Is the USDA working with China to create a bird flu that can spark a pandemic?

WHO and other health officials have been trying to understand how the bird flu virus can jump from birds to humans to create a virus that will transmit from human-to-human. Not willing to leave well enough alone, and since this hasn't happened naturally yet, scientists around the world have been working to create it — to know what to look for should it happen, they say!

Let's make it lethal for humans to see what that would look like

The CDC has been trying to manufacture a human-to-human transmission capable bird flu virus since before 2004, according to an NPR report by Richard Knox, heard on All Things Considered (audio below).

‍CDC tinkers with the bird flu

Rather than being thankful that the bird flu is not transmissible between humans, a CDC flu researcher says the agency has been trying to change that reality.

‍Knox -

In fact, the scientists and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention did do some tinkering with the bird flu virus several years ago. They created some hybrids of bird-human flu viruses but they put that work aside because of other pressing problems.

Nancy Cox is the CDC's chief flu researcher. She says the world has been lucky that the bird flu virus has not acquired the genetic changes it needs to spread easily from person to person.

Making the virus in the lab so we can be prepared for a "potential pandemic"

Cox -

Well, there is so much that we don't know that we absolutely must press forward doing everything that we can to be prepared for the potential of the next pandemic that could occur with the H5n1 viruses.

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Possible bird flu virus bioweapon created in lab

Genetic structure of new virus finally published

Scientists experimented with ferrets as a "stand-in" for humans to see what needed to change for bird flu to become pandemic among humans.

A 2012 paper detailing which genes need to be changed for bird flu to become contagious between humans was published in Nature magazine, as NPR reported. The paper was previously withheld from publication because of the possibility that the information could be used to make a bioweapon.

To see if this [H5N1 bird flu] virus might be capable of becoming contagious in humans, [Yoshihiro] Kawaoka, [a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison] team put a key gene from H5N1 into a different flu virus and showed that just a few genetic changes could make this new hybrid virus contagious between ferrets — the lab stand-in for people.

Had Kawaoka's team created a bioweapon?

[Philip Campbell, Nature's editor-in-chief] heard about the paper when his editors said it needed an outside review by security experts — to assess the risk that the information could be misused to make a bioweapon. And he soon learned that this paper had also come to the attention of the U.S. government, along with another bird flu study by the lab of Ron Fouchier, of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands.

. . .

Finally, at the end of March, the NSABB reconsidered the whole issue and reversed course, saying it would be OK to publish. That was a relief for Campbell. But he's not sure what lessons have been learned. "I don't think we're in a place where we know what to do the next time this happens," Campbell says. (Emphasis added.)

Scientists developing more contagious viruses

At the same time, NPR author Nell Greenfieldboyce reported that some international scientists engaged in this research had voluntarily stopped "to allow time for a discussion of the risks, benefits and necessary safeguards." In 2013, a CBC report related that the scientists had decided to resume their work "on changing the H5N1 avian flu virus in the lab to make it transmissible between ferrets through respiratory droplets. They want to understand how the bird virus could spread through the air to mammals such as humans."

Just to be prepared

Scientists have also been interested in the bird flu virus H7N9 (the H5N1 bird flu is the virus that is generally referenced) according to another article penned by Nell Greenfieldboyce in 2017. Entitled: "A Few Genetic Tweaks To Chinese Bird Flu Virus Could Fuel A Human Pandemic," scientists are trying to figure out how to tweak this virus so that it can infect people - just to be prepared.

"As scientists we're interested in how the virus works," says Jim Paulson, a biologist at The Scripps Research Institute. "We're trying to just understand the virus so that we can be prepared."

That's why he and his colleagues recently tinkered with a piece of the H7N9 flu — a protein that lets the virus latch onto cells. It's thought to be important for determining which species the virus can infect.

"So it's not the whole virus," says Paulson. "It's just a piece — just a fragment — that we can then study for its properties."

What they studied is how different changes affected the virus' ability to bind to receptors found on the surface of human cells.

Gain-of-function research being funded - by the White House!

Inconceivably, in 2021, despite suspicions that COVID-19 was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with U.S. funding and collaboration, the Biden White House approved a $1 million grant for the USDA to collaborate with China and the U.K. on bird flu gain-of-function research.  

The Washington Post expressed incredulity:

At this point, we know the United States government most likely funded the creation of COVID-19 in a Wuhan lab via grants to perform animal torture (gain-of-function) research.

Has that made our agencies rethink these programs? Led to gain-of-function research being re-banned? Caused enough pressure on the U.S. government to make it political suicide to keep funding labs in the territories of our biggest enemies? No. This is the government we’re talking about here; don’t be silly.

Senator Joni Ernst learned of this via the White Coat Waste Project, as the NY Post reported. In a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, acquired by the Post, Sen. Ernst requested information about the research, which has already cost taxpayers $1 million.

I am writing to obtain information about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ongoing funding of a collaboration with a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked researcher involving dangerous bird flu experiments and recent support for other animal labs in adversarial nations.

I was troubled to learn from the non-profit group White Coat Waste Project that USDA is supporting experiments involving “a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus” that poses a “risk to both animals and humans” in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which is controlled by the CCP, and a researcher affiliated with the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Biden USDA began financing the collaboration for “wet-lab virology” to study “newly emerging avian influenza viruses” in April 2021. The project has already received at least $1 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money to date and is slated to be funded through 2026.

The pathogens being experimented with, she wrote, have already caused human deaths.

According to the USDA, the collaboration with CAS and this WIV-affiliated researcher will study, “in vivo passage of viruses through mallard ducks and Chinese goose species to predict evolution in natural hosts” and “viral evolution and transmission dynamics of avian influenza virus (AIV) infection in Japanese quail as an indicator species of potential to jump into mammalian hosts.” These experiments with China involve animals infected with “highly pathogenic avian influenza,” including potential pandemic pathogens that have already caused outbreaks and killed humans. (Emphasis added.)

The Daily Mail, reporting on the outrageous research being conducted, provided more details, including information received from the USDA that the funds were not going to China, but were only being used for research in Georgia.

The specific viruses the researchers will work with include H5NX, H7N9 and H9N2 . . .

A 2023 study described H5NX viruses as 'highly pathogenic' with the ability to cause neurological complications in humans.

The H7N9 strain first infected humans and animals in China in March 2013 and the World Health Organization said it is of concern 'because most patients have become severely ill.'

The H9N2 strain has been found in dove in China and while it has a lower pathogenicity than the other strains, it can still infect humans.

The main collaborators  . . . USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute - a Wuhan lab partner.

[O]ne of the researchers collaborating on the project is Wenju Liu, who is affiliated with the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] - which is believed to have sparked the Covid pandemic - and a member of the board of a scientific journal, working with Zheng-Li Shi, who is known as the 'bat lady' for her extensive work on bat coronaviruses. . . .

Allan Rodriguez, a spokesperson with the USDA, told DailyMail.com the $100 million funding awarded to the research 'is only being committed to the specific components carried out by our own team located in Athens, Georgia, and is not any way contributing to research taking place in the UK or China.'

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Congressman not happy with USDA collaboration with China

Congressman Ben Cline tweeted his questioning of Secretary Vislak who questioned the affiliation with the Chinese:

Why are they still working with the Chinese government on risky virus research when it has violated U.S. grant and gain of function policies . . .

Should we worry?

While the fearmongering is gaining steam, and the scientists are working away in the lab, epidemiologist & former Member of German Parliament Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, in the video below (@2:56), says we needn't be alarmed. Viruses that kill their hosts cannot transmit it to others. He expressed greater concern that vaccines which incorporate pieces of a dangerous virus can do more harm.

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