logic was safety in numbers next time round.

Let’s turn to the Nature paper describing DGOF research on the bird flu H7N9 virus. Its title Limited airborne transmission of H7N9 influenza A virus between ferrets, is a good resumé. Its outcome didn’t follow the DGOF H5N1 work.

But look at the precision emerging from this study: Here we report that airborne transmission of Anhui/1, as for A/Shanghai/2/2013, [both H7N9 flu strains] can occur between ferrets. Keeping in mind that quantifying transmission in our current experimental model is difficult, and that any transmission may not be directly extrapolated to transmission between humans… Note the added bold type. What can any public health official anywhere do with such remarks? Nothing.

Two points:

• For the record This work was financed through NIAID-NIH contract HHSN266200700010C and EU FP7 programs EMPERIE and ANTIGONE. There has been much discussion in the US about NIH funded DGOF research, but in Europe? Ten times less, if not more. Where’s the European discussion and transparency intrinsic to science? The UK and Germany did a little yet still under par, France and The Netherlands a soupçon, nothing from the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Austria, Italy or Spain. Where’s the European oversight?

• The appeal in Nature was dated August 7, 2013, with the Science version coming out the next day. The Fouchier paper on H7N9 dangerous GOFing came online on August 7. Neither of the appeals mentioned that the work they were calling for had already been published the same day in Nature! Words like collusion, connivence and capricious come to mind along with others. The appeal was a veneer trying to justify more dangerous GOF research, trying to ram it down our throats without engaging public concerns. The authors and journals knew the ropes. They had done it the year before. With the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Fast forward a decade. Between February 2013 and February 2019 there were 1,568 confirmed human cases and 616 deaths associated with the outbreak in China. …The outbreak in China has been partially contained by a program of poultry vaccination which commenced in 2017. It’s not reared its head since 2019 in part due to a campaign of vaccinating birds against the virus.

Dr. Kawaoka published a paper in 2023 on H7N9. Although wild-type H7N9 AIVs [avian influenza viruses] can be transmitted by respiratory droplets in ferrets, they have not yet caused widespread outbreaks in humans. Yes, we had spotted that. Through growth in ferrets We show that three main factors—purifying selection, stochasticity, and very narrow transmission bottlenecks— combine to severely constrain the ability of H7N9 AIV to effectively adapt to mammalian hosts in isolated, acute spillover events. Stochasticity refers to the randomness observed in physical systems. Hence, predicting pandemics, the original claim of the H5N1 DGOF research, and preparing for pandemics is fraught with a degree of randomness. Good to hear, but we did know this from work on other viruses years before.

We conclude that human-adapted H7N9 viruses are unlikely to emerge during typical spillover infections. Our findings are instead consistent with a model in which the emergence of a human-transmissible virus would be a rare and unpredictable, though highly consequential, ‘jackpot’ event. Strategies to control the total number of spillover infections will limit opportunities for the virus to win this evolutionary lottery. Emphasis added.

Reducing spillover infections will lower the chance of a virus going bigtime. That makes perfect sense for once inside humans the virus can adapt. Note that the above words show that the H7N9 virus wasn’t ‘pre-adapted’, a concept we encountered in the last essay (Natural COVID crowd miss target again).

A viral pandemic is a rare though highly consequential, ‘jackpot’ event. Yep. So, all those claims for DGOF work on H7N9 a decade earlier meant what? Clearly, nobody had a sixth or seventh sense for the avian flu viruses despite all 22 authors being topflight flu researchers. But we’re not finished.

Another of the signatories to the 2013 appeal for DGOF on H7N9 is Dr. Garcia-Sastre of the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. He published a paper just a year later. We learn that it has recently been noted that some circulating H5N1 strains are only three amino acid substitutions away from achieving airborne transmission in ferrets [The Fouchier and Kawaoka DGOF papers]. These mutations were predicted to have the ability to arise concurrently in an infected mammalian host, but only at proportions ranging from 10-7 to 10-11. Our findings indicate that dissemination of viruses at these levels is unlikely and offers an explanation as to why, despite significant numbers of human infections, a mammalian transmissible H5N1 has not yet emerged.

Yet we were told it was a matter of time before these viruses would pick up the DGOF generated mutations and go pandemic. All hands to the pumps and more financing were needed to prevent this.

Lastly, our data illustrate that in order for a virus like H5N1 to develop into a pandemic it must pass through two distinct bottlenecks. As demonstrated previously, the virus must first acquire a specific set of mutations and/or reassortments to adapt and allow for optimal replication in the new host. Obvious but see above. Second, the virus must also overcome the sequence independent bottlenecks we have defined that occur during transmission between susceptible hosts. Infections following direct contact with the host are more efficient and maintain a greater proportion of the original virus population when compared to airborne transmission events. Given these results, preventative measures such as avoiding direct contact with infected individuals may help curb the emergence of future pandemics.

Sequence independent phenomena! This will put the cat among the pigeons for the computer jocks who attempt to explain away virus evolution and emergence by looking at genomes. Stochastic events were evident from HIV replication in vivo years before these papers by Drs. Kawaoka and Garcia-Sastre. Transmission bottlenecks can go down to a single infecting virus – that too from HIV research but also from HBV research years before.

To a retired HIV evolution gent peering into flu there is something missing. Flu A is treated with a single drug called oseltamivir. When taken early in infection it is very efficient. The emergence of resistance… was detected in 43/1207 (3.56%) oseltamivir-treated influenza A- infected patient. The vast majority of mutations conferring resistance are single amino acid residue substitutions in the neuraminidase enzyme, the target of oseltamivir. In short, oseltamivir resistance is rare. The frequency of a single mutation in a pool of flu genomes is of the order of 7x10^-5 (1/influenza genome size). At this level a resistance conferring mutant is present in any stock of virus in lab culture.

Why then isn’t oseltamivir resistance rampant? Today it would be criminal to treat an HIV patient with a single drug. It was the combination of several drugs, tri-therapy, that ushered in efficient HIV treatment in 1995. Something isn’t right. Sense can only be had if flu replication is curtailed to fewer than 13,600 cells (1/7x10^-5) at any one moment which is small.

Looking back, we saw multiple themes:

• Vocal flu pandemic drum beating no doubt designed to garner research funding, H7N9 being the case in point here.

• Self-serving and disingenuous calls for DGOF work on H7N9 in Nature and Science never mentioned that the work had been done and published online in Nature. The two journals were complicit. No wonder trust is an issue.

• More predictions that did not hold up - the Fouchier and Kawaoka experiments predicting the next pandemic.

• The genesis of novel human viruses carried pandemic potential and with them inherent risks – lab accidents, crazies and rogue states – which could rise to catastrophic risks threatening millions to billions (You couldn’t make body bags fast enough) and the world economy.

• As little as two years after the controversy erupted, flu virologists were learning of stochastic events and sequence independent bottlenecks. The H5N1 DGOF research didn’t yield anything. Virologists quickly learnt that that noisy DGOF research feeding in to beating the grant funding drum, was unsound.

• Yet virologists didn’t change their tune, dixit the position of the American Society for Microbiology who continued to laud the claims of dGOF research years after. (Deconstructing the portrait; Going places; Flights from reason; Perilous posturing. Let’s stop there).

Have we heard any apologies, or even a simple admission like ‘we goofed’? No. It not even like a page 1 news story with the correction, no matter how important, showing up on page 7 or beyond. Just nudnik.

Conclusions

With the failure to confront DGOF and COVID origins head on it’s a rough time for virology in particular, and science in general.

‘Could do better’ is out by a couple of orders of magnitude.

The Europeans just can’t discuss hot scientific issues where questioning and discussion is everything. Pathetic.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Dynamics of natural selection preceding human viral epidemics and pandemics by Jennifer Havens, Sergei Kosakovsky Pond, Jordan Zehr, Jonathan Pekar, Edyth Parker, Michael Worobey, Kristian Anderson and Joel Wertheim, Cell 2026; S0092-8674(26)00171-6.

Scientists get a glimpse of how new pandemics are made by Carl Zimmer, New York Times, March 29, 2026.

A ‘nail in the coffin’ for the lab-leak theory? by Mark Honigsbaum, The Telegraph March 19, 2026.

This is another paper from a group of scientists who have been striving to show that the COVID-19 virus is of natural origin. This is an unusual scientific endeavor given that people are not cooperating – WHO’s opinion (WHO wordplay on COVID origins). There are no sister viruses around just distant cousins so it’s possible to mess up.

In the paper’s abstract there is an odd line: We conclude that extensive pre-zoonotic adaptation is not necessary for human-to-human transmission of zoonotic viruses.

The thing about evolution is that when confronted by a change selection occurs on variants within the population of animals, plants or microbes allowing adaptation to the change. If unsuccessful, competitors ever present get the upper hand.

The microbe will not pre-adapt unless confronted by that change. In other words, a virus cannot adapt to human-to-human transmission without first getting into humans. More specifically, a coronavirus in a bat or a mammal cannot pre-adapt to humans. Humans will always be different. You can write the sentence, but so what?

In the introduction they write that some viruses circulating in the natural host reservoir already have the ability to infect and transmit between humans and do not require additional adaptation to cause zoonotic epidemics.

On reading was but a few years into his career in virology when he learnt that the best model for man is man. Even HBV in chimpanzees doesn’t fully recapitulate all aspects of the human disease. There are large numbers of differences between humans and chimps, something that has been known for 25 years or more. For example, human chromosome 2 was formed by fusion of two ancestral chromosomes in the chimp.

Note that they are concluding a negative, something is not necessary, which is always fraught with problems. Why didn’t the dog bark? The most plausible explanation is that it knew the intruder, dixit Sherlock Holmes. But the intruder could have drugged the dog, it had laryngitis, was deaf or distracted by canine social media. The list is long. Scientists put a premium on proof, especially for publications in a top journal such as Cell.

The paper presents no new data, although it provides a reworking of a program published a decade ago. It’s voluminous with the multiple threads coming together at the end. So, what’s the idea?

They feel it should be possible to differentiate between the evolution of a virus in its natural environment to that in lab culture. This is to test the hypothesis that if the SARS-CoV-2 virus leaked from a Wuhan Institute of Virology lab it would carry vestiges of lab culture in its genome. These would show up in the ratios of certain types of mutations, at least that is the postulate.

They compare examples of natural selection of several viruses in the wild and viruses adapted in tissue culture. Fine, but going down this route, they can at best establish correlations, no more.

If the virus spends a short period adapting in a novel host, this evolution is unlikely to result in a detectable change in selection. Intuitively, for the method to be powered, it is necessary to have a selection change that is sufficiently large and an evolutionary time that is sufficiently long to accumulate detectable substitution patterns. A single or a few substitutions, even if they are adaptive, will likely be missed.

Early on we learn that their method is only sensitive to genetic changes that are sufficiently large and an evolutionary time that is sufficiently long. We have no idea what the precursor to the SARS-CoV-2 is although, once upon a time, it was a bat coronavirus. As we are never told how large or long are, we have no idea if these conditions are met.

We’re given sections devoted to the 2009 pandemic flu virus, Ebola and Marburg filoviruses, monkey poxvirus, coronaviruses of the SARS family and the 1977 Russian flu pandemic virus that inadvertently emerged from a lab by mechanisms not fully known. For all of them purifying selection - rooting out of the less fit genomes - dominates. The extent of the purifying selection varies but this not new.

Their analyses are developed to measure changes in selection pressures or to use their words intensification or relaxation of selection compared to some reference. Changes in selection pressure could signal host changes of lab culture.

If you look carefully there are anything but comparable numbers of mutations for the background, stem and outbreak groups. Only for the former are there many mutations which explains the relative stability in purifying selection. For the others there is greater variation in part due to fewer mutations sampled. They bundle everything into a single parameter called selection intensity as if evolution of viral genomes can be represented by a single number.

Fitness and therefore evolution are multigenic.

Two further technical points. First, it is fair to conclude that host switching occurred along the branches called stems in the figures. Accordingly, they harbor genetic changes in two species and so are composites. As nobody knows a posteriori where along the stem zoonosis occurred, there is no way of allowing for this. This renders the findings unreliable and undermine statistical inferences made from calculations.

Second, they use multiply aligned genome sequences so important features like the unique furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike gene/protein are eliminated.

As the raison d’être of this work is exclusively COVID origins, what do they say about SARS-CoV-2? In the results our analysis of selection on the stem preceding SARS-CoV-2 emergence… found no evidence of intensification or relaxation of selection compared with selection of the bat host reservoir. Hence, we find no evidence to suggest SARS-CoV-2 experienced prolonged selective pressure in an environment different from related bat viruses prior to its emergence in humans.

They find no evidence.

• Maybe the averaging the effects of genetic drift in one species followed by rapid selection in a second species along the stem scrubbed the signal.

• Hypothesis: the furin cleavage site is the biggest determinator allowing increased replication and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between humans. As it is deleted by making multiple alignments, the negative findings across the rest of the genome are unsurprising. Discuss.

Remember also that using serological techniques US and Chinese researchers showed that bat coronaviruses spillover into humans. They estimate that a median of 66,280 people are infected with SARSr-CoVs annually in Southeast Asia. To make antibodies means the virus replicated well in humans, just not enough to ensure onward transmission.

These spillover viruses have solved a great deal, but not the human-to-human transmission issue. And that is huge. Therefore, adaptation is necessary. Indeed, this is exactly the issue Drs Fouchier and Kawaoka addressed for avian H5N1 flu spillover infections in humans. Their aerosol ferret transmission work on H5N1 ignited the dangerous gain of function research controversy back in 2012.

The authors analyze six mammalian viruses that have been passaged in tissue culture, some extensively, others less so. The results were mixed. For three cases there was evidence for less purifying selection – relaxation of selection - which is as understandable given that there is no place more hostile for a virus than inside an animal with acute, innate and adaptive immune systems. For the mumps virus there was very little change.

For two cases, mouse hepatitis coronavirus and human H2N2 influenza virus, the results were consistent with adaptation to tissue culture during passaging.

In short, for the six viruses propagated in the lab there was considerable variation in the outcomes.

What have they to say about SARS-CoV-2? These sensitivity analyses indicate that changes in selection intensity due to human-to-human transmission within a single viral genome lineage are relatively weak compared with those induced by laboratory passage, and a combination of multiple sampled genomes over many months is needed to reliably detect this change. The six examples were anything but uniform as the words in bold (added) might suggest. If your references are mouse hepatitis virus and H2N2, OK. But mumps virus? There was little change.

The authors have no way of knowing which is the more appropriate reference virus. Note they only make a comparison, a suggestion that… no proof. And that’s it.

To quote Cyrano de Bergerac, Ah! non! c’est un peu court, jeune homme! (Ah! no! that’s a trifle short, young man!). The manuscript clearly encountered obstacles during its 13 month review which was unusually long. Yet Cell went with it.

The fact that the virus evolved quickly from the prototypic strain to the alpha, beta, delta strains and onwards to the much more transmissible omicron strain – something the authors pick up - at a time when there wasn’t worldwide herd immunity means the Wuhan strain was not pre-adapted to Sapiens. So what does pre-adaptation mean?

Pre-adaption is in the mind of the authors. It’s surprising and sad that the referees and Cell editors went along with this thin gruel. The hound of the Baskervilles surely should have howled.

This article made the news, notably in the NY Times authored by science writer Carl Zimmer. The researchers found no peculiar changes in SARS-CoV-2 before it jumped into humans. It gained mutations as it spread from bat to bat, just like other bat coronaviruses did; only after the virus emerged in humans did it undergo a marked shift. Within a year, radically new variants were evolving, with mutations that made them exquisitely well-adapted to humans.

Apparently, the precursor virus was banging around from bat to bat and then went haywire, radically new variants were evolving, with mutations that made them exquisitely well-adapted to humans, as the COVID pandemic exploded. Odd, no, for a virus that was pre-adapted?

The article finishes with the take home message that Zimmer has been pushing for a while: “Most of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence supports this hypothesis,” the scientists noted. Dr. Wertheim has helped collect some of that peer-reviewed scientific evidence. The new study adds more evidence in favor of an animal origin, he said.

The quip Most of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence was handled in the recent essay (WHO wordplay on COVID origins). This paper doesn’t provide any new evidence in favor of anything. It provides a handwaving suggestion that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

To be fair Carl Zimmer, like so many, doesn’t have the wherewithal to handle the fine details being bandied around. That’s why peers are asked to review specialist papers. As we have seen, peer review can break down (High risk research and public trust).

The Telegraph story takes a resolutely anti-lab leak stance despite noting that Six years on from the biggest pandemic of modern times, we are no closer to knowing how and where the virus first spilled over into humans. There are some cheap shots at the NIH Director and Matt Ridley a science journalist, not a virologist, and a leading proponent of the lab-leak theory.

We read that The row comes as a new study in Cell calls into question one of the central planks of that theory: namely, the claim that when SARS-CoV-2, the virus of Covid, emerged in Wuhan it was suspiciously well-adapted to people.

In other words, the virus was just waiting for the right opportunity to infect people which is utter nonsense. A sentence without meaning. The lead author of the paper is down as saying “That absence of evidence is exactly what we would expect from a natural zoonotic event – and it represents another nail in the coffin for theories invoking laboratory manipulation.” Ah, the irony of absence of evidence. Remember, the authors themselves deleted the furin cleavage site from their analysis.

The piece ends with Unless and until evidence emerges to suggest otherwise, that remains the most parsimonious explanation. Hmm. Before 1977 all pandemics were natural. However, if you take the last 50 years as reference period – around three-quarters of the world’s population was born since - 1977 pandemic flu resulted from human intervention, 2009 flu was natural while 2020 COVID is hotly contested. The parsimonious explanation no longer works.

Note that Honigsbaum, a medical historian and science journalist with a PhD in history so not a virologist, asks readers to think differently to Matt Ridley, a science journalist, not a virologist with a PhD in zoology who at least has written a book explaining his reasoning.

Conclusions

• A multitude of thoughts and data sets relying on many assumptions bucking much settled knowledge in evolution. In a top journal this paper can harm virology, and consequently public trust.

• Six years on the natural origin crowd miss the target once again.

• Science news journalists, stick to facts. If you can’t master them, don’t pen anything. Your editor won’t be happy but there is far too much nonsense already out there – in peer reviewed papers and elsewhere. Above all, remember, peer review starts with publication (WHO wordplay on COVID origins). A hot of the press paper is not settled knowledge.

• Artemis II didn’t go to the moon and back based on the equivalent of Cell papers like this.

Aside 1

Talking of chimps, overall, their genome is about 99% identical with that of Sapiens. Suppose our nearest neighbor genetically speaking was the gibbon whose genome is about 96% identical. We’d be missing the orang-outans, gorillas, chimps and delightful bonobos.

Accordingly, it is fair to say that as the SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 genomes are 96.4% identical we’re missing a great deal.

Yet six years later, greater than 25 million dead, nobody has bothered to fill in the gaps, aka the thousands of SARS2 like bat coronaviruses that are out there in the wild. The ones causing 66,280 spillover infections annually in SE Asia. It’s not normal. At all.

Aside 2

In the results section they write that Genetic and epidemiological evidence support the hypothesis that the virus preceding SARS-CoV-2 briefly circulated in an intermediate host sold at the market. What genetic data? What epidemiological evidence? What intermediate host and for how long? The sources subtending these lines provide suggestions but not answers. This is a paper in Cell so things need to be rock solid from A to beyond Z. Correlations are not good enough. As to the Huanan market, maybe it functioned like a superspreader event but there is no evidence that it was crucial for the virus to jump from of an as yet unidentified intermediate host to humans.

Aside 3

This paper was covered in an April 28, 2026 podcast by Dr. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of virology at Columbia University, NY. As the work was described as neat around 56 minutes, apparently little thought was given to the paper. Dr. Racaniello has been a staunch disparager of the lab leak hypothesis from the get-go, just as he’s been a supporter of DGOF for even more years. It appears based on the position that virologists know best which, sadly, seems impervious to data. So, for the record.

Aside 4

The recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship is caused by a strain of Andes virus, something we have discussed before (Andes virus).

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading A plan to restore trust in science from a ‘fringe epidemiologist’, an interview of NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya by Ross Douthat in the New York Times, January 29, 2026. Part of the podcast can be found here.

Whether it was dangerous GOF research or COVID origins we’ve seen the life science establishment knuckle down and dismiss questioning out of hand. Some even advocated censoring of the questioners (Censoring virology). Stopping scientists asking questions is like asking them to stop breathing. Let that sink in.

The message coming from the new man at the top of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is, unfortunately, unusual. Finished the sure, can do, we know what we’re doing overconfidence that is anathema to research. Indeed, overconfidence in any area where data driven decisions are needed can be dangerous (Just two minutes).

Re COVID we’re shoved quickly onto the other foot by I guess I was naïve before the pandemic. I would tell my students: “Don’t join Twitter” — it was Twitter back then. “Just publish your papers in scientific journals. That’s how you make a big difference in the world.” I thought public health had the best interest of the working class, the poor, in mind. And the Covid era shattered my illusions on all of those fronts. In particular, what happened in March of 2020 represented a fundamental break that public health authorities had with the public.

To paraphrase, I thought science too had the best interest of the working class, the poor, in mind. It should have but science has become so competitive and aggressive, scientists have no time for anything else. Oops, back up; they have time but use it to forward their academic careers. And nobody up top cares.

Re COVID we’re told that But what you’re not allowed to do is assume that the thing you’re doing is going to work. Right? ... So you close the schools. You know for certain that you’re going to harm a generation of children. That’s a certainty. …There’s a hundred uncertainties. You still have to do that kind of honest calculation, and you have to convey that deep uncertainty to the public at large.

These days many scientists don’t like saying they’re not sure or don’t know seeing it as a sign of weakness, when it is a sign of maturity. Everything must be sure, can do, leave it with us. Yet, um, er, methinks we still don’t have an efficient TB vaccine some 148 years after its discovery.

Through an early study on blood antibodies to the COVID virus, Dr. Bhattacharya realized that it is a disease that’s obviously spread much more widely than people realized despite…I thought that would’ve changed our approach, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I faced, essentially, attacks on my character, an attempt to destroy my career, questions about the integrity of my work that were completely spurious.

Readers, this is a common reflex. It’s a variant of shoot the messenger and a classic in infectious diseases. In the early days of a new infection, only people with disease are spotted. It takes a little time to develop blood tests to realize that they may constitute a few percent of the total, which in fact is good news. Perhaps some saw this as a down grade, a lack of respect given their struggles to help struggling patients, when it showed the virus was less dangerous than initially thought. It also showed that the virus had spread far more widely than the powers that be had any inkling off, so that too might have been unwelcome.

Whatever, ad hominem attacks have no place in science which is data driven. As is usually the case, such attacks tell you far more about the utterer than their target.

At the N.I.H., the former head of the N.I.H. [Dr. Francis Collins] wrote an email to Tony Fauci in October 2020 calling me a “fringe epidemiologist” …What was needed was an honest scientific debate. …But instead, the ethos of public health was that just having the debate at all was a dangerous thing. …That’s, if you want to ask me — you started with what went wrong — that is the fundamental thing that went wrong.

Debate was a dangerous thing for it meant that past decisions might have to be reviewed, or worse changed! In numerous countries, those in charge failed to morph decisions to keep up with new developments coming in from all over the world. 2+2=5. In general, those at the top don’t like being questioned. The problem is that questioning and experimentation are the two most important arrows in the quiver of any scientist.

Bhattacharya goes on with more candor. All of public health found itself in that position. They’re facing an uncertain threat. There’s no real science yet about it. It’s a brand-new disease. The entirety of society is looking at them, saying: “What should we do about this? What’s the wise, right thing to do about this?” And you don’t know the answer.

As a med student, you have to learn to say, “I don’t know.” You have to learn to say that. It’s not an easy instinct. And public health failed at that, at large. So they looked to leaders, like Tony Fauci and others, to guide them on what to say in that setting. And those leaders also failed at that.

A pandemic due to a novel virus is the nightmare scenario for public health people. Add to this the ‘can do, leave it to the experts’ hubris, and you understand how easy it was for things to go wrong.

Moving on, the present NIH Director comes out with I want reform of the public health authorities so that they become worthy of trust.

I’ve pointed to, I think it was a Pew poll in 2024 that said 25 percent of Americans don’t believe that scientists have the best interest of the public at heart. One in four. And then people will come back to me — scientists — and say, “Well, look, 75 percent trust us.”

That’s too low a bar, Ross. It needs to be 100 percent. It’s not politics, where if I get 50 plus one, I’ve succeeded. If only 75 percent of the public thinks that the work that the N.I.H. does benefits them, it’s an utter failure.

Goodness, he puts the bar very high which is good. I’d put it at 90% for in today’s world you can’t win ’em all. Seriously though, it’s good that 75% still trust science given the GOF and COVID debacles.

Meanwhile, many at the coal face, aka academics, keep a CV between themselves and the world. Virologists are never short for talking up their research on this or that virus that could lead to novel therapeutics or vaccines.

Much of what is called basic research is curiosity about the virus, a molecular version of know thy enemy. Endless examples have shown how the scientific meanders in one field cross over into a totally unexpected area. But rarely novel therapies or vaccines result. Academics that cofound start-ups are often pilloried by their academic colleagues as cracking up, wanting to make some money, when the truth is that most academics would be lost in biotech.

Speaking of vaccines Dr. Bhattacharya comes out with the obvious for someone coming from public health: For instance, I’ve very, very clearly and straightforwardly said and recommended that parents vaccinate their kids for M.M.R., for polio, for D.P.T. — diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus. I very clearly and cleanly said that I think that the evidence is strong, and you should do that for the vast majority of kids — probably all kids.

Do read the Bhattacharya interview, for it is not possible to convey the unusual narrative by way of a few quotes.

Let’s transition to the past. Arguments of authority, from on high, from cheerleaders or influencers have no place in science. It’s the quality of the data, the strength of an experiment, its reproducibility and its ability to open doors that advance science. The errors of bucking this obvious trend were tackled in part in the previous essay (Two plus two). Worth the detour, if you’ll allow an opinion.

That said, concrete examples as opposed to generalities are always useful. Dr. Peter Duesberg was a vocal critic of HIV causes AIDS. His views were sidelined until his impact on the then President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, came to the fore. President Mbeki withheld governmental support for tackling HIV/AIDS leading to one of the highest seropositivity rates in the world.

A handful of activists and scientists, including On reading bandied together and crafted the Durban Declaration which gave the scientific reasons why HIV caused AIDS. Scientists, clinicians and epidemiologists wrote the text which was published in 2000 in Nature. There were over 5000 signatories all with MD or PhD level qualifications.

In 2008, independent estimates by public health experts attributed over 300,000 preventable South African AIDS deaths and nearly 200,000 new HIV infections to government policies based on the AIDS denialist assertions criticised by the Durban Declaration.

Many virologists from the NIH wanted to get on board and asked us if Tony had signed up, Tony being Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. As he hadn’t most held off. And so it was until the eve of publication in Nature when Dr. Fauci signed on. On reading phoned Nature’s London office and got his name added to the list in the nick of time.

This anecdote highlights two related points. First, an influential administrator should have no impact on the scientific beliefs of a researcher in their institute. Second, even though NIH researchers are civil servants in a pyramidal structure, they must be granted freedom to speak out on their science and the implications thereof without going through a ponderous chain of command. It must be understood that their opinions, ramblings even, do not engage their employer. A totally different situation pertains to civil servants in the State or Defense Departments for example.

The point is that questioning is the essence of good science. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have government scientists cut off from the rest.

It must be accepted that most government scientists wherever they are don’t speak on behalf of their government but are struggling to get as close to the ‘truth’ as possible, even though that is a loaded word. The struggle involves thought, experimentation and discussion. More often than not it’s a long and winding road and can take years. When administrative complexities enter basic science bigly, their effect is to hinder science making it less productive and as night follows day, more expensive.

There will always be politics in science. Science administrators should work to keep it at bay.

Politicians, please understand that if you want efficient science leading to new technologies subtending national economic growth, try not to make things harder for the scientists. We’re up against questions that have been asked for the first time. Often, we haven’t the foggiest idea. That said, experience shows that we do get answers to these questions, albeit not as fast as we, or the public would like, particularly where there’s disease and suffering.

Conclusions

• Nobody today doubts that HIV causes AIDS.

• Scientists must use their brains and not delegate thinking which can be damn hard. AI and other computer analyses support but cannot replace wondering, the most powerful force in discovery. 2+2=22.

• Allow government scientists to speak their mind. It is by far and away the best for everyone concerned, especially the taxpayers.

Aside

Nature subsequently published a critique of the Durban Declaration from Dr. Duesberg and his allies, which provoked a satirical quip from On reading. Reduced antiretroviral therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is on the cards today, will be accompanied by an increase in deaths from AIDS. As sure as 2+2=4.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading High risk research. HHS should publicly share more information on how risk is assessed and mitigated, from the US General Accounting Office (GAO), Report to Congressional requesters. January 2026.

The keys to a better gain-of-function policy: Accountability and a ‘fair and rigorous’ risk assessment, by Thomas Kelly, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1, 2026.

This is a long but interesting read and follows on the heels of the last essay on the limits of peer review in science. The GAO needs expertise in all areas of government including science. Given its sheer breadth from astronomy to physics, computing, chemistry not to mention biology, focusing on a minute portion that constitutes high risk research on microbes is a daunting task.

Members of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce asked the GAO to review the outcomes of gain-of-function research of concern and related risk mitigation strategies. They conducted their study between January 2024 and January 2026 spanning two Administrations.

For the purposes of our review, we consider gain-of-function research of concern to be any research that imparts new traits, removes existing traits, or enhances existing traits in a microorganism that could increase the risk of morbidity or mortality in humans.

This sentence is accompanied by a footnote: Our definition includes research that could directly increase the risk of morbidity or mortality in humans, such as research that adds, removes, or enhances a pathogen trait that could result in increased virulence or transmissibility in humans. It also includes research that could indirectly increase the risk of morbidity or mortality in humans, such as research that adds, removes, or enhances a pathogen trait that reduces animal or agricultural production, thereby harming economic output and the food supply. We developed this definition to include pathogen research broader in scope than the research.

See, a definition wasn’t difficult to craft. These overseers got through the obfuscation that has so muddied the literature. That said, they use the term gain of function research of concern (GOFROC) which is unfortunate as the Presidential Executive Order of May 2025 uses dangerous GOF which is clearer.

They bend over backwards to describe their approach, the data bases used, the fields of the specialists consulted and their anonymous responses. It’s honest but flawed in places.

They limit their analysis of peer-reviewed literature to the period 2019 to 2024. We chose this period to include sources published 1 year prior to and 1 year after the COVID-19 pandemic. This makes no sense scientifically even if you believe the SARS2 coronavirus was engineered in a lab. As the DGOF controversy erupted in late 2011 you should start from there. The last thing to do is to exclude material and thoughts. Importantly, most of what needed to be said was public by 2015.

As it happens this five year window reduces their analysis to merely 14 publications, 11 contained information pertinent to our review: seven commentaries, two research articles, one e-book, and one news update.

They don’t seem to recognize that when you have just two research articles and 7 commentaries that’s not enough data. The two papers were certainly peer-reviewed but the commentaries? Some were perhaps facilitated by the authors being journal editors too. A couple are problematic and have been critiqued in a couple of essays (Deconstructing the portrait, Flights from reason).

As to the news update, since when have any been peer-reviewed?

The GAO didn’t seem worried by this dearth of material which doesn’t stop them from writing that Our review of literature published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and biosecurity reports found that one outcome of gain-of-function research of concern has been the advancement of scientific knowledge of pathogens.

Hmm, scientific knowledge? Five of these sources [the 14 publications] discussed how two studies published in 2012 showed that the H5N1 avian influenza virus, also known as bird flu, could transmit between mammals via respiratory droplets using ferrets as a model. Readers will recognize the two studies to be those of Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka.

Was that scientific knowledge useful? Way more importantly, did those two papers advance the field? Fourteen years down the line the answer is no. For the record, this was clear back in 2012. If scientific knowledge, whatever that means, is just another peer-reviewed paper that’s a very low bar.

Then comes across an extraordinary conclusion: We considered the two studies referenced by these sources to be gain-of-function research of concern because they involved research that imparted new traits to the H5N1 virus that could increase the virus’s risk of causing morbidity or mortality in humans.

These two papers by Fouchier and Kawaoka showed how virology can have up and down sides. Dual use research of concern, according to 2005 parlance, ended up being described as GOF research by 2102. The GAO’s own definition was sculpted by others around these two papers, yet the GAO has the temerity to say their definition is robust as it scores these two papers correctly. Can’t they see the circular logic?

Being outsiders, aka not practicing virologists, it is understandable they make some errors. After all, the editorial teams of specialized science journals send manuscripts out for reviewing precisely because they don’t have the inside knowledge. Peer reviewers are, at their best, subject matter experts who are to provide an objective and unbiased evaluation and constitute the first line of quality control. Serious peer review starts after publication when someone, somewhere, might spot a flaw that weakens the paper, or even discombobulates it.

Peer-review can collapse when the down sides of science come to the fore. This is because the kneejerk reaction or corporate response is often to push negatives under the carpet or talk over them. For example, did the COVID pandemic result from a lab leak? Inadmissible first strikes from authors in Nature Medicine and The Lancet tried to squash it when there was no data either way (Distal truths). The DGOF issue was nipped in the bud by top NIH administrators by way of an Op Ed in the Washington Post entitled A flu research is a risk worth taking. (Chilled virology). This non peer-reviewed piece had a powerful chill effect on virologists for who would dare face down these people publicly?

The GAO committee interviewed eight subject matter experts, aka people who probably would be peer-reviewing manuscripts for scientific journals or grant proposals for, say, the NIH.

Four of eight experts we spoke with said gain-of-function research of concern helped lead to the development of vaccines and therapeutics for specific viruses, such as COVID-19. For example, one of these experts told us that this research was used to quickly generate SARS-CoV-2 in a cell culture to test whether a COVID-19 vaccine was effective. It’s sad that such vaccine rubbish is still rolled out when there is no evidence to support such a conclusion.

Evidence? In contrast, four experts disagreed. One of these experts told us that the information obtained from gain-of-function research of concern experiments has no practical benefit and is not used to develop medical countermeasures. The expert stated that medical countermeasures are developed in response to disease threats detected in nature, rather than those created in a laboratory. The expert noted that, even if a gain-of-function study identifies a dangerous pathogen mutation, it is unknown whether that strain will occur in nature and whether medical countermeasures will be needed to combat it.

• This means there is no consensus among the eight experts.

• Yet throughout the DGOF controversy, 2012 to present, almost no virologists publicly criticized the Fouchier and Kawaoka experiments. No doubt the cover of anonymity provided by the GAO helped people say what they really think. Courage was and still is in short supply.

• How can you trust what is written in papers when in private there is such a disconnect?

• Agree with these dissenting remarks.

• On reading wasn’t approached by the GAO.

…we found that there was broad consensus among the sources we reviewed that this research can pose biosafety and biosecurity risks. Moreover, these risks are exacerbated by pathogens that have been altered to transmit more easily or to increase disease severity, potentially causing widespread and uncontrollable disease and posing significant consequences for the public and global health if released accidently or deliberately. One biosecurity report specifically noted the potential for a loss of public trust if a laboratory accident involving a modified pathogen were to occur or if this research were intentionally misused to cause harm.

• Obvious.

• You need very good arguments to go down any DGOF road. It’s best done with a scientific consensus backing you up. Arguments from authority as per the Washington Post Op Ed have no place in science.

• Public trust is acknowledged in private but so few bring it up in public.

Biosecurity risks could include the theft or release of a modified pathogen by a malevolent actor; or the theft or misuse of information obtained from gain-of-function research of concern experiments to create a biological weapon.

Although the GAO might have missed some of the finer points in virology, no doubt due to the lack of courage from virologists, they didn’t miss the bigger ones.

However, one expert said that, based on the available evidence, the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by gain-of-function research of concern “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Another of the experts raised the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic could have resulted from a laboratory accident but noted that other explanations for the origins of the pandemic were also plausible.

Goodness. They interview just eight experts and a quarter of them are worried about SARS-CoV-2 emerging from a lab. That’s 25% and again a huge disconnect with the ‘reality’ that most virologists considering it to be of natural origin. The anonymity/courage (lack of) duo once again.

Probably not having enough specialist wherewithal to tranche between the conflicting virology, the report recommends that The Secretary of Health and Human Services should work with HHS funding agencies to ensure that key information on the agencies’ risk reviews of extramural research and intramural projects involving pathogens are publicly shared with researchers, Congress, and the public, as appropriate.

An appeal for a more transparency, as appropriate. Don’t overdo it, of course.

The recent opinion by Thomas Kelly in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is worth reading in full. Kelly is a political scientist specializing in biosecurity policy and federal oversight of high-risk research. He critiques the specialist Gryphon report on the risks and benefits of gain of function research on viruses which dates from the Obama Administration. Apparently it plays down the risks and plays up the benefits, a phenomenon that has been known for a while.

The flaws in the Gryphon report were not subtle—excluded risks, misrepresented accident history, and contradictions between stated methodology and actual analysis were evident to careful readers.

The author would like to see three changes in DGOF oversight. We’ll focus on just one. First, independent risk assessment. Future policy should commission new analysis from institutions without ties to virology research—organizations like the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office’s technical analysis divisions, or independent risk assessment firms.

• We’ve seen how hard it was for the GAO to provide adequate oversight of DGOF research. This is due primarily to the biased positions of virologists and the breakdown of peer review. The GAO simply cannot do it, nor could the Congressional Budget Office.

• If you want virology to deliver, you need virologists to provide objective help which is often siloed. On reading wouldn’t be capable of advising seriously on the future of bacteriology. Sure, there are some overlapping areas, notably the immune response, but otherwise he’d be quickly out of his depth.

The task before us is to get virologists to be courageous and say what they believe. This requires that they not be shot down by top administrators or those involved in evaluating their career trajectories. Without their knowledge the health of citizens will be in the hands of the unknowing which will result in harm. You don’t ask your dermatologist about a heart condition. Virologists and overseers must establish a new relationship.

We see the down sides when administrators fail to allow open discussion, when peer review on sensitive topics is questionable and it’s a mess! You may not disagree with the current NIH Director on any number of issues, something that is allowable, but cut him some slack and leave him time to get open discussion back to normal.

Politicians, part of your job is oversight. Absolutely. Yet please don’t think that anyone can understand science. We talk innumerable tongues. It’s a fact, it’s not a smokescreen to crowd you out. Seek out translators who don’t use can do, leave it to us rhetoric and you might have a chance.

Conclusions

The GAO, like oversight bodies and committees the world over have a very difficult job when they delve into science.

When there is a whiff of blame the peer-reviewed scientific literature is no longer reliable and corrupts oversight. Let this been understood.

Perhaps more virologists should be interviewed anonymously. The lack of courage is sad. The reasons for this need to be explored seriously for kowtowing or cringing scientists are not going to protect the health of US citizens. Individual courage is needed.

Aside 1

Among background information we read that Pathogens undergo natural alterations in the wild outside any human manipulation… Some changes that allow pathogens to infect a new host can increase the risk of a pandemic. We do know this; it’s been going on for more than 4 billion years. Darwin’s wonderfully compact formula from 1859 ‘descent with modification’ crystalizes this.

Aside 2

The Gryphon report was mentioned in the essay New USG DURC policy.

Aside 3

Re speaking in tongues, in the last millennium when there was still the odd dinosaur roaming the planet, On reading and a fellow student were discussing their work over several beers in a pub in Oxford. After a while the gent next to us leant over and said, ‘I’ve been listening to you for twenty minutes and haven’t understood a word.’

Aside 4

On reading generally doesn’t answer questions for he’s had a go; it’s for others to have theirs. That said, comments are read while references are appreciated. The recent Wertheim/Worobey paper (Havens et al., 2026, Cell 189, 1–14) is in the works - not a fan. The thesis by William Vogel is being digested. The cadence needs to be reduced to an assay every fortnight for a few months.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading COVID’s origins: what we do and don’t know by Marietjie Vente and 22 colleagues. Nature 2026; 650:829-833.

A recent opinion piece in Nature on the origins of the COVID-19 virus was authored by 23 of the 27 members of the World Health Organization’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens or SAGO committee. As the WHO had previously published a 78 page report back in June 2025, you wonder what information was left out requiring a 5 page piece in Nature.

…with the politicization and speculation around the origin of the pandemic showing no signs of abating, 23 of us mark the close of SAGO’s first chapter by clarifying our position on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the science behind it in a more accessible way. Yet this has been going on since the spring of 2020. Nothing has changed since their report came out.

Whatever, up front they write we determined that most of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 has a zoonotic origin, meaning that it came from an animal. But until requests for additional information are met or more data become available, there can be no certainty about when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 entered the human population. Think about that a second. By the second paragraph they deliver an early conclusion which they immediately suspend for lack of information. The corollary is that the peer-reviewed scientific evidence is inadequate, their early conclusion premature. Thanks for pointing this out.

We used published scientific studies relevant to all the areas we were investigating, which is fine except that they buy into Two distinct genetic lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were identified in samples from early cases associated with the Huanan market… These genomes differ by two mutations. One was derived from the other according to a peer reviewed paper from a Chinese group: All of them may have evolved from one common ancestor, probably lineage A0 or an unidentified close relative, and jumped into human via a single zoonotic event.

Readers, please understand that a master’s level knowledge of RNA viruses is enough to appreciate that the two genetic lineages cannot be distinct. Reading this in a top journal in 2026 is a red flag. This shouldn’t happen and makes you wonder just how much they understood or whether there were other agendas.

Under the heading SARS-CoV-2 originated from an accidental lab-related event we read that Much of the information needed to assess this hypothesis has not been made available to the WHO or SAGO. Knowing that much information is missing, knowing that the Chinese government has not provided the necessary information that we have requested since the launch of SAGO in November 2021 to investigate a potential biosafety breach… the authors go on to note that Most of the scientific reviews we assessed support the zoonotic-origins hypothesis and find no conclusive evidence for a lab leak.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Take the mechanism by which the vast diversity of human antibody genes is created. Three enzymes are critical. Now take out two of them, TdT and AID. Scientists would be fretting trying to understand their findings and doing more experiments. There might be moments when some might conclude that most of the scientific reviews we assessed support the genetic rearrangement of antibody genes catalyzed by the enzyme RAG. Unlike the antibody example, SAGO members know data is lacking, as we all do. Accordingly, premature conclusions like most of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 has a zoonotic origin stack the deck. They’re either afraid to say they don’t know or they have an agenda.

Yet despite not knowing, how is it that the natural zoonosis hypothesis has the overwhelming support of virologists the world over? Let’s keep going for we’re not finished.

They are highly dismissive of the few reports they have seen from the intelligence communities. Most of the published government-agency and intelligence reports that we assessed… assign levels of confidence, such as ‘low’ or ‘moderate’, to the lab-leak or zoonotic-origins hypotheses. But such reports deliver different conclusions, seemingly on the basis of political rather than scientific arguments.

In short, published intelligence reports, which focus mainly on biosafety and biosecurity policies and practices at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, are speculative. None provides concrete evidence of a breach. That won’t make you any friends. They’ve been asking for more reports unsuccessfully. It is possible they’ve not seen the juicy ones, yet they have no qualms about accusing actors of political bias. Intelligence reports are famously provided on a need-to-know basis. Until more are declassified nobody can draw an opinion.

Their dismissive tone is all the sadder in that they pushed the erroneous sentence that Two distinct genetic lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were identified in samples from early cases associated with the Huanan market which is 100% wrong.

Six paragraphs are devoted to the DEFUSE research proposal which outlined the genesis of manipulated bat coronavirus viruses by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with some input from US collaborators. For the record, the WIV had been performing dangerous GOF research prior to the COVID pandemic. While the DEFUSE project didn’t say they’d splice a furin cleavage site into a bat coronavirus Spike gene, earlier drafts did. As is known the DEFUSE project was turned down by the US agency DARPA.

They say that even if the proposal had been funded, it is scientifically implausible for SARS-CoV-2 to have been derived from the genome elements in the chimeric vaccine backbone or proposed spike protein. Perfectly correct. However, it is rare for scientists to give up on a pet project. Usually what happens is the proposal is repackaged and submitted to another agency. They could have included a new bat coronavirus backbone of their own hat they had just come up with, one that would emancipate them from US hegemony and/or oversight. And here the lack of cooperation from China, which the SAGO members bemoan, means we cannot rule this out.

Their most pernicious argument is We also stress that formal scientific evaluation of findings requires peer-reviewed publication. Peer review means prior examination by anywhere from two to five scientists, known as referees, who know the subject. Generally, they give unbiased assessment. Some are sloppy and provide a few lines, yes! Others can be wonderfully detailed and helpful. These days, the journal invariably asks the referee for an opinion, for example, is the manuscript suitable for this journal? Everything is possible going down to squeezing out a competitor.

In short, peer review has objective and subjective components. Referees’ comments are usually anonymous. It works by and large but it is not a perfect system. Rogue papers get published, even in the big journals.

It doesn’t work well when something goes wrong or if there is a whiff of blame. The idea that civilian virologists were revving up virus making the equivalent of novel biological weapons was nipped in the bud by the December 2011 Op Ed in the Washington Post entitled A flu risk worth taking. (Chilled virology). Its authors were Drs. Fauci, Nabel and Collins at the top of the NIH. It shut down any discussion to the contrary for which virologists would be so crazy as to bite the hand that feeds them?

Something similar happened when the paper describing the resurrection of the Spanish flu virus was published (1918 and all that).

So, when rumors surfaced in the spring of 2020 that the SARS2 coronavirus was Made in China, pre-emptive strikes were launched in the top science journals Nature Medicine and The Lancet. Although both were rife with conflicts of interest and double talk, they shut down discussion. For a while.

Peer-review breaks down when something goes wrong. It is the classic group reflex even though everyone on the planet was impacted. So, when SAGO members insist on peer reviewed scientific publications it’s mission impossible.

If peer-reviewed publications are what count, why are you bothering us with a critique of speculative intelligence reports that use political rather than scientific arguments? Next…

Repeated requests have been made to the Chinese government by the WHO to release the health records of research-lab staff, biosafety and biosecurity protocols, and audits or independent inspections conducted to verify the safety procedures of labs in Wuhan… In our view, the government has not provided the necessary information that we have requested since the launch of SAGO in November 2021 to investigate a potential biosafety breach.

Everybody would like to see such material. If made available, the science writers for Nature, Science, The New York Times and everybody else would have a field day. There would be innumerable quotes from virologists, while podcasters would work overtime. Would the commentaries be devoid of speculation or political bias? No, although some would.

Yet to follow these ex-SAGO members only a peer-reviewed publications matter. And this means involvement of journals and their editors that have been pushing the natural hypothesis well beyond what the data says. It would involve some virologists who have shown themselves to be biased, to support cancel culture and censorship.

Reasoned arguments are worth having wherever they come from. Scientists the world over can integrate data, assess whether it is internally consistent and identify any gaps. It’s what they’re trained to do. If a scientist says something outside of a peer-reviewed publication, it does not invalidate their words. It is the confrontation of ideas, data and analyses that allows the field to advance.

Finally, one hugely important point about peer-review. What two referees recommend to Nature or Science about a paper doesn’t validate the work. It’s merely the beginning of quality control. Real peer review starts after it’s published.

There maybe someone in a lab in Japan, Brazil or Switzerland who spots something the referees missed. This happens more frequently than many readers might suspect. It is through this trial-and-error process that science becomes so strong.

This is why preventive strikes, like the Op Ed in the Washington Post supporting dangerous GOF research on viruses, like the Proximal origins paper in Nature medicine, SAGO limiting their brief to peer-reviewed papers and calls for censorship are so damaging for science. There is no better way to lose the public’s trust than to fix the deck.

When virologists batten down of the hatches with articles in journals, scientific or otherwise, which have the blessing of the editors and top scientific administrators, dissenting voices go elsewhere. Today that means newspapers, Substack, podcasts and social media. And just like the scientific literature, you need to sift through the evidence, separating the wheat from the chaff.

Judging by the attitude of virologists who were arguing that SARS-CoV-2 arose from a spillover back in the spring of 2020, when there was no data around at the time, plus the steady stream of lax peer reviewed papers – not only are these papers sloppy, peer-review must have been at the same level in order for them to be published in top journals – in favor of a natural origin, the response will probably be no different to the situation today.

At the time of the Watergate scandal some wit came up with, ‘You can Nixon some of the people all the time, you can Nixon all the people some of the time, but you can’t Nixon all the people all the time’. For something as big as COVID it wasn’t possible for virologists, administrators and journal editors to COVID all the people all the time.

Conclusions

• Cut the nonsense about peer-review. Some of us have more than enough scientific baggage to amply review this sort of material and express themselves in scientific journals or elsewhere.

• There has been too much nonsense on COVID origins in peer-reviewed papers.

• There have been some remarkably good analyses of the data outside of peer-reviewed scientific journals. As a former referee for many scientific journals, On reading could recommend a number.

• SAGO simply served up some sugo.

Aside 1

Under outstanding questions we learn that No animal testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 has ever been reported in China. Yet it is unlikely that none was infected given the number of susceptible species that were in markets in the Wuhan region during the pandemic — and given that hundreds of infections were reported in species, such as ferrets, tigers, domestic cats and white-tailed deer, in the rest of the world from 2020 to 2023 (see go.nature.com/3nvqhrj).

Couldn’t have said it better, thanks. Indeed, SARS-CoV-2 infected mink and cycled back to humans. All this indicates that not finding a single positive animal in China is a highly unusual observation. It’s so singular it should be put on hold.

Aside 2

Keeping up with developments in artificial intelligence, the BBC reported that the US artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic is looking to hire a chemical weapons and high-yield explosives expert to try to prevent “catastrophic misuse” of its software.

A similar position has been advertised by ChatGPT developer OpenAI. On its careers website, it lists a job vacancy for a researcher in “biological and chemical risks;”

Nobody is surprised.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On re-reading Airborne transmission of highly pathogenic H7N1 influenza virus in ferrets by Troy Sutton and colleagues. Journal of Virology, 15 June 2014; 88:6623–35

Sequence changes associated with respiratory transmission of H7N1 influenza virus in mammals by Terence Dermody, Rozanne Sandri-Goldin and Thomas Shenk. Journal of Virology, 15 June 2014; 88:6533-4.

An avian H7N1 gain-of-function experiment of great concern by Simon Wain-Hobson, mBio. 14 October 2014; 5:e01882-14

The decision to publish an avian H7N1 influenza virus gain-of-function experiment, an editorial by Terence Dermody, Arturo Casadevall, Michael Imperiale, Rozanne Sandri-Goldin and Thomas Shenk. mBio,14 October 2014 Oct 14;5(5):e01985-14.

This essay comes with a mental health warning.

The Fouchier and Kawaoka papers on adapting the bird flu H5N1 virus to be efficiently spread between ferrets, and onwards to humans, provoked the dangerous GOF controversy back in 2012. Other papers doing the same thing on H5N1 from China or on different bird flu viruses in the US received much less attention – see end of essay for a list. Among them is the nightmare paper; there is nothing more frightening. It came from a well-known flu research group at the University of Maryland funded by NIH NIAID contract HHSN26620070001.

They took a H7N1 flu virus of ostriches and adapted it to respiratory transmission between ferrets, just as Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka did with their H5N1 bird flu viruses. Readers will know this is synonymous with human-to-human transmission. Why do this?

Avian H7 influenza viruses are recognized as potential pandemic viruses, as personnel often become infected during poultry outbreaks. H7 infections in humans typically cause mild conjunctivitis; however, the H7N9 outbreak in the spring of 2013 has resulted in severe respiratory disease. To date, no H7 viruses have acquired the ability for sustained transmission among humans. Airborne transmission is considered a requirement for the emergence of pandemic influenza, and advanced knowledge of the molecular changes or signature required for transmission would allow early identification of pandemic vaccine seed stocks, screening and stockpiling of antiviral compounds, and eradication efforts focused on flocks harboring threatening viruses.

The belief that the mutations involved will faithfully reflect those that will show up in nature and the predictive value of this work for public health are all copy pasted from Fouchier & Kawaoka logic.

When inoculated by needle into ferrets, the unadulterated ostrich flu virus killed 3/5 (60%) animals, so a nasty beast like H5N1 bird flu. The surprise was that after ferret respiratory transmission, transmission was not associated with loss of virulence. A surprise in that the ferret adapted bird H5N1 viruses of Fouchier and Kawaoka were less lethal than the initial viruses.

• This novel human flu virus kills as readily as the Ebola virus.

• It’s respiratory transmissible.

• Humans are immunologically naïve to such a virus.

• The recipe is plastered across the cloud, downloadable by any Tom, Dick or Harry curtesy of USG and the proverbial taxpayer.

Gulp. If there was a lab leak or misappropriation of the work the consequences would be… what? We haven’t the slightest idea for nobody would dare extrapolate from ferrets to Sapiens. But what if it remained as virulent, then what? Devastating is too mild a word. COVID-19 or Spanish flu would be peanuts by comparison. Or smallpox - for those who can remember it? The ordinary form is the most common (~90 percent) with a 30 percent case fatality rate. So worse than smallpox which killed around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence. Humanized H7N1 flu would be more, in the billion plus range for the first year. You couldn’t make body bags fast enough.

This paper came out at a time when the DGOF research controversy was raging. Sensing sensitivity or vulnerability the paper was accompanied by an editorial from the editor in chief of the Journal of Virology, a vital organ of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), that published the paper.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses have been sporadically introduced into humans... these strains are more likely more virulent in humans than the 1918 influenza virus A H1N1 pandemic strain... the virulence of this strain in birds suggests that it could be similarly virulent in humans. Emphasis added. No comment needed.

We learn that prior to submission to the Journal of Virology, the University of Maryland Biosafety Committee (representing the host institution where the work was performed) and the NIAID (the funder) studied the issue of whether the work constituted dual-use research of concern. On two counts there was agreement, but they differed on the third, does the knowledge, information, products, technologies meet the definition of DURC. Basically, they disagreed on what constitutes DURC, while neither group recommended against publication. When the work was submitted to the journal, they did not reach a consensus about whether the work represents DURC. Yet they published it even though they couldn’t agree on whether it was DURC, even though these strains are more likely more virulent in humans than the 1918 influenza virus A H1N1 pandemic strain.

No precaution, no putting the issue on hold giving them time to consult more widely. No, no, they pushed the button for publishing a recipe of a virus more dangerous than the smallpox and Ebola viruses. To try and seize a little high ground they reiterate the totally bogus claims that GOF transmission work on these avian viruses may guide preparation of influenza vaccines, and lead to identification of new antiviral drugs. Eight years later we’ve seen nothing. Nada.

You’d be right – nope, just normal - to expect an uproar in the scientific and lay press. Yet there was none. The NIH kept mum. The only person who hollered was this writer. Having complained to the ASM he was asked to write a critique in the ASM journal mBio.

This allowed some elementary, my dear Watson points to be made. Back then not a single human case of H7N1 bird flu virus had been described so where was the public health relevance of the work? Flu viruses mutate and replace each other, just think of seasonal flu for humans. So why perform work on a virus first isolated more than a decade earlier – 2000 to be precise? Totally irrelevant. In the critique readers will spot many themes that crop in the present series of essays.

Not content on writing an editorial accompanying an article describing the genesis of the equivalent of the most terrible biological weapon imaginable, the ASM accompanied On reading’s critique with another editorial entitled The decision to publish an avian H7N1 influenza virus gain-of-function experiment.

Dr. Simon Wain-Hobson has written an opinion piece questioning the decision of the American Society for Microbiology to publish in the Journal of Virology a paper by Sutton et al. that reports mutations in H7N1 influenza virus associated with airborne transmission in ferrets. We, the group of editors constituting an ASM committee that evaluates papers containing potential dual-use research of concern (DURC), provide responses to the three main concerns offered by Dr. Wain-Hobson and explain the rationale underlying the decision to publish this paper.

The stage is set to correct the wayward virologist. Let’s see how they did. Under The underlying science we learn that the original paper was reviewed twice by three senior influenza virologists with ample experience in studies of influenza transmission and pathogenesis. These reviewers concurred that the results were novel, significant, and scientifically sound. Furthermore, the experiments described are consistent with normative and epistemic standards in the field of molecular microbiology currently used for establishing causation.

There is no attempt to enlighten the reader, it’s a case of he said, they said. As the former is outnumbered, he must be wrong. That said, in a conversation eons ago with an editor of the top scientific journal Nature, On reading learnt that they seek out the lone referee that spots the weak point missed by others. So much for smothering tactics.

As the work raised a concern about the possibility of DURC, an additional evaluation of the manuscript was conducted by the ASM DURC Review Committee. This committee obtained opinions from the University of Maryland Institutional Biosafety Committee and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. After substantial deliberation, the committee reached consensus to publish the paper.

That’s odd. Remember that earlier quote, did not reach a consensus about whether the work represents DURC. As the sharp Elizabeth Bennet said more than two centuries ago, But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is the last time I shall ever remember it myself (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 59).

Under The internal review process and assessment of DURC we’re served the law and jurisprudence. Evaluation for the possibility of DURC consists of asking three specific questions as specified by the 2012 U.S. Government DURC policy First, does the work involve one of the 15 listed agents and toxins? Second, does the work involve one of the seven specified experiments (or “effects”)? Third, does the resulting knowledge, information, products, or technologies meet the definition of DURC as defined in the policy? For the first the answer is no. The error here from the public health angle is to focus on the starting point of the experiment, not the end point. This anomaly was corrected only in 2024. For the second the answer is yes as per 2004 Fink report. For the third, they prevaricate and say it’s a judgement call while the DURC definition is problematic for journal editors.

In the end they nod it on as others did before them. In this regard, we note that the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity [NSABB] recommended unredacted publication of two controversial H5N1 papers in 2012 reporting DURC and that other papers reporting potential DURC have been published since that time. Thus, our decision to publish the Sutton et al. paper is consistent with contemporary practice. We know that the NSABB changed its position with Drs Fauci and Collins present, authors of the erroneous and unprofessional Op Ed entitled A risk worth taking that appeared in the Washington Post (Chilled virology), so this is hardly a rock on which to base a decision. They hide under the establishment umbrella.

This abdication of mental effort shows up once again in the next section Although risk-benefit analyses have value because they foster discussion and can potentially identify important parameters that should be considered, we do not think an accurate (i.e., quantitative) risk-benefit analysis can be performed when neither the risk nor the benefit can be measured in a meaningful way. In our deliberations about the Sutton et al. paper, we relied on the funding agency (NIAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the University of Maryland Institutional Biosafety Committee to adjudicate biosafety risk. Emphasis added. The words in bold are wonderfully accurate. Then why do people mention risk benefit analyses for such work? As for biosafety risk, they leave it to others even though this H7N1 flu virus experiment dwarfs the results and dangers of the much-discussed Fouchier and Kawaoka experiments. It’s all alone in another league.

Second, the parental A/H7N1 virus is susceptible to oseltamivir and antigenically matched to an A/Netherlands/219/2003 (H7N7) experimental vaccine. Third, all experiments in this study were conducted in an enhanced animal biosafety level 3 laboratory appropriate for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus strains and routinely inspected by both institutional biosafety and United States Department of Agriculture officials. The risk of some type of laboratory accident is not zero, but we think that appropriate steps were taken to diminish risk to a minimum degree. Benefits are similarly difficult to quantify.

• If this virus got out, could you scale up production of oseltamivir and an unapproved vaccine fast enough? Would they be readily available to the entire world? Unlikely.

• Sure, biosafety level three is par for the course, but why do the work given the non-zero risk of a catastrophe? Especially as benefits are similarly difficult to quantify. You can’t conclude, yet you published the work.

In the end, we reached consensus that the potential risks of the study were low (as defined by the appropriate experts) and mitigated further by the experimental strategy used and that there were indeed potential benefits that might lead to improvements in human health.

In the case of publication of the original scientific paper and On reading’s comments, rather than leave the reader to think and formulate their own opinions, they give theirs. This is reminiscent of Terry Pratchitt: The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

No thoughtful comments are provided in either piece from the ASM. It’s status quo, protecting the establishment. Nothing on the horror of generating of the equivalent of a deadly biological weapon, nothing on the responsibility as publishers that this info might me used by bad actors or rogue states. Note that we’re post 9/11. Nothing on first, do no harm that is incumbent on scientists (Do no harm 1). Nothing on the ethics or morality of this work (Biosomething).

More than a decade, no study has appeared showing that such DGOF studies have moved the field on. To top things off everything is now out of phase with the current Executive Order on DGOF research, and the words of the present NIH Director.

Conclusions

Calamitous. A betrayal of virology, trust in science, thought and the Western intellectual tradition.

Aside 1

The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.

Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813.

Aside 2

DGOF experiments on bird flu viruses which have been overshadowed by the Fouchier and Kawaoka papers.

The third DGOF paper on H5N1 bird flu virus is

H5N1 hybrid viruses bearing 2009/H1N1 virus genes transmit in guinea pigs by respiratory droplet, by Ying Zhang and colleagues. Science 2013; 340:1459-63.

H7N1 bird flu virus

Airborne transmission of highly pathogenic H7N1 influenza virus in ferrets, by Troy Sutton and colleagues. Journal of Virology, 15 June 2014; 88:6623–35

H7N9 bird flu virus

Limited airborne transmission of H7N9 influenza A virus between ferrets, by Mathilde Richard and colleagues. Nature 2013; 501:560-3.

H9N2 bird flu virus

Minimal molecular constraints for respiratory droplet transmission of an avian-human H9N2 influenza A virus, by Erin Sorrell and colleagues. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2009; 106:7565-70.

Aside 3

With the end of the wonderful 2026 Winter Olympics it’s perhaps worth looking at the Olympic Oath:

In the name of the athletes.

In the name of all judges.

In the name of all the coaches and officials.

The athletes’ representative then completes the oath:

We promise to take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules and in the spirit of fair play, inclusion and equality. Together we stand in solidarity and commit ourselves to sport without doping, without cheating, without any form of discrimination. We do this for the honour of our teams, in respect for the Fundamental Principles of Olympism, and to make the world a better place through sport.

Note mention of the up and down sides in sport. Judges, coaches and officials are drawn in to make the world a better place. Surely that what science is all about, yet science PhDs take no oath. All we have is virtually unknown and toothless 2005 InterAcademy Panel on Biosecurity that no academy promoted, even though it mentioned funders and journals. Even though the down sides could hurt or kill billions. Indescribably sad.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On worrying again about dual use research of concern (DURC).

We’ve not had much guidance from bureaucracies or learned bodies about DURC in biology. This is odd for science is performed in societies that have no end of laws and regulations, many of which go back to time immemorial. Yet as Yoshua Bengio, the 2018 Turing Prize winner, the ‘Nobel’ in computing, recently remarked a sandwich has more regulation than AI.

A 2013 study showed that scientists are optimistic, upbeat and tend to overestimate the benefits of their work, while downplaying the associated risks. While it captures the incurable passion associated with doing science, it puts a finger on a vulnerable spot that most of us are unaware of.

The issue becomes complicated for the bosses and managers responsible for things going on under them. This lack of guidance masks responsibility and allows decision makers to fudge and decide what is best for them and not what is best in the public’s interest. It’s the age-old question for anyone on the up: will they serve or serve themselves? Sometimes people at the top decide for it is expected that they decide, even though they know next to nothing about the issue. The results can be bloody (Pandemic illusions, UK COVID response Report).

In the thin air at the mountain tops of the scientific firmament the little guidance there is is remarkably clear. The Hippocratic Oath First, do no harm. OK, but that’s for medics, not scientists. Not so according to the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) 2005 statement on biosecurity signed by over 60 national science academies from around the world. It has five points that fit on the two sides of a single sheet of paper. The first point was Awareness. Scientists have an obligation to do no harm. We know where this comes from. It skewers any ambiguity with They should therefore… recognize that individual good conscience does not justify ignoring the possible misuse of their scientific endeavour. In blunt terms, you can’t say that once your paper is published ‘I’m no longer responsible.’

We’ve been over this in one of the earliest essays (Do no harm 1). It was a model of clarity and dragged in all the actors. For example, Oversight. Scientists with responsibility for oversight of research or for evaluation of projects or publications should promote adherence to these principles by those under their control, supervision or evaluation and act as role models in this regard. Unfortunately the IAP statement had no teeth. Worse, the academies didn’t promote the message. While it may well have provided protection for them, it didn’t protect citizens.

If it had been adhered too, we wouldn’t be where we are. It is not a question of being lost in the volume of a hectic world, it’s because administrators and scientists pushed it under the carpet. Why? Either they don’t care, are serving themselves, or are more incompetent that we believe, or some awful combination. Whatever, the buck doesn’t stop with them. Plus, there is always someone to scapegoat. Someone smaller, understand.

Nobody wants to talk about the down sides of science. Stop, reboot. Everybody wants to talk up the positives starting with the scientists themselves, the journals, the institutional press officers and occasionally the university Presidents, Provosts and the like. Positives are fascinating and comforting. News media will laude a breakthrough or the development of a new cutting-edge technology.

But the negative side? Taking just dual use research of concern, US biologists have been avoiding it for decades even though it was first brought up at the Asilomar conference in 1975. Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.

Yes, yes, but science has its down sides that are vastly more painful than shedding a few tears. And while the atom bomb is the example, the 1977 flu pandemic arose through the hand of Sapiens leading to maybe 10 million deaths. Re COVID the scientific jury is out only because scientists and administrators everywhere are not cooperating. Things are changing for the current NIH Director has said he believes that the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The atomic bomb resulted in many physicists moving into biology which benefited immensely from the likes of Max Delbrück or Francis Crick, to mention just two. Readers, do you know of any virologists that left the field over DGOF research? Do let me know, for I’ve not spotted any.

Perhaps some of the younger generation might feel that do no harm sounds rather old world, something you’d get from a low-energy candidate. Perhaps something punchier is needed. If so, the solution is in the title. Everyone knows that universities and research institutions swear by cutting edge research. It sounds sharp, on target. Fine. Just ask yourself if what you’re doing could cause bleeding. Bright red hemoglobin bleeding resulting from a nastier virus or a more transmissible bacterium.

If so you’re on the wrong side of history. On the other side to the greats, aka Pasteur, Koch, Yersin, Ross, Theiler, Enders Sabin and many, many more who devoted their lives to beating the hell out of microbes. You don’t even need a bioethicist or a cleric for advice (Biosomething). Society wants/needs cutting edge research on microbes that advances knowledge. Cutting edge research that stops bleeding.

Some more guidance? It’s there is if you care to look. NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.

And this is where it hurts. For while the NIH sponsored gain of function research on flu and coronaviruses that might, at the very best provide qualitative information on the H5N1 bird flu virus, it was of no predictive value whatsoever. Sure, it had the merit of existing, but since when was that a criterion of the NIH for securing funding? This work always carried a huge risk if ever there was an accident or if the research was duplicated by a bad actor or rogue state.

The risks generated by the DGOF research on H5N1 bird flu virus will never subside. The information is on the cloud, downloaded as pdfs on innumerable laptops away from the praying eyes of the world’s intelligence communities. The next chapter in a book without end will be a lab accident or when a rogue state or crazy decides to act. The risk is permanent and accumulates with every new paper reporting DGOF research, notably on bird flu H7N1 and H7N9 viruses not to mention coronaviruses.

The NIH broke its own mission statement, to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability, and nobody rebuked them! Fortunately, the new administration is doing something about DGOF.

Draw no blood is a zero-level criterion but very relevant to scientists. Nobody knows whether a NIH financed project will pan out and enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. Obviously, there are strong hopes which explains why projects are selected for funding, but as science is tough, you more often don’t know.

It was always an unwritten assumption that everybody was on the side of the greats, the giants innumerable, the mentors and personal heroes. Always.

Yet given the disgrace of DGOF research on viruses, finding yourself on the other side, aligning with those who make biological agents that are outlawed by the Biological and Chemical Weapons Convention, it’s time to be blunt. It is immensely sad that the Rubicon was crossed by the NIH.

Don’t fall for word plays that disguise the reality, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) being the greatest purveyor (ASM propaganda). If ever you find yourself in an unsure or tight spot, discuss with a colleague, perhaps On reading, don’t bottle it up for there is another form of bleeding, regret. You might come to regret having your name associated with the development of the equivalent of biological weapons and bright red bleeding down the line even though you aspired to cutting edge research.

Regret. That’s the situation of some of the pioneers in AI.

And if DGOF research on viruses ever hits the fan, you may well bleed for the loss of family and friends.

Fortunately, there is hope. No doubt stung by the direction AI was going, Yoshua Bengio set up LawZero, Safe AI for Humanity, a nonprofit startup developing technical solutions for highly-capable, safe-by-design AI systems.

We have seen how the Mirror Life community has been behaving openly and responsibly (Mirror Life).

All you have to do is follow others. You’ll be in excellent company.

Conclusions

Are you doing cutting edge or bleeding edge research? Trust that’s blunt enough guidance for what DGOF research is all about. Indeed, for all DURC biology.

NIH, please add a sentence to all grant contracts getting the principal investigator and others on the project to commit to first, don’t draw blood. It’s a very low bar.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On Reading two documents on Gain of Function Research posted on the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) website. A 2025 fact sheet and Expert Roundtable: Gain of Function Research With Infectious Agents September 13, 2023

Readers will know that the ASM has been a staunch supporter of dangerous GOF (DGOF) research, notably the morphing of novel human influenza viruses out of those from birds. This work is indistinguishable from the genesis of biological weapons of mass destruction and therefore immoral, at least according to the Catholic Church (Biosomething). And while an atheist, On reading couldn’t agree more.

The landmark work that started the DGOF controversy on the bird flu H5N1 virus eclipsed a catastrophic study by another group from the University of Maryland, which makes the work of Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka look like child’s play. Catastrophic? Surely an exaggeration? Nope, a novel transmissible human flu virus spread by the respiratory route that killed 60% of infected animals. Just that.

For a second try to imagine the state of the world after a flu pandemic that was 30 times more lethal than Spanish flu, or 20 times the initial strain of the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers of dead would be close to half a billion in the initial wave. Despite this, the ASM pushed back hard on any criticism, while the NIH was as quiet as a hibernating squirrel. For the record, the only person to holler at the time was On reading. We’ll address this in an upcoming essay.

As the May 5, 2025 Presidential Executive Order on DGOF has put a stop to such madness, you might have thought that the ASM would be a little more circumspect in what they write. Although the fact sheet is undated, a url at the bottom of the first page makes reference to the Executive Order so we can take it is current ASM orthodoxy.

In answering the first question What is Gain of Function Research? we learn that GOF occurs naturally as viruses and other microbes evolve and may also be accomplished in the lab by adding to or changing the organism’s genetic sequence, and this type of research has had a positive impact on basic and applied life science research. Indeed, it allows an organism to do more than it used to do. They go one better and use the e word - gain of function is a naturally occurring evolutionary process and cap it off with listing a few examples of natural DGOF such as the emergence of antibiotic resistance and the unending seasonal flu variants. 1) While nature is bristling with nasty experiments, it does not undertake them deliberately, what we’d call research, so it’s a sloppy analogy. 2) It’s a variant of the much overused ‘Mother Nature is the world’s worst bioterrorist.’ 3) At least we have their admission of positive and negative sides to natural GOF experiments. Hence, something similar should pertain lab GOF experiments. But really, this isn’t even first year biology.

Under Why do scientists use gain of function techniques in research? the logic seems to be that as GOF is part and parcel of an evolutionary process, scientists had better use it to better understand microbes. Been there, done that (Observer bias, Limits to lab simulated virus evolution).

They go on; But the natural process of gain of function occurs too slowly for scientists to study, so the gain of function technique is employed to develop better experimental tools to advance scientific discovery, understand the natural processes that are occurring, and develop solutions to medical conditions or other problems in the living world around us. Nonsense. The natural process of evolution allowed Dr. Fouchier to do his DGOF experiment on the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Second, GOF research is used to understand the natural processes. We know that the Fouchier and Kawaoka of 2012 experiments didn’t predict the next pandemic which was the promise. That’s a fact. The next pandemic was COVID-19… Neither scientist now believes in those naïve claims of 2010, claims that flew in the face of a little elementary evolutionary virology. The third part of the sentence is merely hitched on to rest to provide positive traction.

We learn that Certain types of gain of function research — for example, Gain of Function Research of Concern, Dual Use Research of Concern… raise important biosafety and/or biosecurity concerns. While these are an extremely small subset of gain of function experiments, they require a higher level of review and are subject to strict protocols.

This is what the controversy was all about. GOF research on microbes resulting in the enhancement of traits like virulence and transmission is DGOF. There was never any beef with GOF research.

And yes, they represent a tiny fraction of experiments. That was always the case. But at least the ASM has admitted this and so the Executive Order isn’t going to discombobulate US research on viruses and bacteria. However, they fail to admit three other facts. DGOF research…

• Can’t deliver on the promise to understand the natural processes that are occurring for microbes,

• Is indistinguishable from the development of biological weapons,

• It is immoral (Biosomething).

Such experiments require a higher level of review and are subject to strict protocols. Once again, they totally duck the issue of risk and benefit and whether these experiments should even be done. The belief is they can handle it, until they can’t, by which time it will be well out of Pandora’s microbial box. Indeed, we may be in the beginning of a pandemic.

Like everybody, they duck the publication issue, informing rogue states how to make dangerous bioweapons courtesy of the US taxpayer. Do remember, the ASM is not just a learned society. It is also a publishing house of great reach among infectious disease scientists.

The piece continues with an intellectual lapsus: How have we used gain of function in life science research? No, that was never the question. The controversy was about DGOF, not GOF. They’ve slipped back to ambiguity. Deliberately. Accordingly, everything in this section is irrelevant.

They wrap up the piece with some policy recommendations, the first of which is Clearly define terms like “gain of function” to ensure a common understanding of which categories of gain of function research require enhanced scrutiny. The effrontery!

At this point On reading gave up especially as the next title was Increase transparency and public engagement. Once again, the ASM appears incapable of any data driven, logical and coherent contributions to the topic.

No organization or learned society has played on the GOF/DGOF semantics more than the ASM. The list of essays highlighting this is rather long unfortunately… (Deconstructing the portrait, Going places, Flights from reason, Perilous posturing, Crossing the line, Electroplated nickel silver, An evolutionary void, Gobbledygook).

An earlier 2023 piece from the ASM was passed over - there were more pressing publications to correct - which is a pity for it contains a gem. The term gain of function can have different meanings based on the context or the audience.

If the language used is clear, then the meaning wouldn’t depend on the context or the audience. If scientists cannot express themselves clearly than how can they work productively? They must be going round in circles most of the time. This leads to the obvious corollary, why should they be funded?

The meaning of the word context by bureaucrats and those of influence has been addressed in an earlier essay (Red lines, Godot and Context). It is a euphemism for ‘let us decide’.

The fact is that the ASM doesn’t want any restrictions on what can and can’t be done. They consider biosafety constraints more than enough to handle DGOF research. They know they cannot make risk benefit analyses as the claims of Drs. Fouchier and Kawaoka circa 2012 were bogus.

As they can’t admit publicly that they endorse the genesis of bacteria and viruses that are akin to biological weapons and therefore immoral (Biosomething), their strategy is to constantly mix up DGOF with GOF research, talk up the positive side of GOF research such that the outcome depends on the context. And by wordsmithing and using technical jargon that the public or politician understandably may have difficulty understanding, they hope to quietly undertake DGOF on viruses and bacteria.

They consider themselves the guardians of what research can be done on microbes. They feel no need for oversight even though most infectious disease research in the US is funded by the NIH, aka the taxpayer.

The ASM is not alone. Dr Racaniello and his team do it all the time in their TWiV podcasts dealing with DGOF research on viruses.

Their problem is the world has changed.

Everything suggests the ASM deep down doesn’t accept the Presidential Executive Order. This is troubling for it puts them at odds with the NIH Director and that of the NIAID who both support it.

Conclusion

Using clear and unequivocal language will the ASM state that it accepts the Executive Order on dangerous GOF? If not, explain why. Whatever do be clear.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On Reading The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 by Kristian Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, Ian Lipkin, Edward Holmes and Robert Garry. Nature Medicine 2020; 26:450-452

And Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19 by Charles Callisher and colleagues, Lancet 2020; 395:e42-e43

These two publications from the earliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic came under intense scrutiny including the US Congress. One is a commentary, the other a statement. Neither provided any new data. A remarkable analysis of the dark side of the proximal origins paper has been made by Gilles Demaneuf. USRTK did an excellent job too.

While virologists the world over embraced a natural origin for the COVID-19 coronavirus, nobody has commented on the strength of the virology, or lack of it, in these two publications. This essay seeks to see how the virology stood up then and six years later. Let’s go proximal first.

Our comparison… identifies two notable genomic features of SARS-CoV-2: (i) on the basis of structural studies and biochemical experiments, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be optimized for binding to the human receptor ACE2. Strictly speaking, structural and biochemical traits are not genome features. Next, for something to be optimal implies a comparison to numerous experiments involving multiple strains. There was so little data back then it was not possible to use the word optimal.

With hindsight, we have learnt that binding of the Spike protein to the ACE2 receptor molecule changed with the emergence of each new variant. It was increased for the first variant, alpha and seesawed through to Omicron BA 3. The binding of the prototype, delta and Omicron BA 3 Spike proteins for ACE2 is indistinguishable yet the disease profiles of all three variants were different. The tightness of the binding of Spike for ACE2 is subordinated to the optimization of the virus.

The coronavirus’s journey from the prototype to alpha, beta, gamma, delta variants and onwards to omicron can be taken as prima face evidence that the initial virus wasn’t optimized for humans from the evolutionary perspective. This is a good moment to remind folks of Theodosius Dobzhansky’s famous remark: Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

So how do we handle the remark that the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation. The affinity of some bat coronaviruses for ACE2 is high by general standards in virology but not enough to raise eyebrows. It no doubt arose in bats through natural selection. The key question is how quickly some bat coronaviruses can adapt to the human ACE2 molecule? With hindsight the answer is pretty quickly. All this is uncoupled to purposeful manipulation. As it is, the latter sentence is logically disconnected from the former. A linguistic UFO no doubt.

Next and (ii) the spike protein of SARSCoV-2 has a functional polybasic (furin) cleavage site at the S1–S2 boundary. Much e-ink has been spilt about the furin cleavage site. Two points. First, back then there was but one bat coronaviruses akin to the COVID-19 virus. Who could have foreseen that among the next 20 bat coronaviruses, there wouldn’t be one with such a feature? Indeed, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2-like viruses with partial or full polybasic cleavage sites will be discovered in other species wrote the proximal authors indicating they were banking on it. Yet even today nobody has found such a feature. The rub is that bat coronaviruses in Southern China, northern Vietnam and Laos have been inexplicably under sampled. After six years On reading would have expected thousands of SARS2 like bat genomes to have been generated (Cancel Virology). There must be a reason for it. The logical conclusion is that some people don’t want more SARS2 like bat coronavirus genomes to become public.

Second, the impact of a furin cleavage site depends on the viral strain. Years ago, it was shown that the introduction of a furin cleavage site into a H6N1 bird flu virus increased pathogenesis. By contrast, for chicken H5N1, H5N2 and H7N7 viruses it did not. The virulence is based on additional pathogenic determinants. Thus, finding a furin cleavage site was suggestive of a contributor to virulence, but was hard to interpret in early 2020. We know today that it is important.

In the section Theories of SARS-CoV-2 origins they serve up their conclusions - It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus - before stating the competing hypotheses, although the UFO provided an inkling this would happen. Anyway, they served a great double whammy. Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used. However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV- 2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone. Emphasis added.

First, who mentioned genetic manipulation? Ron Fouchier used naturally arising mutations to adapt H5N1 bird flu virus to aerosol transmission to ferrets. Second, what if the virus backbone used was that of an unpublished virus, then what? Readers will know that researchers amass tons of data in the years prior to getting their work published, so this is a distinct possibility. The fact is that back in early 2020, the genetic data irrefutably did not show anything about the origins of the virus apart from the fact that it originally came from bats. To affirm otherwise was and is science fiction.

In the next two sections they discuss their pet hypotheses and make some unsubstantiated remarks on which we’ll pass. The following section starts with We must therefore examine the possibility of an inadvertent laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2. By now they’re in wrapping up mode even though in theory, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 acquired RBD [receptor binding domain] mutations during adaptation to passage in cell culture, as has been observed in studies of SARS-CoV. Yet rather than leave it open, they provide arguments to suggest that key features of the Spike protein arose naturally none of which are definitive. They simply declare their bias.

Under Conclusions we read that a Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events. Prevent? You mean it will help us stop spillover infections? Until we have at least a hundred, and preferably many more, bat like SARS2 viruses and know their penchant for the human ACE2 protein, this is more science fiction. Not having this data is slowing down virology.

Although the evidence shows that SARSCoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus is trundled out without reason. It was not possible to say anything without access to lab notebooks or the WIV coronavirus database that was taken down in September 2019. Traits, smoking guns for some, but invoking the high burden of scientific proof, the jury is out. What is highly abnormal, so much so that the word suspicious is in order, is the astounding dearth of SARS2-like bat coronaviruses genomes published to date.

Moving on, the second publication is a Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19. That’s good of you, and yes, we felt their pain too. But why speak out? The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Apart from what has been revealed by USRTK on the dark side to this paper and the numerous conflicts of interest, three remarks.

• Since when are scientists bothered by conspiracy theories? OK Steve Bannon was one of the first peddlers, but he was never a virologist and could easily have screwed things up, if not invented them. Why are you even listening to him?

• And while you’re apparently bothered by conspiracy theories do you really think a statement in The Lancet will shut them down? No, they will feed on your intervention. Naïve to say the least.

• The important words, indeed, the raison d’être from the authors’ perspective is does not have a natural origin. Yet back in February and March 2020 when this text was written there were no data either way to conclude. This was an unsubstantiated assertion, and yet The Lancet nodded it on. Scientific conclusions are based on data and discussion just in case that needs reminding.

Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife… On reading read a couple of the papers cited to support this adamant conclusion. Unfortunately, they said nothing of the sort at which point dizziness set in. Fortunately, a cup of coffee righted things.

Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture. Again, do you really think you can counter conspiracy theorists this way?

Note the self-righteous and melodramatic We want you, the science and health professionals of China, to know that we stand with you in your fight against this virus… Stand with our colleagues on the frontline! We speak in one voice.

Rhetoric apart, what are you doing peddling untruths about COVID origins? As scientists you knew back then there was insufficient data to support any hypothesis. Sure, you had a preference but coupling your prejudices to support for Chinese health care professionals who were battling this bastard of a virus, working phenomenally long hours, some paying with their lives, was and remains obscene. The Chinese medics deserved better.

Both publications, they cannot be called scientific papers, had the goal of trashing the lab leak hypothesis out of hand. We’ve seen this before. Nine years earlier an Op Ed in the Washington Post entitled A flu virus risk worth taking by Drs. Fauci, Nabel and Collins from the NIH shut down discussion on dangerous gain of function flu research (Chilled Virology). No virologist dared speak out against dangerous GOF research or COVID origins.

The NIH was omnipresent and complicit in both stories. Scientific knowledge is made by those at the coal face, not the administrators. Shutting down discussion is a professional failure.

If ever a disaster were to happen, then virology and the scientific establishment would take an awful hammering. Who was responsible, who would be scapegoated? The rapid response was to deny, deflect, double down and trash critics even though the work was indistinguishable from the immoral development of biological weapons of mass destruction - the hand of Sapiens (Biosomething).

And while the scientific jury is out on COVID-19 this is mainly because too many people, for example many of these authors, are not cooperating instead of helping all of us learn from the past. Hmm, there was a phrase somewhere… now where was it? Ah yes, in a publication entitled The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.

In the midst of the global COVID-19 public-health emergency, it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter.

Conclusions

The monumental error of these authors along with those of the Op Ed in the Washington Post was to have believed they could decide science by decree. It is earned by hard work, checking, challenging, repeating, the forging of a consensus and ultimately transformation into knowledge.

For DGOF research on viruses and COVID origins fears of a cock up and shouldering responsibility by those on the Olympian mountaintops were and still are enough to explain everything.

The publications need to be retracted as does the Op Ed. As to content, it’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.

Aside 1

The journal editors have been refractory to retracting these publications. The argument goes something like as there was no original data, at worst the authors were wrong in some of their analyses. After all, nobody’s perfect. Plus, it is up to the authors to initiate the retraction process. This a weak defense that shouldn’t count in science where being clear and precise is essential. The journals could at least have flagged them as wanting, biased and unhelpful not to mention acknowledging their dark sides.

That said, they are excellent examples of what not to do.

The journal editors, like so many scientists are unaware of their responsibilities as outlined by fifth principle on oversight in the 2005 InterAcademy Panel statement on biosecurity. Scientists with responsibility for oversight of research or for evaluation of projects or publications should promote adherence to these principles by those under their control, supervision or evaluation and act as role models in this regard. Emphasis added.

Sadly, it’s unlikely to change any time soon. Like bioethicists. Apparently, role models are a thing of the past, for suckers. Go tell that to the Chinese doctors who gave everything in early 2020 while others spun words. Or emergency staff today.

Aside 2

Colonel (Ret.) Robert Redfield, MD and former Director of the CDC at the beginning of the COVID pandemic was interviewed recently. Redfield has a top secret security clearance and says all the evidence pointing to a lab accident has not yet been declassified. And yet the Lancet and Nature Medicine publications were so adamant... Embarrassments don’t stop. Of course, we’ve seen this before from others over COVID origins (Being sure without data).

Aside 3

In a recent interview, the new NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, said that My view is it’s pretty close to certain. [that the pandemic was the result of a lab accident that happened in Wuhan, China] But again, scientists disagree with me on this.

Aside 4

It seems the earliest recorded hand of Sapiens goes back to an outline made some 67,800 years ago in a cave in Indonesia.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On Reading Ethical criteria for self-identifying societal risk associated with dangerous gain-of-function research by Patricia Delarosa, C. Matthew Sharkey and Kristjan Hollo. mSphere 2025; 10:e0060725

A possible turning point for research governance in the life sciences by David R. Gillum. mSphere 2025; 10:e0040725

Catholic bishops remind political leaders that nuclear weapons are immoral, by John Wester. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 14, 2025

Coming across ‘ethical’ and ‘dangerous gain-of-function research’ in a journal of the American Society of Microbiology, an old friend, made it a must read.

By way of introduction, we’re reminded that the Executive Order (EO) on dangerous gain-of-function research (DGOF) “could cause significant societal consequences” or SSCs as the authors like to call them. Yep, that’s what it was all about. We’ll use the full version throughout as abbreviations allow the reader to forget what is at stake. Apparently, this is a new criterion that has not been included in previous institutional research oversight policies. Not having served on any such body it seems odd to an outsider that the institutions didn’t have the big picture already in their remit. Might this be because nobody ever considered the possibility of catastrophic risks emanating from a research lab? What cloud were they on?

They transpose ethical principles from the Belmont report upon which US policy on human subjects in clinical settings is based: …protecting them from harm but also by making efforts to secure their well-being.” It further elaborates that “[t]he obligations of beneficence affect both individual investigators and society at large, because they extend both to particular research projects and to the entire enterprise of research. Investigators and members of their institutions are obliged to give forethought to the maximization of benefits and the reduction of risk that might occur from the research investigation.

The big picture is society at large. Good, but then why did nobody on any of these institutional review boards or within the NIH see way before 2025 that there were no benefits to the DGOF work on bird flu viruses in the first place? After all, everyone agrees that the risks can go as high as sparking a pandemic. A sloth would have moved by now. Not so administrations.

Nonetheless, the authors note that The consideration of “longer-term benefits and risks” by the NSABB [US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity] was heavily focused on scientific advancements as the primary societal consideration, whereas the risks of the pathogen’s escaping containment were not central to their approach given existing biosafety policies and required containment practices. The line is NSABB didn’t have risk culture at their fingertips and so couldn’t handle analysis of work that could cause significant societal consequences. Certainly, the NSABB was composed mainly of university professors and not biosafety experts.

If correct this means is that the Kawaoka and Fouchier papers were published without any consideration of the bigger picture. Catastrophic risk went completely under the radar.

Yet the burning question for these university professors on the NSABB was could this risky work even deliver on the promises? If yes, then move to the difficult issue of benefits versus risks. Yet despite being of no value, Nature and Science published the papers. It was rammed down our throats because the NIH wanted it so. The irrelevance of these papers has been borne out over the following decade while their lead authors have changed their minds.

Next, do no harm is so obvious that it should be the base line. It should not need explaining or defending, especially as the authors cite the InterAcademy Panel statement on Biosecurity where the first principle - first, do no harm - pertains to scientists (Do no Harm 1).

Fortunately, post COVID things have changed. The dire societal consequences seen during the COVID-19 pandemic - in terms of human life and economic, educational, and social opportunities lost - should inform the consideration of SSC when assessing DGoF research; the COVID-19 experience frames the EO’s requirement for review of SSC as an ethical assessment review process… The assessment of SSC is founded on the assumption that biocontainment strategies may conceivably fail. Which they do. Occasionally. We’ve known this for ages. Emphasis added by the way.

Yet earlier in the paper the authors mentioned that the Biden era policy on the review and funding of research similar to DGoF called for an ethics review, whose criteria included non-maleficence, beneficence, justice, respect for persons, scientific freedom, and responsible stewardship. So it’s not clear what’s new. Perhaps the word ‘society’ wasn’t explicitly used, although this should have been obvious. Lots of words signifying little useful.

Opening the review aperture to apply the reasonably anticipated research effects to all pathogens and toxins shifts the review process from an agent- to outcome-focused assessment, which is more appropriate for the review and oversight of enhanced agents whose transmissibility or virulence may be enhanced in a manner not previously studied, especially given emerging capabilities in biodesign. Absolutely. But again, this was obvious years ago, indeed from 2012 and even 2005 following the resurrection of the Spanish flu virus.

The EO identifies SSC - an ethical assessment of anticipated benefits and potential bad outcomes - as the final filter to stratify and prioritize risks within the pool of potential DGoF research. This says the same thing albeit more succinctly. This leads to Clear SSC assessment criteria - grounded in ethical considerations - are fundamental to public transparency and the creation of trust between the life sciences research enterprise and the public.

Phew, they finally got to the essential albeit 13 years late. From the get-go, engineering novel human viruses by whatever means posed ethical problems. It’s amazing that bioethicists were not clear on this from day one. Well day two if day one was a Sunday. IMHO they have underperformed, tracking the discussion rather than educating, or dare it be said, helping virologists.

Now if you detected, perhaps a tiny trace of irk in the above, the second paper starts with unanchored rhetoric. While intended to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity, the EO introduces vague definitions… Researchers, biosafety professionals, and institutions are left with a biosecurity policy vacuum after this EO, which is creating uncertainty across the scientific enterprise. Disagree. Nonsense in fact.

The EO rescinded the 2024 United States Government Policy for Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential (2024 DURC/PEPP policy), and charged the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) with issuing a replacement policy within 120 days. While very detailed, the 2024 policy document wasn’t very good and didn’t get to grips with dangerous GOF research (US DURC policy). Here too the word ethics was used but the narrative moved on. The EO cut through that Gordian knot. Correct, the OSTP hasn’t issued a replacement policy within 120 days.

This obviously leaves the powers that be to sort things out. Dr. Gillum claims that this leaves federal agencies, research institutions, and investigators without clear guidance or guardrails for conducting life sciences research. But wait a minute. Which is the lesser evil? Leaving virologists without clear guidance or allowing dangerous GOF research to continue, which the author admits could result in “significant societal consequences.” Unequivocally the latter. On top of which, virologists are not stupid. They spotted the EO on day 1 – a Monday as it happens - and will fall in line and be as careful as ever.

Yet without clear guidance or guardrails for conducting life sciences research is a false argument. Virologists know how to handle Ebola and Marburg viruses. There is no way they will expose themselves to infection if they can help it. They too have family and friends.

Virologists need institutional support such as labs and equipment, up to date training for there is always a non-zero risk of getting infected (LAIs). They don’t need bosses or science administrators to encourage them to work on dangerous GOF research that cannot answer questions about emergence and pandemics.

Dr. Gillum should cut them some slack and stop the dramatization. But he can’t. There follow a series of statements which if taken at face value indicate a baffling and confused situation in US biosafety. For example, this moment demands more than a routine regulatory update: it calls for a fundamentally different paradigm in which biosecurity governance is handled in a transparent, scientifically grounded, and operationally feasible manner, and responsive to current and emerging biotechnological threats.

Or the EO was not a surprise. U.S. biosafety and biosecurity governance has long been marked by fragmented oversight, inconsistent terminology, and regulatory frameworks that struggled to keep pace with scientific advancement.

Who underperformed? Yet Dr. Gillum says nothing about DGOF, the dilemma of pursuing needless research that creates catastrophic risks. From the point of view of protecting lab staff, it’s a no brainer. Yet he can’t even say that. He uses the EO to talk up his concerns. This is not good enough from a PhD and biosafety professional with 30 years under his belt.

The piece closes with the EO has created a disruption but also an opportunity. In its urgency, the EO reflects a broader recognition that our current oversight system is ill-equipped to handle modern bioscience challenges. Again, if so, then how come the powers that be maintained an oversight system [that] is ill-equipped to handle modern bioscience challenges? Science administrations should surely first set the rules and revise them as necessary; second, finance the best projects to roll back microbes and disease. Requiring that no harm is done in areas where risks arise and protecting staff seems to be obvious. Part of the job.

Whether bioethics has much to say here is a point that has baffled this writer since 2012. The answers are so obvious that biosomething arguments seem superfluous.

Recently John Wester, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, reminded us that In 2019, Pope Francis elevated the Catholic Church beyond conditional acceptance of so-called deterrence. He declared that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.

Wester added that the 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons does nothing more than ban nuclear weapons, just like previous treaties that enjoyed universal support banned biological and chemical weapons, which are also weapons of mass destruction.

Let’s use a little logic: the mere possession of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction is immoral.

Logically, as the results of dangerous GOF research by academic scientists are indistinguishable from biological weapons developed by the military, they are weapons of mass destruction.

Logically, their possession by any academic lab is therefore immoral.

Logically, publication of the papers describing these novel biological weapons was immoral. Albeit a post hoc symbol, the NIH could call for the retraction of the papers on dangerous GOF engineered bird flu viruses. Alas, the recipes for making them will always be available.

Logically, stocks of these viruses should be destroyed.

Despite the above, research on dangerous GOF pathogens is not prohibited. Anywhere. It is suspended in the US.

Asides

• Can others confirm or deny Dr. Gillum’s concerns about US biosafety?

• Could biosafety officers from other nations reassure us that they are on a par with the US which, from On reading’s perspective, doesn’t seem to be the case?

• The Executive Order was issued without clammer from bioethicists.

• If yours truly had written such weak science manuscripts as the first two, he’d have been blasted by the reviewers.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On wondering why it’s been so hard to make progress these past years on some things virological.

Dangerous GOF research in virology took 13 years to crack. Movement came from a most unexpected quarter in the form of a Trump Presidential Executive Order. It came after a changing of the guard at the NIH. The Europeans and countries like Canada, Japan and Australia haven’t reacted or followed suit, perhaps because they’re reeling from so much else.

And while human affairs are invariably complex, the opening gambit was as simple as it was blunt. It started with Ron Fouchier talking tough at a scientific meeting in Malta circa September 2011 – he had just made a human respiratory transmissible form of the bird flu virus H5N1. Just that. Not surprisingly news got out fast. The Fouchier and Kawaoka manuscripts were referred to the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosafety (NSABB) which refused recommending publication of Dr. Fouchier’s paper at their December 20, 2011 meeting.

Yet just ten days later a line was drawn in the sand. The Washington Post published an OpEd entitled A flu virus risk worth taking. Its authors were no less than Drs. Anthony Fauci, Gary Nabel and Francis Collins, top administrators at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Not surprisingly when the NSABB met the second time, in the presence of Drs. Fauci and Collins, enough members flipped and recommended publication of the Fouchier manuscript without any data being redacted.

So it was that the mutations conferring respiratory transmission of the bird flu virus H5N1 between ferrets were plastered across the world thanks to the top two science journals Nature and Science who published this work. Note that this work was ultimately back peddled by the lead authors themselves.

This toxic OpEd has been dealt with in an essay (Chilled Virology). Yet as many virologists across the globe had NIH funded US collaborators or colleagues, almost no virologists spoke up. This was the desired result - there was not to be any discussion of this NIH funded work, apart from some very staccato, stage-managed meetings in the US. An iron curtain descended on virology.

One of the problems with papers in Science and Nature is that they are taken very seriously with others joining the bandwagon without questioning, when the normal reaction to any scientific paper is healthy skepticism. So it was that a few years later a paper was published in 2015 reporting what can only be described as GOF research on a bat coronavirus from Dr. Ralph Baric’s lab in the US funded by the NIH. The penultimate author was Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This interpretation was disputed by virologists. Surprised? The world lurched on.

Dr. Baric was, still is, an excellent coronavirologist. A thinker. Therefore, it was only natural for others to pace him. And you’d do that by copying his recent work and adding a twist of your own.

Then COVID hit in 2020. The early pushback and pretentious condemnation of the lab leak hypothesis in the name of collegiality was stunning. The more so as there was no data around in March 2020 to support or refute any hypothesis. Obviously, this smelt. It had the effect of reopening the dangerous GOF research injury.

Once again, virologists failed to understand that when the public is deeply disturbed by things virological, they turn to them for council and comfort. Instead of providing that, they were met by disdain and words. When ideas fail, words come in handy. It’s attributed to Goethe, but it doesn’t matter who.

You don’t have to be particularly perceptive to know that COVID was badly handled at the policy level in the US and UK. Meanwhile, Taiwan with one of the highest population densities in the world did well.

The handling by the UK has been laid out by two reports from an independent enquiry. We’ve been over one (UK COVID response report) but please allow On reading to use the same brutal quote once again: Across the UK, systems had grown to be overly bureaucratic. Instead of focusing on skills, technology and infrastructure, they were focused on creating groups, sub-groups and documents. Emphasis added. How out of touch can you get?

In pyramidal structures people who express themselves clearly often get hammered and subsequently isolated, their analyses being sidelined even though they may well be correct. The solutions to survival are adherence to orthodoxy and bureaucracy where nobody is responsible. This provides protection from the chilly winds from above which are dissipated by the complexity of the labyrinths.

We have seen that the circle is complete: leaders do not know, they know that they do not know, but they feel they cannot say that they do not know as they are expected to know by a whole load of people who know they do not know anyway! (Pandemic Illusions). Plus, documents in archives are vulnerable to fire, flooding or being misplaced to quote Sir Humphrey Appleby.

This is also the case for scientific pyramids, even though being clear and precise as possible is necessary to scientific advancement. Bottom line: the human edifice is more important than the data. Ouch!

Virologists in most countries have not discussed dangerous GOF research. If they have it was to continue for there is nothing good to be gained from this grain of folly. They simply aligned with pax-NIH.

But it went beyond.

• Journalists covered the dangerous GOF virology controversy pretty well but by and large were not demanding enough. Why make the world a more dangerous place? Nobody brought up the Hippocratic Oath.

• As we saw in a recent essay (A virus not on the Select Agent list) the powers that be in the US can’t even get the extinct H2N2 flu virus, responsible for the 1957 Asian flu pandemic, onto the federal select agent list. A renowned think tank missed it too. As another renowned think tank, Terry Pratchett, observed, I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Science is advancing at the coal face, AI being an example. However, at the higher levels of admin there seems to be a great deal of paralysis. How could the UK have got COVID so wrong? Political incompetence, experts under pressure in a competitive and probably macho environment trying to second guess a novel pandemic virus nobody had ever seen before colliding with bureaucracies interested in creating groups, sub-groups and documents. Aka not caring.

Here we’re not alone. Jamie Dimon is the head of the world’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. CNN reported on a May 2025 talk of his. “We have to get our act together,” Dimon said. “We have to do it very quickly.”

He added that the United States has a “mismanagement” issue. He called on fixing permitting, regulations, immigration, taxation, inner city school and the health care system. If those things are fixed, Dimon said, the country could grow 3% a year.

“What you heard today on stage was the amount of mismanagement is extraordinary. By state, by city, for pensions … and that stuff is going to kill us…”

The US can’t even fix inner city schools, although we’ve known this for a while. Why? Those who care are no longer heard. Their efforts are isolated. Health services in high income countries cannot simply siphon off trained staff from other countries to their detriment. But they do. The irony is obvious. For the last 150 years the norm was focusing on natural resources from overseas and not caring a shit about the locals. The 21^st century variant is natural resources and trained personnel from across the globe.

There is urgency as that stuff is going to kill us…

Let’s look at another urgent parallel. The head of the UK’s foreign intelligence agency MI6, Blaise Metreweli said in her first public speech that the UK is “now operating in a space between peace and war” and “the front line is everywhere,” amid growing tensions with Russia.

Emphasizing the need to master new technology, Metreweli said recent advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing could converge to create “science-fiction-like tools” which could be used as perilous weapons. Seeing biotechnology and perilous weapons in the same sentence doesn’t augur well.

The chief previously led the service’s technology and innovation teams, a position made famous as “Q” in the James Bond movies. The lady clearly knows what she is talking about.

In a more dangerous, tech-mediated world, the chief called for the “rediscovery of our shared humanity,” to determine how the future unfolds… “It is not what we can do that defines us, but what we choose to do.”

We have some serious choosing to do. We’ve seriously ignored dangerous GOF research in particular, and Dual Use Research of Concern in general for too long. And now we have the AI juggernaut to deal with, while quantum computing is just a few steps away. If we could remember first, do no harm – an incredibly low bar – that would be a start.

Everything is personal today. Nobody cares about society which is seen as old school. Or as Robert Reich put it recently, America’s so-called “leadership class” is a sham. Most of them do not care a whit for the rest of the US. They are out for themselves.

Yet citizens pay taxes, part of which are spent supporting science and medicine for their good. Administrations have a tendency of privatizing the benefits of the finances dedicated to them, while the risks remain. In the aerospace industry safety was always #1 aka public interests dominated private ones. Then Boeing morphed, cut corners and favored $$$ (private) over safety (public) with known results. Meanwhile, the US Federal Aviation Administration struggled, partly because they rely so much on experts from the aviation industry.

In fields where expertise is rare this happens although there are ways of tackling conflicts of interest. It’s called transparency. As mentioned previously, virology today is low tech and so there are many specialists around. Yet virology and virologists are like small businesses, struggling to find customers, aka getting grant monies to stay open. That’s #1 understandably. However, this makes them vulnerable, some would say beholden to those at the top of science administrations to toe the line. Speech is curtailed or used carefully - you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Scientists must be allowed to say what they think and not fear what some far away boss in DC thinks. Fortunately, the new NIH boss has said just this.

Virologists already abide by a huge number of regulations with good reason yet are mostly unaware that they also have an obligation to do no harm. The 2005 InterAcademy Panel statement on Biosecurity is clear on this (Do no Harm 1). It was signed by more than 60 national science academies from around the world, including the US National Academy of Sciences. Most scientists I’ve spoken to didn’t know about it. The academies signed a feelgood statement but didn’t get the word out. Or didn’t care. Or both.

This is why the Executive Order on dangerous GOF research is necessary. Other nations should follow suit.

Fortunately, everything is not as bleak. The Mirror Life community penned an excellent text to the journal Science and have reacted openly and responsibly (Mirror Life). They were able to do so because there were no chilling winds coming from the NIH or elsewhere. Plus, the fact that mirror chemistry is already in biotech companies today.

By contrast, the economic advantages of Mirror Life are unclear. That said, when you see the metabolic potential of natural bacteria and the power of human imagination to conjure up experiments, it is hard to accept that mirror bacteria could do better than natural bacteria.

Concerning AI, there is so much investment and vested interest that there will be little control. Especially as the Trump Administration, like others across the globe, are in favor. The applications to biology are evident. Through imagery and AI analysis, a tissue section can be read more accurately leading to a diagnosis of cancer earlier than the human eye/brain combination.

The applications to infectious diseases will be multiple and beneficial so long as it is not used to design novel or enhance existing pathogens. We’ve already seen the first scientific paper devoted to the design of viruses that infect bacteria (AI assisted design of viruses).

Wisely, the Executive Order on dangerous GOF research didn’t define the techniques used to develop novel pathogens. Whether it be genetic engineering, selection in the lab or AI, it’s the end point that matters. Accordingly, AI is covered.

As Q’s successor said we must recover our shared humanity. More simply put, we need to get back to caring. And that’s the problem within everybody’s mind.

Aside 1

Private (individual) desires over public (societal) interests is of course a form of parasitism, which brings us back to infectious agents. When you realize that the amount of mismanagement is extraordinary, indeed it’s holding back the US economy, some powerful antiparasitic drugs would be useful. Gotta laugh.

Aside 2

Other countries are not managing simple stuff well. Take the Brits and their beloved National Health Service. Thousands of people who have had a stroke are ending up severely disabled or dying because the NHS has to few specialists to treat them quickly enough, senior doctors are warning. Just don’t siphon off specialists trained in other countries. You voted for Brexit; live with it.

Aside 3

A harrowing example of not caring.

Aside 4

To finish on a positive note, take a look at Ronnie O’Sullivan, the snooker genius at work, and his words at 12:50.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Emergence of crucial evidence catalyzing the origin tracing of SARS-CoV-2 by Shunmei Chen and colleagues. PLoS ONE 2024: 19: e0309557.

The focus of these essays is the folly of dangerous GOF research on viruses, aka making novel human viruses, aka making the world a more dangerous place. They try to bring some normality of virology. COVID origins have not been covered here for many have taken it on with brio.

The present scientific paper is so abnormal that comment is unavoidable even though there is nothing new, the ideas have been published by the authors 4 years earlier. We’ll dive into the virology and come out at the end, wondering, but hopefully sane.

Most virologists relate viruses by way of family trees using differences in their genetic sequences as code for establishing family trees. Simply put, the greater number of building blocks that differ, the further any two sequences are. Given that the COVID virus, like coronaviruses in general, can exchange genetic info with related viruses, this results in mixes and matches which can play havoc with generating family trees. A bit like illegitimate children in human lineages.

To get round this they home in on selected genetic features of the COVID viruses and use this subset to establish relationships, which is not a new idea. They choose nine features (RC0, RC1-7 and ORF8 – unimportant jargon for our discussion) that show up in the viral genome. First off, nine is a small number. Second, some features are juxtaposed in the same protein and so are not necessarily independent of one another. Without showing that these features are independent, their value for discussing relationships is compromised. This could bring the number of features down to as little as three which puts an end to the paper’s scientific value.

They also arbitrarily make two groups out of what is a continuous variable (the size of insertions or deletions, InDels for the afficionados) which illustrates an unbearable lightness of analysis.

Yet it is not these lighter shades of pale that singles out the paper. From the first sentence of its abstract we see where this Chinese group is going: Since the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), its genetic and geographical origins remain unclear, resulting in suspicions about its natural origin. Nope, what remains unsolved is always unclear. Mystery if you will, but when this paper was published in 2024, we knew the epicenter of the pandemic was in Wuhan and knew that viruses like this existed in bats in southern China and SE Asia. These areas do not overlap.

Why do these facts raise suspicions for the authors? We’d like to know your take. Like so many papers critiqued in these essays, they fail to get to the point and express themselves clearly and succinctly. This is odd given that’s what scientists are paid to do.

In the section entitled The origin of SARS-CoV-2 in bats they use one of their seven features to talk up viruses from the Feuang region of Laos. They go on to use small changes in a very macroscopic feature – the gross composition of the building blocks across the genome – which is at best a correlation, to derive a geographic direction to the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. It is worth noting that the migration is away from China - Thus, we proposed that SARS-CoV-2 originated along a conceptual path from Yunnan, China to Vietnam, and then to Laos, acquiring crucial genomic features through crucial recombination events. Sure, they can propose it, but there is no support for it. It reads like some attempt at deflection using anything they can find.

They get to the point in the Conclusion to the paper starting, Unraveling the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only crucial for scientific knowledge, but also for improving global health security and pandemic preparedness. Thank you for that.

Unfortunately, the genetic and geographical origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain unknown, resulting in suspicions about its natural origin. Suspicions again.

Then, two main hypotheses have been addressed: 1) SARS-CoV-2 naturally spilled over from an animal reservoir to humans, possibly at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China where the first cases were detected; and 2) SARS-CoV-2 originated from a laboratory incident, potentially linked to coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Yep, although there is a big omission which we’ll come to.

Our findings disprove the second hypothesis, as none [sic] Sarbecovirus strains in Wuhan Institute of Virology or from Tongguan town in Yunnan province of China, particularly RaTG13, harbor or acquired wild-type RC1, RC6, and RC7 together through recombination. And there you have it. An invalid analysis put in print to disprove the lab leak. All the reference genomes in this study have one handicap. Whatever part of the genome you use, they are insufficiently close to be considered progenitors to SARS-CoV-2. A single genome with less than 1% genetic divergence would overturn everything. So, this study cannot disprove the lab leak hypothesis because it is vulnerable to further genomes being published.

Interestingly, due to the undetected wild-type RC0, which might have been acquired in intermediate hosts or humans, contributing to the genesis of SARS-CoV-2, our findings are insufficient to provide a conclusive answer to the first hypothesis. RC0 is their jargon for the furin cleavage site in the Spike protein. Given the binary choice provided above and the categoric elimination of the lab leak hypothesis, it is interesting they do not conclude something a little stronger.

Their reticence is due to the absence of a SARS2 like bat coronavirus carrying a ‘good’ furin cleavage site. Two points:

• Woefully too few SARS2 like bat coronavirus have been published. After a pandemic you’d have expected thousands, particularly as sequencing is so easy these days. It is a massive failing. It is a huge unknown hanging over the entire COVID origins story.

• It is fact that the literature is replete with papers describing the experimental introduction of furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses and influenza viruses. Other papers have described their deletion or mutagenesis. Accordingly, one could have been added to the precursor virus. Yet this was not posited in their binary presentation of COVID origins.

Conclusions

• The paper is a waste of space. It generates hypotheses based on unsound analyses and so must be called out. Virology deserves better.

• Why write such nonsense? Suspicions remain.

Aside 1

USRTK reports that on Dec. 18, President Donald Trump signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act of 2026, which includes a provision instructing to the Director of National Intelligence, in coordination with the heads of intelligence agencies, to conduct a declassification review of COVID origins intelligence and to publicly release intelligence information. Agencies have 180 days to release what they have including raw data, not just reports. Let’s see the degree of redaction.

Aside 2

A recent paper has described the use of drones to collect pathogens in the blow out of whales and dolphins around Norway and elsewhere. Among the critters they found a morbillivirus that is known to have been linked to numerous strandings. Human measles virus is the best-known morbillivirus. Combine imagination, drones and highly sensitive PCR and you get this sort of thing. Virology has everything.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On listening to the podcast ‘From the Director’s Desk, a discussion between NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya and NIAID Director Jeffery Taubenberger’

Dr. Taubenberger is a distinguished flu researcher best known for resurrecting the 1918 Spanish flu virus. At 15:08 he says that …the 1957 pandemic, the so called H2N2 [virus]…The problem with that is since 1968 nobody on earth has seen a H2 virus. That virus was completely human adapted. It is not a select agent. We work with it under the same conditions as we would the 1918 virus, but that’s not an obligation and it probably sits in clinical diagnostic and basic lab virology freezers all over the world, and that really scares me actually because I think we’re concerned about how a new flu pandemic would occur but here’s one that was actually a pandemic. Now, the vast majority of the world’s population born after the 1968 pandemic does not have immunity to H2, and so that’s something I worry about.

Ouch, he’s both scared and worried, so let’s kick off with a little background. Pandemic flu viruses strike anywhere between 11 to 41 years after the last one, which means that we’re already in the next window: 2026 – 2009 (last pandemic) = 15 years. Flu viruses are characterized by two proteins on their surfaces called the hemagglutinin and the neuraminidase, aka H and N. H comes in one of 16 types numbered H1, H2 etc. while there are 7 for N aka N1 to N7. Pandemics result from a new flu virus with a different type of H protein. N is less important. By contrast, seasonal flu viruses are characterized by mutations within the same type of H protein.

The 1918 Spanish flu virus went by the epithet H1N1, that of 1957 Asian flu was a H2N2 virus while the 1968 Hong Kong flu virus was a H3N2 combination. The 2009 pandemic was a repeat performance by a H1N1 virus, albeit different to Spanish flu. For those interested in the genetics of these pandemic viruses, see “The 2009 Pandemic Influenza Virus: Where Did It Come from, Where Is It Now, and Where Is It Going?”

The Asian flu pandemic killed from 1-4 million people worldwide. It settled down as a seasonal flu virus until the Hong Kong flu virus showed up in 1968. Since then, nada. It went extinct naturally.

In the meantime, the world’s population has more than doubled, up from 3.5 Bn in 1968 to 8.2 Bn today. This means that most of the world’s population (around 84%) has never seen the H2N2 virus and so they are immunologically naïve. Those born before 1968, like yours truly, will have antibodies to the H2N2 virus although their immune systems are less robust due to age. In short, just about everyone would be vulnerable were it to come back.

Next, It is not a select agent. Select agents have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety. They are so dangerous or worrisome that work with them must be highly regulated. In the case of the smallpox viruses work is limited to just two labs worldwide. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS) has oversight of select agents for humans in the US. For another take see Wikipedia.

The same goes for animal and plant viruses with the US Department of Agriculture playing top dog.

Select agents, aka viruses, bacteria and parasites come in for further classification, with the most dangerous being called Tier 1 agents. Not surprisingly this is where you’ll find the extinct smallpox virus along with Ebola virus and Nipah virus even though the latter has caused ‘only’ 435 deaths out of 754 infections to date worldwide. It’s the high death rate that’s scary.

The resurrected infectious Spanish flu virus is on the select agent list as is the rinderpest virus of cattle that was eradicated by vaccination the last case being documented in 2001 (Rinderpest). Like the smallpox viruses, rinderpest virus is a Tier 1 agent.

So you might have thought an extinct human pandemic flu virus would be on the select agent list like smallpox and rinderpest viruses, perhaps even a Tier 1 agent. Yet it is not, which makes no sense at all - that’s something I worry about.

As already mentioned in several essays, in the virocene viruses can come back by way of the freezer (A viral reawakening in China). And this is where we come back to Dr Taubenberger being scared - the H2N2 virus probably sits in clinical diagnostic and basic lab virology freezers all over the world, and that really scares me actually.

It just so happens that before March 2005 Samples of the influenza A(H2N2) virus were sent to 3,747 labs, the vast majority of them in the United States, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement. They were inadvertently sent out by the College of American Pathologists. By April 20 2005, 98.8% of the samples had been destroyed.

If Dr Taubenberger is scared it is because of a lab leak or a lab accident leading to an infection of a researcher. We have seen that Lab Acquired Infections (LAIs) occur and are generally underreported, especially outside of the US which does a much better job. Not surprisingly, LAIs occur with select agents.

It so happens, again, that While a few H2N2 laboratory-acquired infections have been documented in the past, the likelihood of laboratory-acquired influenza infection is considered low when proper biosafety precautions are followed. The risk for the general population is also considered low. Without knowing when these LAIs occurred it is difficult to appreciate these lines from the World Health Organization. If they occurred between 1957 and 1968 then the risk was low for the virus was all around. If after, the whole world was at risk for a moment. Some very close shaves. Fortunately, it didn’t go bigtime.

It is always possible to eke out a little more data about the virus by continuing research on it. However, H2N2 is human adapted meaning highly efficient at respiratory transmission. A single lab acquired infection could put 8.2 Bn people in danger. Indeed, if it did a repeat performance today of what id did back in 1957 it would claim between 2-9 million lives. Catastrophic risk by any metric.

Yet wait a moment. This is a conversation between arguably the two most powerful people in infectious disease research in the US if only by virtue of the size of the budgets and influence at their command. The world has just gone through COVID and instead of saying something like ‘this scary situation should be cleaned up, indeed we could clean it up’, the conversation moved on.

The Federal list of Select Agents comes under review every two years. Human pathogens are managed by the CDC with input from the NIH which makes sense. So they could make a difference.

For some reason there seems to be a blind spot when it comes to the H2N2 virus.

• A 2022 paper used a multi-criteria decision analysis to try and reduce expert bias in the assessment of Select Agents, which was certainly worth trying. It seems that H2N2 wasn’t a strong candidate for the Select Agent list because it wasn’t a severe killer like, say, the Ebola virus. A virus that kills ‘only 0.5%’ of those infected it is often considered by many not to be a dangerous agent. Yet the key point is how infectious the virus is.

If 30% of 8.2 Bn people were infected by a virus that ‘only’ killed 0.5% that would result in 8.2 Bn x 0.3 x 0.005 = 12.3 million deaths. Ebola virus has killed ‘only’ 15,266 people between 1976-2020. Concentrating on virulence and putting aside transmissibility is a common fallacy (An evolutionary void).

• A May 2025 RAND Organization report entitled Identifying and Closing Gaps in the Federal Select Agent Program didn’t even mention H2N2 flu. That Dr. Taubenberger was worried and scared in August 2025 means there is at least one gap in the Federal Select Agent Program.

Conclusions

• It’s hard to imagine any lab acquired infection that carries more danger than human H2N2 flu because we know what the virus is capable of. It’s an agent of mass destruction. The risks massively outweigh any tiny benefits of continuing research on an extinct virus.

• Gents, use all the leverage you have to get human H2N2 flu virus on the Federal Select Agent List as a Tier 1 agent. And fast. Please. Other countries should do likewise.

• As it has been extinct for 56 years, embark on destroying stocks of the H2N2 virus and any tissues harboring the virus. This should have started years ago following smallpox and rinderpest jurisprudence. There is no excuse for keeping H2N2 flu virus stocks. The H2N2 genome is known so the virus could be recovered by reverse genetics if ever it was needed.

Aside 1

The conversation from 23:00 is also worth noting. They are talking about influenza in the context of pandemic preparedness. Dr. Taubenberger let’s drop we’re not at a point yet, we do not have the fund of knowledge to predict what even next year’s seasonal flu will be like, much less when the next pandemic will occur. So, in my view, the only thing we can do is react to a pandemic when it happens, sadly, but that’s the truth.

Exactly. We must react as quickly as possible to an exploding pandemic. There may be no vaccine or if there is one, stocks will be in the process of being expanded. Drugs might exist but we cannot bank on them. It depends on how transmissible and lethal the pathogen is. A million people might die before measures start kicking in. It’s horrible but this is the nature of severe pandemics. This is why it is so important for politicians and public health people to appreciate the dangers up front.

Don’t listen to those who pretend to predict the next pandemic or to have pandemics sewn up. Just as you’d not listen to the predictions of a soothsayer.

Aside 2

Experiments with influenza viruses containing genes or segments from 1918-1919 H1N1 (1918 H1N1), human H2N2 (1957-1968)… shall be conducted at BL3 enhanced containment (see Appendix G-II-C-5, Biosafety Level 3 Enhanced for Research Involving Risk Group 3 Influenza Viruses). The USG document is dated April 2024. Hence it is not clear what the remark We work with it under the same conditions as we would the 1918 virus, but that’s not an obligation. It could just be slip of the tongue as happens in data rich, fast moving conversations.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Prevention beats nonproliferation: Addressing the risks of Mirror Life. Emerging scientific consensus about the risks from mirror life presents a rare and promising policy opportunity to prevent the emergence of a global threat, by Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Corey Hinderstein and David Relman, October 3, 2025.

Dr. Relman’s testimony to the US Congress.

Pandemic risks: Are there some genetic experiments that simply should not be done? By Filippa Lentzos (2025) Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2025; 81: 174-7.

After a brief reference to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970) the first article gets to the point: Today, biology evokes another novel threat to peace and security: the potential to create mirror bacteria. And while we’ve already taken a look at it (Mirror Life) it’s worth reading this short 1400-word piece for there are some stark differences with the atomic energy/nuclear weapons example.

First, the material threat has not yet emerged. Whereas nuclear weapons technology was already available and in use as experts sounded the alarm about risks, no scientist has created mirror bacteria, and the world is likely at least ten years away from their creation. But with focus, resources, and technical innovation, the timeline may well be shorter. Second, the risks clearly significantly outweigh the potential benefits. Points taken.

The piece closes with three recommendations.

• First, the global scientific community should clearly and accurately communicate the risks of mirror bacteria to the public, policymakers, and other key stakeholders.

• Second, public and private funders should commit to not funding research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria.

• Third, policymakers should engage with diverse stakeholders in the process of establishing red lines and other policies to robustly ensure that mirror bacteria are not created. Emphasis in the original.

Amen to all three. All in favor of red lines.

And just in case they might not have been perfectly clear, they close with

• We should start to guard against the creation of mirror bacteria now. The risks are too serious to wait, and the costs of action are small.

• The scientific community is coalescing around the view that this technology should not be pursued. Policymakers must ensure that it cannot be.

Let’s move on to David Relmans’ Congressional testimony given on July 14, 2021 at the Hearing on “Principles for Outbreak Investigation: COVID-19 and Future Infectious Diseases.” After a presentation of arguments from both sides of the COVID origin discussion, circa 2021 remember, Relman goes on to talk about GOF research and more, notably …if scientists are not forced to confront the issues of laboratory safety and risky research in a serious manner, history suggests that we will not do so… More importantly, we need to consider whether there is life sciences research that is so risky that it should not be undertaken. In other words, red lines.

Relman has been going on about red lines for more than a decade, so who is he? He’s an MD and professor of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford whose forte is bacteriology. This means he understands infectious diseases, has seen death and has taken the Hippocratic Oath. More, he served on the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) that reviewed the Fouchier and Kawaoka manuscripts on aerosol adapted, ferret transmissible H5N1 bird flu viruses prior to publication. He recommended not to publish them as they were, which was the general opinion.

At the second NSABB meeting where they were asked to reconsider their position by the NIH, with Drs. Fauci and Collins present, he maintained his objection to the Fouchier, even though the majority now voted to allow publication of the papers without redaction of any data. Thus, the genetic blueprints for two novel human viruses for which humans had no immunity were plastered across the cloud and no doubt downloaded by bad actors free of charge at the expense of US taxpayers.

Since then, Relman has been outspoken and consistent. Red lines for some experiments in bacteriology and virology were always part of his case. He made a 90-minute video entitled ‘The case for the use of “red lines” in the governance of life science research’ on 13 April 2023. It’s worth the time. And he’s among those calling for red lines for Mirror Life research. So, bravo.

Let’s move on to the third article which is more nuanced and covers other aspects that are worth highlighting. It’s from Filippa Lentzos of Kings College London who is a senior research fellow at King’s College London. Her forte is biosecurity and she is a regular at the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva. The title of her piece is unambiguous: Pandemic risks: Are there some genetic experiments that simply should not be done? Aka red lines.

It starts with reference to the 1975 Asilomar conference and the recent 2.0 meeting 50 years later (Spineless. Again). A multitude of questions are brought up such as What unknown potentials, and potential hazards, do these developments entail? How should we consider, prevent, and manage their impacts on humans, nonhuman animals, plants, agriculture, and the environment going forward? How can we ensure that the edge of the experimental precipice does not accidentally or inadvertently spark a pandemic?

This is where things become difficult. Fortunately, we read that Developing biological weaponry is beyond the pale, and so are any experiments knowingly supporting such aims. Doing so would cross a red line. …the red line …is based upon the principle of doing no harm: a centuries-old principle that also underlies, among other things, the Hippocratic Oath of the medical profession.

Pretty clear. Yet the demon comes back, dixit Developing red lines around pathogen research based not on norms or principles but on harm-benefit assessments is a much messier endeavor because whether to allow or disallow experimentation will depend on the context.

The obvious retort is to go for something less messy and base decisions on norms and principles. We’ll come to the context in a moment but the prevarication continues with a third class of experiments that cross over the red line and into the danger zone: the ones that create a pathogen that, to current knowledge, does not exist in nature, is extremely difficult to control (i.e. it is highly transmissible), and is very harmful (i.e. highly virulent). Emphasis added.

These adjectives introduce ambiguity. For example, if just virulent, then what? Editing them out leaves a pathogen that… is difficult to control (i.e. it is transmissible) and is harmful (i.e. virulent). Doesn’t that still scare the s… out of you? Where are they with respect to the red line? Especially as we’ve had the Hippocratic Oath thrown at us – with reason.

Let’s pile on. Readers know that RNA viruses are mutation machines. They know that low pathogenic bird flu viruses can mutate into highly pathogenic ones. They have read that canine distemper virus was but one mutation away from being able to infect human cells in the lab (More goofing). So even if the pathogen that does not exist in nature is not unduly dangerous, it could change. How many mutations away might it be from something nasty? Nobody knows, but On reading would proffer from between 1-7 at most. Societies, let alone readers, can’t cope with new manmade pathogens capable of infecting humans, animals or plants because nobody knows what the initial version will morph into. It’s that simple.

And yet we don’t have red lines in place circa 2025. What are science administrators and politicians waiting for? In virology, Godot always returns. And on his terms. Always. Nobody, repeat nobody, should be allowed to make novel human viruses. Beyond madness.

But we’re not finished.

A couple more quotes and we’ll tie things up. …and provide adequate assurances of substantial benefits expected in the near-term with a plausible plan for equitable global distribution of these benefits. None of the dangerous GOF experiments provided any benefits, period. Resurrection of Spanish flu virus neither. Nice to have for the academics, but not for society. Private benefits, public risk. Yet we learn that Developing red lines around research with pandemic risks will likely be a challenge.

And there it is. Why should formulating red lines be a challenge when none of this work can help societies? Why? After all its madness. It should be simple. The answer is the scientific establishment wants to call the shots and not have to bend the knee to anyone and that includes the taxpaying public.

This brings us to context. When asked whether “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” Harvard’s president Claudine Gay replied It depends on the context. University Pennsylvania’s president Liz Magill did no better.

Context is a euphemism for ‘we are the ones who decide, and we’ll do so on our terms in our own time’. And that depends on donors, influencers and all the other paraphernalia of power. Public concern occasionally but only if it is so loud that they can, occasionally, see that the new optics may threaten them.

In the current situation, context/power is an infectious meme which consumes individuals from within resulting in a dereliction of duty and harm to others, particularly those on the lower rungs of schemes. Just look at the two UK reports on the COVID pandemic.

Old hands will say corporatism and they’re right. The only thing is that here millions of lives could be in the balance plus the global economy. The only move we have seen is the Presidential Executive Order on dangerous GOF research. Elsewhere nothing.

Conclusions

• Don’t change Dr. Relman.

• For Mirror Life, red lines should not be set too close to the final mirror bacteria. Otherwise, transgression will be just one short step for a scientist: one giant leap backwards for mankind.

• Be clear and do no harm. The wish list of vaccines, mainly for developing countries, is way longer than those available. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are huge killers and contribute to more deaths annually than TB, malaria and AIDS combined. There is so much to do. And you want to make novel human viruses based on dreams? Is that the road you want to go down? Really?

• A recent email exchange with a mathematician friend on the impact of AI in our respective fields provoked this great one liner: The only difference is that in virology even the intellectually unremarkable ones can create headaches for the whole planet. Nailed it. Dangerous GOF virology is low tech, so all the more dangerous.

• Cut the context and stop dangerous GOF research, Mirror Life and AI assisted design of pathogens. Choke the funding.

Aside 1

There was a recent call for international red lines to prevent unacceptable AI risks. Launched during the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, it was supported by hundreds of prominent figures and organizations.

Just read the opening paragraph: AI holds immense potential to advance human wellbeing, yet its current trajectory presents unprecedented dangers. AI could soon far surpass human capabilities and escalate risks such as engineered pandemics, widespread disinformation, large-scale manipulation of individuals including children, national and international security concerns, mass unemployment, and systematic human rights violations. Emphasis added.

The first danger listed is engineered pandemics. Readers of these essays might gulp having learnt of the resistance of virologists to oversight. We’ve got to holler. Join in.

Aside 2

We’ll regroup in early January. All the best for the holidays and 2026.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Emergence and characterization of historically extinct virulent genotype IV Newcastle disease virus in wild and domestic birds: genetic insights, pathogenicity, and vaccine efficacy by Weiwen Yan and colleagues, Journal of Virology 2025; e0164625.

Species come and go, all the while passing on their genomes which morph over time. Extinction is all around us, a good case being primates. …no more than 7% of all primate species that have ever existed are known from fossils while the average age of a species is around a million years. The same is true for viruses, the regular replacement of a seasonal influenza strain – lifespan generally 1 or 2 years - being a good example. Genomes galore, gone forever.

But.

In the contemporary virocene era – they can come back by way of the freezer. The 1977 flu pandemic was probably provoked by a poorly attenuated vaccine strain of a swine virus going back to descendants of Spanish flu. That virus was resurrected first by deriving genetic material from cadavers in permafrost and then built in US labs (1918 and all that). Viruses dormant in permafrost for more than 45,000 years have been recovered (Dormant permafrost viruses).

How can we know if a virus has come back from the freezer? First, the researchers themselves could tell us, dixit the above examples. But if an accident occurred, perhaps hushed up, what then? Apart from the COVID origins issue, which is not scientifically resolved, are there any recent examples?

The paper of Yan and colleagues from China along with colleagues across the globe report the reemergence of historically extinct virulent genotype IV Newcastle disease virus. Newcastle disease of wild and domestic birds is caused by a respiratory RNA virus. As mentioned, lineages of viruses come and go. They are often called genotypes or clades accompanied by letters or numbers, in this case IV. Genotype IV of Newcastle disease virus (NDV), a historically virulent strain responsible for the first Newcastle disease panzootic from the 1940s to 1960s, was presumed extinct after its last reported isolate in India in 2000. That said, there are plenty of other NDV genotypes in circulation. For the record, NDV is not just another animal virus. Pathogenic strains are on the US Department of Agriculture’s veterinary services list of select agents and toxins, #53 in fact, meaning they are nasty beasts.

Then the surprises hit. Here, we report the emergence of four virulent genotype IV NDV isolates from 6,731 wild birds and domestic poultry across nine provinces of China between 2021 and 2023, representing the first genetically confirmed isolation of this ancestral genotype in over two decades.

Yet this is just the build-up to These isolates exhibit remarkably high genetic similarity to ancestral strains, showing minimal divergence despite a temporal span of 50–90 years, yet they differ from the most recently reported isolate from India.

Now while 20 years is not a lot of time for humans, for rapidly mutating RNA viruses like NDV it is. A comparison of any two NDV genomes separated by 20 years will reveal a patchwork of mutations across the genomes, with genetic differences in the 2-5% range. We learn that differences between these viruses and those from a 1973 strain was 0.2% and between 0.2-0.4% for a strain from 1933.

As the authors say the unusually close genetic similarity between recent subgenotype IVa isolates and ancestral viruses from before the 1970s raises questions about their natural transmission dynamics in domestic poultry or wild bird populations.

How well do they answer the questions they raise? This remarkable genetic stability of these isolates, coupled with detection gaps exceeding 20 years (last report in India in 2000), aligns with several non-mutually exclusive hypotheses, including reintroduction from preserved material, persistence in under-sampled ecological niches, or repeated introductions via migratory routes. As our data are observational, these remain hypotheses. No event-level climatic drivers were identified in our sampling records; rigorous attribution would require dedicated environmental data sets and modeling. Further investigation into ecological and anthropogenic factors, including wild bird populations, is critical to understanding this emergence.

Sure, their data are observational, but they balk at saying any more. That said, the anthropogenic hypothesis is the most plausible given past findings in virology. The field is replete with forensic analyses of viral genomes to answer questions. For example, genetic variation among HIV genomes has been used in court to show that X infected Y, or to show that the NIH group’s first strain of HIV was in fact that from the Pasteur Institute. And this more than 30 years ago, so it’s anything but new. That is why the authors could have said safely more.

Re COVID origins, virologists have said they’d be happy, well reasonably happy using SARS-CoV-1 as a rule of thumb, if someone identified a bat coronavirus that was more than 99% identical to SARS-CoV-2, or failing that 99% identical or more in the gene for the all-important Spike protein. This is because of frequent recombination among coronaviruses has been amply demonstrated.

So for NDV genotype IV there is 99.6-99.8% identity between extinct and present genomes and while mentioning anthropocentric factors they balk at saying explicitly a lab leak is the hypothesis to beat.

Going down this hypothetical rabbit hole, where could this virus have come from?

• It could be in China, but it must be kept in mind that bird flyways cross continents. However, the most parsimonious explanation would be from a lab in China. Parsimonious means you start with the simplest hypothesis and, if the data doesn’t come out in the way anticipated, move to the next simplest one. Repeat until something holds up.

• It could be a lab leak of an old NDV genotype IV virus that was used in the past, say something like the previous 5 years. A rapid key word search shows no published papers reporting this.

• It could have come from a lab doing reverse genetics on a genotype IV virus. Such systems exist and are performed by several Chinese labs. None reported working with NDV genotype IV.

Once again, it comes down to transparency. The most parsimonious hypothesis is a lab leak, perhaps infecting a bird that escaped as unlikely as that seems. But a leak it seems there was. Can someone shed any light on the hypotheses outlined above? Note that the Chinese farmers are the first to suffer from the virulent genotype IV coming back to life, particularly as these results indicate that the LaSota vaccine... provided …only limited protection against clinical signs, tissue damage, growth retardation, and virus shedding caused by the current genotype IV NDV isolate.

There will be economic losses associated with this reemergence. It indicates once again that lab leaks happen and will happen. Perfect systems are prohibited by the three laws of thermodynamics. The conundrum is that virologists must work on economically important animal viruses in circulation.

Conclusions

We have prima facia evidence of another lab leak.

Attention to good lab technique, aka training, lab conditions and reporting of accidents will help cut down on future accidents, which can sometimes result in loss of life of the researchers (Lab acquired accidents). These are a constant and cannot be neglected.

In the case of viruses that have become extinct, either naturally (NDV genotype IV) or by vaccination (just two, the smallpox and rinderpest viruses), it’s far better to let sleeping viruses lie. The same could have been said of the resurrection of the Spanish flu virus.

Don’t resurrect them, don’t play with them. Destroy any remaining stocks of virus or infected tissues in the freezer (Rinderpest). That would be useful.

Aside 1

The following email dated December 5, was received from a Spanish colleague, Francisco de Asis who allowed me to use it here. Emphasis is in the original.

The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture has opened a complementary investigation into the origin of the African swine fever (ASF) virus recently detected in wild boar in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona). Genomic sequencing indicates that the strain belongs to genetic group 29, which is not circulating in the EU and is instead highly similar to the “Georgia 2007” strain, commonly used in research and vaccine-related studies.

This atypical genomic profile has prompted authorities to examine all possible sources, including whether the virus could have originated from a biocontainment facility. SEPRONA and EU animal-health authorities have been notified, and the inquiry is proceeding under the relevant EU sanitary regulations.

Crucially, only weeks earlier (3 November), nine scientists at the nearby IRTA-CReSA facility had published an experiment in which 20 pigs were inoculated with high doses of this same Georgia 2007 virus.

First reactions?

• The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture is suggesting the virus was spread through a sandwich with ***foreign*** cold cuts. “un bocadillo de embutido ***foráneo*** contaminado”. It seems wild boars eat foreign made ham sandwiches tossed out by truck drivers once they’ve entered Spain. This makes perfect sense as wild boars on the French side of the border are way too fussy to touch a ***foreign*** sandwich. There is something to learn every day. It is reminiscent of the Chinese hypothesis that COVID resulted from the importation of foreign seafood.

It reeks of the foreigner, the fifth column in old parlance. The immigrant today, aka the eternal scapegoat. For the moment the truck driver hasn’t been identified as a foreigner. We must be allowed scapeboar and why not scapevirus for lab leaks. Lol.

• Two Spanish virologists answer all the questions which we’re not interested in while the Spanish Media Center journalist doesn’t ask about the origin of the virus. Déjà vu. We’ll no doubt come back to this story.

Aside 2

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) is still working the ambiguity surrounding the term gain-of-function, this time to the US Congress.

The paragraph below was slipped into an ASM letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee which organized an October 29, 2025 hearing on “The Future of Biotech: Maintaining U.S. Competitiveness and Delivering Lifesaving Cures to Patients.”

To deepen our understanding of the role of microbes, we encourage Congress to avoid overly broad bans on gain-of-function research. In addition to driving fundamental discoveries for disease prevention and treatment, basic research on the function of bacteria and viruses, which could be considered gain-of-function research, leads to innovations in agriculture, aquaculture and environmental health. Correct. The recent Executive Order “Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research” has led to the suspension of research long recognized as essential to human health. While ASM supports the strengthening of biosafety and biosecurity systems, we urge Congress and the White House to work with stakeholders to develop guidelines that do not arbitrarily stifle innovation and the development of lifesaving cures. Incorrect.

The Executive Order starts thus: Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens. If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.

The Executive Order clearly distinguishes dangerous GOF from standard/classical GOF research in biology. The ASM cannot change and pull back from its past position. Prof. Kawaoka has said that H5N1 is not a threat for humans so leaving high and dry not only the NIH who funded his dangerous GOF research, but also the ASM and many virologists in the US and elsewhere who defended his work. Yet the ASM still has the hutzpah to lobby Congress in favor of dangerous GOF research. Madness. They should not be listened to.

Aside 3

The Director of the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Taubenberger, has recently said that he will abide by the Presidential Executive Order on dangerous GOF research. This means that the ASM is at loggerheads with the NIAID Director. Lol.

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Strengthening nucleic acid biosecurity screening against generative protein design tools by Bruce Wittmann and colleagues, Science 2025; 390: 82-87.

The Delphic oracle was asked what would happen to a boat when the planks slowly rotted away. If replaced one by one, then by the time all were replaced, would the boat be the same? The answer was yes, the point being a boat is more than a collection of planks.

Fast forward to this publication which tells two interlaced stories. Let’s go for the easy one first. A critical step in the synthesis of any harmful protein is the ordering of a gene (or fragment thereof) encoding that protein from one of numerous synthetic nucleic acid providers. This describes succinctly the modern way of going about much of biology; first get the gene. Most researchers outsource gene synthesis to commercial companies. For the mischievous mind this creates a vulnerability.

A plethora of computer programs already screen DNA synthesis orders allowing the gene synthesis companies to identify a suspect order which would be flagged and, hopefully, allow the mischievous mind to be intercepted. However, given the power of AI-assisted protein design (AIPD) in the long term, sequence-based biosecurity screening alone is unlikely to remain sufficient for flagging restricted sequences, as we envision a future in which AIPD produces sequences proteins unlike any found in nature. So, we’re not out of the woods. It looks like some iterative game of catch-up is inevitable.

However, there is an elephant in the lab, if the pun be permitted. If the mischievous mind is a state actor or some Dr. No with vast resources, they could buy a DNA synthesizer, hire a technician and work completely under the radar. As this is low tech, in reality relatively modest resources are needed. Accordingly, these screening processes will only weed out loners, dangerous as they might be.

Odd, this wasn’t mentioned. No doubt facing reality is too hard, although we’ve seen this before with dangerous GOF research. And while denial is a quintessential human response, we’re talking about biological threats to society.

The other story in this paper is an AI-assisted protein design study to ascertain how a protein of concern (POC), aka a toxin, could be morphed by changes in its building blocks so that its natural bar code – a string of amino acids – could not be detected by computer screening mentioned in the first story. Understandably, the design would be careful not to lose the function of the toxin.

This project was stimulated by an initial end-to-end adversarial AIPD framing study performed in October 2023 in preparation for a forthcoming summit of protein engineering scientists on biosecurity at the University of Washington.

We contacted the relevant bodies regarding the potential vulnerability, including the International Gene Synthesis Consortium and trusted colleagues in the protein design community as well as leads in biosecurity at the US Office of Science and Technology Policy, US National Institute of Standards and Technologies, US Department of Homeland Security, and US Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. It would seem they had some sort of cover, perhaps tacit approval or non-response, for what follows.

What did they do? We began our follow-on investigation… to generate 76,080 total synthetic homologs across a spectrum of mutational loads for 72 different wild-type POCs. The 72 template proteins are primarily toxins… we refer to each of the 72 template proteins by a randomly assigned index, as we believe that directly linking protein identities to results would constitute an information hazard.

At least they were aware of the purely information hazard, something virologists have seemed oblivious to.

The 76,080 synthetic homologs were sent to four gene synthesis companies, who subsequently ran the sequences through their software. The software were not consistently capable of identifying DNA synthesis orders that contained genes encoding potentially harmful proteins. Interestingly, the failure rate was particularly high for homologs of 4 out of the 72 sequences which is a worry.

This AI-assisted process of making synthetic homologs to get under the radar of commercial companies providing gene synthesis, referred to as DNA obfuscation, is fallible on the computing side. Yet those with means can synthesize anything they like, aka the first story, so they don’t need to resort to AI and DNA obfuscation. They could simply make the real McToxin.

• The are some slights of language. These are not synthetic homologs as no gene was synthesized dixit We did not construct or test any of the proteins generated as part of this study in a wet laboratory setting, having been cautioned to remain cognizant of potential negative perceptions (international and otherwise) of such work being interpreted as pursuing the development of bioweapons. They exist only in computers. If made, we have no idea what proportion would be viable. All we know is that some of their corresponding DNA sequences can escape detection by some computer programs.

• There is a strong flavor of déjà vu. In fact, the answer to the detection question has been known for a several decades. Just look at highly mutable viruses. Some proteins can accumulate changes in their amino acids – planks - that make it hard to know they were the same protein in terms of function - boat. Consider the protease enzyme present in all retroviruses of which HIV is the best known. This enzyme is crucial to the maturation of the newly synthesized Gag and Pol proteins. Any malfunction and the virus is dead. Yet given time all but three protein building blocks can be substituted out of around 100. The remaining 3 blocks partake in the enzymes’ activity. Experiments have shown that any change to them kills the enzyme.

Another example, you say. OK, consider the Rev protein of the human and simian immunodeficiency viruses. Rev controls the balance between proteins that must be made early in the virus life cycle and those needed later. Compare the sequences of the protein building blocks. There is not one position that is perfectly conserved. Many more examples could be found. Plus, there is a plethora of lab experiments on proteins showing just how robust they can be to accumulating change. Not every change works but a large proportion do.

In short, nature has been there, done that and left us plenty of examples. Maybe nobody had done protein evolution on any of these 72 toxic proteins for understandable reasons, but the result was on the cards. The novelty in the paper came from the use of AI methods. That’s what got the work published in the top journal Science.

Needless, the paper was noticed. The Washington Post’s take closed with The only surefire way to avoid problems is to log all DNA synthesis, so if there is a worrisome new virus or other biological agent, the sequence can be cross-referenced with the logged DNA database to see where it came from,” David Baker, who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on proteins, said in an email.

Surefire? Once again, this view is limited by the academic mindset which has next to no idea about state actors and past biological weapons programs. There would be nothing to log for everything would be under wraps. This is why virologists and bacteriologists must address the DURC aspects of their own work and realize that they just can’t do and publish everything.

Hopefully, they would be astonished if a Russian scientist published the details of making a novel bioweapon – certainly they should be. Yet they publish the details of what is, in the wrong hands, a new biological weapon and don’t even blink. Madness.

It turns out that Kevin Esvelt’s group at MIT has been addressing this issue for a while and found that while ordering a gene from a commercial company opens up a vulnerability, with some ingenuity you can get what you want. The thing is a paper in Science or Nature garners far more attention, especially from journalists, than if published elsewhere. That’s why they must be taken on. Dixit last week’s essay (More dodging and deflecting).

Conclusions

DNA screening by commercial synthetic gene companies is necessary, and it will cut down on abuse. For those with resources it will do nothing. The discourse shows, once again, the need for a discussion of DURC in contemporary biology. Until some red lines are established the world will become a more dangerous place. The stopping of dangerous GOF research in the US is a start. Others should follow as should penalties.

The NIH and other research organizations must get their acts together and address the bigger picture.

Aside 1

My Pasteur Institute colleague Antoine Danchin published a book in 1998 entitled the ‘The Delphic boat: What genomes tell us’. Such questions have been banging around for a while.

Aside 2

Given time and relentless changing of building blocks (planks) one by one, proteins can lose the similarity of their linear sequence code all the while remaining the same protein (boat). What matters is the three-dimensional structure of the protein and its activity (the boat). Structural biologists have known this for ages.

However, proteins are anything but simple as illustrated by the Paracelsus challenge which was solved by three scientists from Yale University in 1997. The challenge was to design a protein with 50% sequence identity to another protein but with a very different 3D structure, aka changing only 50% of planks in the boat. Their results demonstrated that a subset of the amino acids was sufficient to dictate the structure.

As only a subset of amino acids dictates the overall structure, this helps explain why proteins can accumulate so many changes over time. And even this subset can accept changes albeit more constrained than other amino acids on the outside of the protein. Given time most amino acids can change meaning that most proteins are Delphic boats.

Aside 3

The two sentences in bold bring us back to Nobel Prize winner Rolf Zinkernagel’s mnemonic for getting a manuscript into print in a top scientific journal. It’s so good it’s worth remembering:

Old method, old results, no way
Old method, new results, OK
New method, old results, OK
New method, new results, no way

Since January 2024, Dr. Wain-Hobson has written weekly essays for Biosafety Now discussing risky research in virology. You can read his entire series here.

On reading Public trust in science has declined since COVID - virologists need to unite around safety standards, by Melanie Ott, Olivier Schwartz and Alex Siegal, Nature 2025; 646: 31-34

The article comes with the subline, Creating international viral biosafety guidelines are key to clearing up confusion, regaining trust and ensuring that essential research continues.

The opening gambit is reference to a New York Times guest essay back in March 2025 by Professors Ralph Baric and Ian Lipkin from the US. They argued that experiments on a coronavirus found in bats and similar to those that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) had been conducted without sufficient safety measures. The experiments involved infecting human cells with the live bat virus to see how the virus behaved.

The NYT article was on target but suboptimal. It criticized a Chinese group for working with a human coronavirus at an insufficient biosafety level. They failed to mention a US group that did the same. As this NYT piece has been covered in a previous essay (Coronavirus biosafety levels) we’ll home in on the present authors’ take.

Quickly we learn of a growing problem that the entire virology community needs to address. On the one hand, the threat posed by emerging infectious diseases is growing, making investigations of potentially dangerous viruses more important. Nothing untoward here.

On the other hand, since the COVID-19 pandemic, trust in virology and science more broadly has declined and work on viruses has become more politicized. There is too much buried here to know what they mean. It pivots To improve trust in science - and to ensure that essential work on viruses can continue - international, standardized and transparent biosafety guidance is urgently needed.

All three of the above sentences are concatenated. They are elliptic and do not enlighten the reader who must wonder how trust in virology has been eroded and how the last sentence flows from the others. Apparently, every country has its own rules and regulations not to mention committees leading to a regulatory patchwork. It reflects nation states of course who tend to be territorial and pay lip service to international governance.

This patchwork regulation has led to confusion in the field. And the lack of transparency has probably made it easier for people to spread misinformation and fake news around the handling of live viruses in research. What confusion? What lack of transparency and by whom? Nothing is said. If people want to be mischievous, they will. Do they imply that virologists fall for fake news, or can’t distinguish it from reality? Plenty of words, nothing precise.

Re the COVID origins issue we learn that findings indicating that the pandemic resulted from a natural ‘spillover’ event, the epicentre of which was the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, continue to accumulate.

Where’s the solid data for the natural ‘spillover’ event? The data for the epicentre being the Huanan seafood market isn’t that strong and beyond its best before date. Continue to accumulate? There’s no new data, just more analysis.

They then proffer an opinion. In our experience, virologists are often reluctant to engage in discussions about work that involves the enhancement of live viruses - either genetically or through natural evolutionary processes - for fear of being caught in the crosshairs or of their own work being shut down, even if it is low risk. But now is not the time to lie low.

• Why is anyone still enhancing live viruses? Why go down this path which, in the case of the Fouchier and Kawaoka experiments, didn’t deliver on the promises made in 2012? Who is financing such ongoing folly?

• Do you know about the Executive Order? You may not approve of President Trump, but the Order exists, and such work is stopped in the US. Other nations should speak out but have not. As we saw from last week’s essay, people are now using AI to play with viral genomes (AI design of virus lookalikes).

• If work is low risk, it is unlikely to be shut down so irrelevant.

• Indeed, now is not the time to lie low, although virologists have deliberately avoided taking on the dangerous GOF and DURC problems in any serious manner. Their conclusion is always ‘yes but let’s continue.’

We then encounter besides growing fully functional zoonotic viruses in the lab, experiments involving live viruses are key to testing antiviral drugs and vaccines. This is so obvious it does not need saying. So why here? It’s difficult to say except to seize the high ground of making drugs or vaccines. We’ve seen that the trinity of developing diagnostics, drugs and vaccines is evoked regularly to counter criticism, notably of dangerous GOF research and COVID origins.

The section finishes with Given the crisis of mistrust in science and institutions, and an increasingly fractured geopolitical world, unified international guidelines are crucial for protecting essential research involving dangerous viruses.

The sentence alone would make for an essay. Up to now it’s been about virology but now it’s science. The mistrust hasn’t been about biosafety levels but dangerous GOF research and the closing down of any discussion of COVID origins from the get-go, even when there was no data. Hence, the proposed solution is irrelevant to the mistrust, although who could be against unified international guidelines for handling viruses?

What does an increasingly fractured geopolitical world mean? Spell it out, be clear. Is this a reference to China’s handling of COVID or Trump’s America? The reader can’t follow. There’s no mention of other issues as per the recent book, the War on Science, the rise of anti-vax amplified by social media, or the decline of scholarship in universities. What do they mean?

Let’s move on for there is more downstream, notably: Some scenarios should not be allowed to happen. If an investigator is working on the H5N1 bird flu virus in a BSL-3 facility, for instance, they should take strict precautions to prevent viral strains that cause human seasonal flu from entering the facility, even though seasonal flu is not considered a dangerous virus. This is because strains of flu virus can exchange RNA fragments. Such exchange could make H5N1 more transmissible in humans.

But wait a moment, didn’t Dr Kawaoka do his H5N1 GOF experiments using a reassortant virus, something akin to a recombinant virus?

Let’s fact check. We identified a reassortant H5 HA/H1N1 virus—comprising H5 HA (from an H5N1 virus) with four mutations and the remaining seven gene segments from a 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus—that was capable of droplet transmission in a ferret model.

Dr. Kawaoka did more than 13 years ago what Dr. Casadevall fears in 2025.

The sentences in bold are taken from an earlier essay discussing the fears of a supporter of Dr. Kawaoka’s work (Some housekeeping).

To paraphrase: Dr. Kawaoka did more than 13 years ago what Drs. Ott, Schwartz and Siegal say should not be allowed to happen in 2025.

Perhaps they never read what he did. It’s amusing that this amnesia shows up in Nature which published Dr. Kawaoka’s dangerous GOF paper on the bird flu H5N1 virus. This is not serious and makes you wonder about the authors. Meanwhile, the authors wonder about mistrust of virologists.

They go on to cite a sloppy study from Georgetown University concerning GOF research which is an error of judgement (Off target).

In the final section entitled Taking control we read that We think that virologists themselves are best positioned to take the lead on establishing guidelines. They know most about which viruses and procedures pose the highest risks and are generally highly motivated to protect the field from reputational damage.

By definition, specialists know their field better than others. Nobody is questioning that. The worrying part is at the end. By overwhelmingly supporting dangerous GOF research and the talking over the COVID lab leak hypothesis, virologists shot themselves in the foot bigly. It was precisely these two occasions where virologists needed to engage with the public. Yet they didn’t; they doubled down to protect the field from reputational damage.

They suggest an international committee that could produce international guidelines for gain-of-function and virology work. And there you have it. The opening gambit concerning biosafety levels for novel coronaviruses was merely cover. Dangerous GOF was the real concern. They finally spat it out.

This committee could draw on existing efforts. This is reference to two papers that provoked a couple of essays, notably Flights from Reason and Going Places both of which reeked of corporatism.

The Nature piece ends with Centralized, international guidelines would empower publishers and funders to screen all work on viruses according to the same rules and help to ensure that virologists globally can continue to do the crucial work of lessening the risk of another pandemic.

Publishers and funders should have been doing this since yesteryear. They never needed a committee. As to lessening the risk of another pandemic, what exactly can virologists do? The authors could have been pragmatic or reassuring and cited an example or two. But no, it was thrown out in the vein of ‘leave us in peace to get on with important work’.

Until virologists realize they must engage with the public in moments of angst, until they share a little of what they know and don’t know, until they accept that oversight is part and parcel of the funding process that keeps them alive, they’ll continue to shoot themselves in the foot. Soon they’ll have nothing left to stand on.

Conclusions

When used thoughtfully, words have precision and meaning. They can have power and for the likes of Shakespeare utter brilliance. Words are essential to generating a hypothesis. Any researcher with a decade or two under their belt knows that when a question is robustly formulated sometimes the solution drops out.

Here we have sloppy text downloaded from floppy disks.

Journals like Nature are a big problem for they refuse to protect virology by addressing the reality of dangerous GOF research, the origins of the COVID virus, and more. Add to this AI assisted design of viruses and the public is right to ask what the hell is going on? Journals play up the good news but doge and deflect everything else. Without society bankrolling virology, the scientific journals would cease to exist.

Aside 1

The New England Journal of Medicine did no better than Nature when they published the article ‘The Origins of Covid-19 — Why It Matters (and Why It Doesn’t)’ which came under scrutiny in the essay Why Words Matter.

Aside 2

Mention of Bill, Shakespeare that is not Gates, can’t pass without a couple of verses. The first on a little brief authority, while the second on imagination is extraordinary.

but man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Measure for Measure Act 2 Scene 2, 1604

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 5, Scene 1, 1600