1. Weaponization of germs causing infectious disease has a long history. Mongols used the plague-infested cadavers as a weapon against European armies in the year 1346, during the Siege of Caffa, Crimea. For Europeans, germs conferred them the conquest of the Americas as local inhabitants did not have immunity against the new disease .
2. Let us focus on the post-Second World War Era of Pax-Americana, that too after the discovery of the DNA as the life-molecular cluster by Watson and Crick(1953) .
3. The US built largest laboratory of biological weapons at Fort Detrick, Maryland, 50 miles Northwest of Washington D.C. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of an entire category of weapons. It was signed in 1972 and became effective in 1975. Richard Nixon ordered to shut it down. But it did not completely.
4. Saddam’s Iraq was running covert biological weapons program which was later uncovered by the UN Special Commission on Iraq.
5. World-wide, labs (BS-4)which can have dual –use research on pathogens are overseen by the WHO.
6. Coronaviruses are large, enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses with a genome of approximately 30000 basepair in length, the largest found in any of the RNA viruses. Coronviruses among animals (chickens) were first discovered in the 1930s. Then among canines and other animals. Corona viruses in human was first studied in 1965 by Tyrrell and Bynoe. Since 2003, at least 5 new human corona viruses have been identified, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus,
7. These 5 Human corona Viruses discovered are as follow: SARS(China, 2003); NL 63( Netherlands, 2004), NL( Netherlands, 2004), HCoV-NH(New haven, CT, USA, 2005), HKU 1(Hong Kong, 2005). NL 63 had the highest lethality.
8. SARS(2003) is considered as the first pandemic of the 21st Century.World across , scientists were concerned that the new corona virus could again cross species-species barrier and become contagious like SARS. World wide laboratories began to understand the Corona viruses. To work on such pathogen, biosafety is required. Since China did not have a Bosafety -4( BS4) lab, with the assistance of France, a BS-4 lab at Wuhan was set up which co3ld become operational only in 2018.
9. The leaders in research on Corona Virus are the labs in US and the UK. Laboratory of Dr. Ralph S. Baric,
Dept. of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill operates at the cutting edge science with research on corona viruses (SARS and MERS-CoV), influenza viruses, noro viruses, and dengue viruses. It has successfully generated reverse genetic systems for Corona Viruses and their response to generation of chimeric particles.
10. A brilliant Indian young scientist, Vineet Menachery joined the lab after 2011. Presently, he is Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, US. He received a Grant F32AI102561 from the US Government for “Evaluation of SARS-CoV 2’O Methyl transferase Mutants.”
11. Vineet Menachery led a surprise work on creating a chimeric virus with SARS virus as backbone. The research was published in journal, Nature Medicine, under title “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” (VOLUME 21 | NUMBER 12 | DECEMBER 2015 Nature Medicine (https://www.nature.com/
12. This chimera of SARS-like viruses was able to infect human airway cells and produce in vivo pathogenesis. The full-length genome sequences of representative CoVs were aligned and phylogenetically mapped. Vineet’s team also found that antibodies of SARS-CoV( 2003 SARS Cov-1) have marginal efficacy against this newly created SARS-like CoVs. Vineet and his team further argued that direct bat-human transmission initiated SARS-CoV emergence and in future newer corona viruses, SARS-like can reemerge. Surprisingly, COVID-19 is just that.
13. Such was the result of the research that the team themselves warned, “the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens…. whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved”. There was lot of debate on ethics of research. But this work was further developed and published in 2016 under the title, “SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America(2016). Clearly, US had the full learning of creating a new SARS-like Corona virus infecting human lung cells, thanks to Vineet and his team.
14. The race to artificially create new Corona Virus started. Erica Bickerton of Pirbright Institute, UK and her team invented an attenuated Coronavirus 5 comprising a variant replicase gene . It was filed for patent in 2015 and patented on Nov 20,2018 under US Patent No. 10130701 B2. The detailed patent is available athttps://patentimages.storage.
15. Though this was not a Human corona virus, the terminal end of the genomic sequence has 27 Adenine Nitrogenous base in consecutive sequence.
16. How similar is the Corona Virus patented as US Patent No. 10130701 B2 in 2018 and the present COVID-19.
17. At present as on 31st March 2020, there are 319 sequences deposited with the GeneBank. The earliest one was collected in December at Wuhan seafood market. It is deposited as GeneBank No. MN908947.3 and submitted on 05-JAN-2020 by Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center &School of Public Health and Fudan University, Shanghai, China to the GeneBank, based in the USA. It has 29903 basepairs with 33 Adenine bases at the terminal end in consecutive sequence.The sequence can be checked here. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
18. Then let us see the virus sample collected on 1st January 2020 from Wuhan seafood market. Its details is at GenBank: LR757996.1 . It has 29868 base pairs and 18 Adenine base in consecutive sequence towards the terminal end.
19. The sample from Wuhan seafood market dated 5 January 2020 has 29872 base pairs and 17 Adenine bp consecutively towards the terminal end. It is deposited with the GeneBank as LR757995.1 .
20. Let us compare with the latest sequence extracted from the USA and deposited with the Gene Bank. It has 29688 bp and no Adenine bp at the terminal end.See GeneBank: MT259287.1 is available at following link :https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
21. We see how the specificity of genome at the terminal end started losing Adenine base pair with evolution. This specificity is but also patented by Pirbright Institute in their patented Corona virus.
HYPOTHESIS
Can a chimera created by Vineet Menachery be formed with backbone of Corona Virus patented by Pirbright Institute? This would give the full quality of SARS-antibody resistant Corona virus that infects the epithelial cell of the lung with the characteristics consecutive sequence of stable A- base pair towards the terminal end?
QUESTIONS:
a) When the news of sudden closure of the largest facility of pathogen research in July 2019 and its possible linkage to the new COVID-19 was propagated by the Russians, Iranians, Chinese and several anti-western media outlets, why did the team led by K. Andersen of Scripps Institute rushed to give a complete clean chit to the origin and evolution of the COVID from the natural selection and ruled out the other possibility of the same being a lab-generated possibility? The team declared, “ Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”(See the full paper by the Consortium:https://www.nature.com/
b) Why is that Wuhan seafood market- originated strain that even entered Nepal has this bio-specificty of the cluster of Adenine bases at the terminal end like the patented corona virus of the Pirbright Institute; but the strains in the US and several countries invluding in South Asia which were jointly participating in the research on bat-viruses do not have this specificity from the earliest strains when large scale mutation is clearly ruled out ?
We donot know with certainty about the ongoing clash between the Deep States on each side arrayed against one another. One thing is sure. Until Democracy recovers the vibrancy, the Deep State would prove to be the nemesis of beautiful human civilization.
Hari Om Tat Sat!!!