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| Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images |
The Biden administration now says it is being “vigilant” about risky scientific research in China after a study there found a coronavirus variant killed 100% of “humanized” mice.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday the heightened vigilance is because viruses can “come back and harm Americans” if they are mishandled in labs.
“We’ve documented in the past over many years concerns about biosafety, biosecurity practices of a number of countries, China being one of them,” Sullivan said at the regular White House briefing when asked about the controversial study, which was described in a preprint paper released last month.
“That’s something we continue to be vigilant about because biosafety and biosecurity, particularly of hazardous bio-substances anywhere in the world, can ultimately come back and harm Americans,” Sullivan added.
“So it remains a significant focus of multiple agencies of the US government and we’ll keep working on that.”
The new study preprint went viral due to the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 before going on to kill nearly 1.2 million Americans — about 800,000 of them since President Biden took office. --->READ MORE HERE
Sen. Joni Ernst is demanding information about President Biden’s Department of Agriculture spending $1 million in US taxpayer funds on “dangerous bird flu experiments” in cooperation with the Chinese government — and a researcher connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a letter exclusively obtained by The Post.
Ernst (R-Iowa) wrote to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday for details about the project, which involves “a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus” and is being conducted “in collaboration” with the UK, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wenjun Liu, a researcher “affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Center for Biosafety Mega-Science Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens.”
The Biden administration awarded the $1 million grant from April 2021 to March 2026 for “wet-lab virology” experiments involving “strains of avian influenza virus” that “pose the greatest risk to avian or human populations.”
The Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing will help with tests to infect vaccinated chickens, mallard ducks, species of Chinese geese and Japanese quail to evaluate the virus’s transmissibility and “potential to jump into mammalian hosts.”
Ernst told Vilsack to hand over any departmental information about whether there are any safeguards in place, if the experiments constitute risky gain-of-function research, and what portion is being done in China.
Gain-of-function research involves experimentation that aims to increase the transmissibility or virulence of pathogens in order to understand their potential to cause pandemics.
“The health and safety of Americans are too important to just wing it, and Biden’s USDA should have had more apprehension before sending any taxpayer dollars to collaborate with the CCP on risky avian flu research,” Ernst told The Post in a statement.
“They should know by now to suspect ‘fowl’ play when it comes to researchers who have ties to the dangerous Wuhan Lab, and simply switching from bats to birds causes concern that they are creating more pathogens of pandemic potential,” she added, referring to risky experiments that may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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