Guest post by Dr. Lawrence Sellin
On January 10, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 365 to 65 in favor of a resolution to establish the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI). The following information is worthy of further investigation by that committee.
SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 disease and pandemic, possesses a number of unusual structural features, which make a natural origin highly unlikely.
The spike protein, which extends outward from the body of the virus and modulates the binding and fusion of the virus with the human cells, has components that appear to be unique to SARS-CoV-2 and not a consequence of a normal evolutionary process.
Foremost among the unusual genetic features of the virus is a small structure called a furin polybasic cleavage site, which can be considered one of several pieces of “smoking gun” evidence for the laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Already in 2005, subsequent to the first 2002-2004 SARS pandemic (SARS-CoV-1), furin and other protein cleavage processes were known to increase both the transmissibility and pathogenicity of coronaviruses.
The presence of the furin polybasic cleavage site may enhance the ability for SARS-CoV-2 to infect multiple human organ systems.
Identified already by mid-February 2020 (5), the furin polybasic cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 is a four amino acid sequence, Proline-Arginine-Arginine-Alanine or PRRA at the junction of the S1 and S2 components of the spike protein, a structure that is not found in any animal coronavirus from which SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved.
Furthermore, the RR part pf the PRRA furin polybasic cleavage site is coded by the gene sequence CGG-CGG, an extremely rare double codon , not found elsewhere in SARS-CoV-2 or in any coronavirus from which SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved, a fact even recognized by Chinese scientists by June 2020.
Remarkably, the exact reverse genetic sequence of the furin polybasic cleavage site found in SARS-CoV-2 is also found in a 2016 patent filed by the vaccine-maker Moderna.
The calculated probability of the furin polybasic cleavage site appearing in SARS-CoV-2 and its reverse genetic sequence present in the Moderna patent occurring as two independent events is infinitesimally small, which makes it virtually impossible that the PRRA insertion could have occurred naturally.
A December 12, 2019 agreement between Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, a scientist known for his “gain of function” experiments on coronaviruses, allowed Baric to receive the “mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna.”
Likely interactions between Fauci, Baric, Moderna and scientists in China long before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that information contained in the Moderna patent could have been used in the laboratory creation of SARS-CoV-2.
Another “smoking gun” is the de facto scientific recipe for the laboratory creation of SARS-CoV-2 described in the 2018 research grant application to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) entitled “ Project DEFUSE : Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses”
That grant application was submitted by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and his primary co-applicants: Zheng-Li Shi, the “bat woman” of the Wuhan Institute of Virology; Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina; and Linfa Wang of Duke University-National University of Singapore, a Chinese scientist, who also worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In the same year, all the applicants named in that DARPA research grant application participated in the 8th International Symposium on Emerging Viral Diseases in Wuhan, China, October 21-22, 2018.
The application was ultimately rejected by DARPA because it involved dangerous “gain of function” experiments that created new human-infecting viruses and because the research had a clear potential for dual use within a bioweapons development program.
Gain of function research is defined as when a naturally-occurring virus is genetically or otherwise manipulated to make it either more contagious, more lethal, or both.
DARPA, however, left the door open for partial funding and it is very likely that experiments were already underway in the laboratories of the principal investigators at the time the application was submitted.
The 2018 DEFUSE research grant application explicitly states the applicants’ intention to artificially insert furin polybasic cleavage sites into high abundance, but low risk bat coronaviruses found in China and testing the ability of those laboratory-created viruses containing an artificially inserted furin polybasic cleavage site to infect human cells.
The 2018 DARPA grant application reads like a “confession,” in which the authors express their intention to artificially create a novel coronavirus that is highly infectious to humans, just like SARS-CoV-2.
It is likely that sometime in 2018 the People’s Liberation Army, together with a tight circle of Chinese scientists both inside and outside China, hijacked that project design, a virus that closely matched the type of bioweapon described in China’s military doctrine.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is [email protected].
Primer for the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party Part 2: The U.S. Joins China’s Cover-Up of the Laboratory Origin of the COVID-19 Virus
On January 10, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 365 to 65 in favor of a resolution to establish the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI). The following information is worthy of further investigation by that committee.
If COVID-19 was simply a blameless natural transmission of a disease from animals to humans, then why the intentional cover-up?
Why the heavy-handed attempts to control the narrative regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2, largely by the deliberate dissemination of disinformation and the censoring of open, science-based discussion?
SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in Wuhan for at least six weeks before the Chinese government, on December 31, 2019, acknowledged there was an epidemic.
Astonishingly, the Chinese government initially claimed on January 14, 2020, at least two months from the onset of the outbreak, that there was no human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2, an obvious lie, which China was forced to acknowledge less than a week later.
Chinese authorities also intentionally underestimated the number SARS-CoV-2 cases in Wuhan in January 2020 to hide the extent of the outbreak.
Another lie perpetrated by China starting in January 2020 was that SARS-CoV-2 was naturally transmitted from animals to humans and originated in a Wuhan market.
After months and endless regurgitation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points by mainstream media outlets, China’s claim that the Wuhan Seafood Market was the source for animal-to-human transmission of COVID-19 was totally discredited , even by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The main Chinese lie that SARS-CoV-2 was a naturally-occurring disease transmitted from animals to humans has been more persistent, primarily due to the support provided by China’s allies within governments and among members of the scientific community, all eagerly propagated by the left-wing media.
In January 2020, at the same time the CCP was promoting its lie about the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, scientists in the United States were plotting their own propaganda and censorship campaign to support China’s false claim and to hide their own potential culpability for assisting China in the laboratory creation of SARS-CoV-2.
On January 26, 2020, investigative reporter Bill Gertz, who had received the information from Israeli intelligence expert Dany Shoham and Chinese whistleblower Dr. Li-Meng Yan, wrote in a Washington Times article:
“The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.”
Undoubtedly, that statement set off alarm bells in both Beijing and Washington, D.C.
On January 31, 2020, infectious disease expert, Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Institute, a scientist who would eventually play a pivotal role in the cover-up of the laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2, wrote an email to Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID.
In that email, Andersen said that COVID-19 appeared to be “engineered” and possessed a “genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”
In other words, SARS-CoV-2 was man-made.
It was then that the plot to conceal the true laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 by a groups of U.S. government officials and U.S. scientists was conceived.
In a recent series of ten Twitter comments posted on December 3, 2022, “Florin_Uncovers” provides smoking gun evidence for the collusion between U.S. government officials and scientists mentioned to cover up the laboratory origin of the COVID-19 virus.
Within days of his January 31, 2020 email to Anthony Fauci, Kristian Andersen would completely reverse his opinion about the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
In a February 4, 2020 email discussing a draft letter to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Anderson ridiculed “crackpot theories” that COVID-19 was “somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case,” opinions he himself expressed just days earlier.
Andersen’s adoption of CCP propaganda that SARS-CoV-2 was naturally-occurring played out within the context of a larger effort by U.S. government officials and U.S. scientists directly linked to China’s coronavirus research programs to control the narrative related to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
No doubt encouraged by Anthony Fauci and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, Kelvin Droegemeier, a product of the Republican establishment and then Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), wrote the February 3, 2020 letter to Dr. Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, asking:
“the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to rapidly examine information and identify data requirements that would help determine the origins of 2019-nCoV, specifically from an evolutionary/structural biology standpoint.”
The motive for the subterfuge was likely a desire not to be forced to confront China for creating SARS-CoV-2 and to protect U.S. government officials and U.S. scientists from culpability for helping China do it.
Most of the scientists consulted for the National Academy of Science response had long histories of collaboration with China and/or were later associated with a robust support of China and the theory that SARS-CoV-2 originated as a naturally-occurring disease.
Based on the scientists enlisted to formulate a response to OSTP’s request, the outcome of Droegemeier’s inquiry was preordained, that is, the complete absolution of China’s responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subsequently, scientists consulted for National Academy of Sciences response began their own public relations campaign to support China and the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was a natural transmission from animals to humans.
On March 7, 2020, Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and a long-time collaborator of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, led a group of like-minded scientists, who published an article in the British medical journal The Lancet, which stated “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 does not have a natural origin.”
On March 17, 2020, Kristian Andersen appeared as senior author on the article “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which claimed that SARS-CoV-2 was “not a purposefully manipulated virus.”
In parallel, there were separate attempts by Chinese scientists working in the U.S. to echo China’s naturally-occurring theory as the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In contrast to the U.S. government officials and U.S. scientists, the efforts by Chinese scientists in the U.S. may have been influenced by direct or indirect instructions emanating from the Chinese Communist Party.
Even as recently as January 9, 2023, the far left-wing Daily Beast published an article by Peter Hotez entitled “Kevin McCarthy Is Already Inviting the Next Pandemic,” which was obviously intended to short-circuit any attempt by the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 virus.
The drumbeat of propaganda supporting China’s claim that the COVID-19 virus was a naturally-occurring outbreak has continued uninterrupted over the last three years resulting in the complete political contamination of the scientific and medical literature.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is [email protected].
Primer for the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party Part 3: The Structure of China’s Biowarfare Program
On January 10, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 365 to 65 in favor of a resolution to establish the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI). The following information is worthy of further investigation by that committee.
The origin and traditional core of China’s biowarfare program is not medical, but veterinary and to some extent agricultural.
Officially known by the name the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, Unit 731 was actually a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development program of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War Two.
When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) subjugated mainland China in 1949, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) took control of Unit 731 and the Institute of Horse Disease, Continental Academy of Sciences, also founded by the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria.
According to the memoirs of the Japanese Kwantung Army, veterinary research and military horse healthcare were used as covers to hide the true purpose of the Manchurian facilities, the study and production of biological weapons.
It appears that the PLA adopted, not only its resources, but also the modus operandi of the Imperial Japanese Army.
In 2002, however, at the onset of the first SARS-CoV-1 pandemic, the PLA began a shift away from traditional biological warfare agents and updated its doctrinal approach to biowarfare.
PLA strategists began writing articles about new forms of biowarfare.
China would use biotechnology to create new forms of designed “biotechnology weapons” that would be “controllable” and “recoverable” for which China would have sole possession of the vaccine or antidote.
Such weapons would be highly contagious, but of low lethality, capable of being deployed in “pre-war” conditions to obtain strategic advantage for China without the destructive effects of conventional or nuclear weapons on infrastructure.
In the PLA’s own words, bioweapons should be used in a way that can avoid global condemnation.
According to Chinese military doctrine, a primary consideration in the choice of a bioweapon is “plausible deniability.”
Bioweapons should be deployed covertly and if suspected, the biowarfare agent can be disguised in such a way that even the most sophisticated analysis would be inconclusive as to its origin.
That is, the bioweapon can be blamed on nature, just like SARS-CoV-2.
Today, China’s biowarfare program exists at three levels:
There is a core, secret military level, which is composed of military research institutes and military hospitals.
The second level includes all Chinese universities and “civilian” research centers, like the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That second level allows the core secret military level to access knowledge, skills, technology and research funding from the third level of China’s biowarfare program, international universities and research centers, particularly those in the United States.
PLA scientists also affiliate themselves with second level Chinese universities, often agricultural, and also “civilian” research centers, which allows them to collaborate with and sometimes work in U.S. research laboratories, while deliberately hiding their true positions as members of the China’s military.
The three-level structure of China’s biowarfare program has created a massive support network of scientists and research centers both inside China and connected to Chinese scientists based in the United States, who access American knowledge, skills and technology, all of which is fed back into China’s biowarfare program.
One example of China’s three-level biowarfare program is research on Flaviviruses. Although also RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, they are far more lethal, including some of the hemorrhagic fever viruses; dengue virus, yellow fever virus, tick-borne encephalitis virus, Zika virus, West Nile virus, and several other viruses which may cause encephalitis.
The organization of China’s Flavivirus biowarfare program illustrates the fusion of military and civilian research and its links to U.S. personnel and resources as shown in the following images.
Level 1 – Core, secret military bioweapons program involved in Flavivirus research.
Level 2 – Chinese universities and civilian research centers involved in Flavivirus research.
Level 3 – Scientists from the People’s Republic of China working in the U.S. and funded by Anthony Fauci’s NIAID conducting Flavivirus research with scientists in the People’s Republic of China, some from the PLA.
China has “colonized” U.S. laboratories such that they have become mere extensions of China’s fused military-civilian research programs.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is [email protected].
Primer for the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party Part 4: China’s Infiltration of U.S. Virus Research Programs Through “Scientific Chain Migration”
On January 10, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 365 to 65 in favor of a resolution to establish the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI). The following information is worthy of further investigation by that committee.
The growth of China’s biotechnology sector and biowarfare program was dependent on accessing knowledge, skills and technologies from outside China, particularly from universities in the United States, which would be eager to collaborate with China and accept Chinese Communist Party (CCP) money.
To achieve that end, CCP leader, Deng Xiaoping and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in 1979, signed an historic agreement for science and technology exchange of which the China-United States Biochemistry Examination and Application ( CUSBEA) program was a part.
That program involved over 60 U.S. universities and soon afterwards thousands of Chinese students and scientists, some from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), began flooding into the United States, many obtaining permanent positions and becoming U.S. citizens., but maintaining allegiance to the CCP.
In a process one can call “scientific chain migration,” successive waves of CCP and PLA scientists would establish themselves in U.S. research institutions, acting as “anchors” and then invite other CCP and PLA scientists into their U.S. laboratories to access American knowledge, skills, technologies and U.S. government funding, which, in turn, would be fed back into China’s research and development programs, including those of China’s military.
President Bill Clinton expanded the Carter-Deng Xiaoping agreement openly inviting Chinese military scientists into U.S. Department of Defense research centers including the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.
Some of those invited into U.S. military facilities, like Liang-Ming Liu and Dai-Zhi Peng were clearly identified as PLA officers, other CCP scientists and PLA officers hid their backgrounds.
But no one in the Clinton Administration bothered to check.
Jing-Ning Huan, also known as Jing-Ning Xun, lists his educational institution as the Shanghai Second Medical University. It is actually the Second Military Medical University of the PLA.
It is unclear why Guo-Ping Li is wearing a U.S. Army uniform while studying advanced laser technologies at the U.S. Army Medical Research Detachment in San Antonio, Texas, or what happened to her afterward.
There is a Guo-Ping Li now working for the Chinese space program using laser technologies for radio telescopes .
In 2011, President Barack Obama extended, indefinitely, the Carter-Deng Xiaoping scientific exchange agreement.
A partial estimate of China’s infiltration of U.S. research programs and industries resulting from the CUSBEA program can be seen online.
Xiao-fan Wang and his wife Xin-nian Dong are graduates of Wuhan University, who came to the United States under the CUSBEA program and are now professors at Duke University.
Xiao-fan Wang is a “foreign” member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Xin-nian Dong is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Qi-Jing Li is a research collaborator of Xiao-fan Wang, who was part of the “scientific chain migration” from China and is now an Associate Professor at Duke University.
Both Xiao-fan Wang and Qi-Jing Li have received more than $22.5 million and $7.4 million , respectively, from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Both Xiao-fan Wang and Qi-Jing Li have also maintained an active research collaboration with the Chinese military for at least the last ten years involving dozens of PLA my scientists.
Both Xiao-fan Wang and Qi-Jing Li have also maintained an active research collaboration with the Chinese military for at least the last ten years involving dozens of PLA my scientists.
Those activities include training PLA scientists at Duke University, over twenty joint publications with the PLA, much of which was partially funded by the U.S. government.
Qi-Jing Li, for example, is listed as affiliated simultaneously with Duke University and the PLA Third Military Medical University.
Xiao-fan Wang and Qi-Jing Li conducted research with the PLA’s Second (Shanghai), Third (Chongqing) and Fourth (Xi’an) Military Medical Universities and with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing.
Xiao-fan Wang and Qi-Jing Li are also involved with a present or former PLA officer, Haiyang Wu, in a Chinese company, TCRCure, which is also operating with them at Duke University.
Qi-Jing Li is a co-founder of TCRCure and Xiao-fan Wang is the co-chair of the advisory team. According to the website, TCRCure is developing clinical translational research and conducting human clinical trials with the PLA Cancer Research Institute at the Third Military Medical University . This company has locations in Los Angeles and Durham, North Carolina and two in China, Guangzhou and Chongqing, where the Third Military Medical University is situated.
Xiao-fan Wang is also Director of the International Executive Committee of Performance Evaluation for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a fact that was purged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology website in 2020.
In a 2010 Chinese language article, Xiao-fan Wang said “I will do more to promote the education and science of the motherland“ (China).
Xiao-fan Wang has done so.
In 2017, Xiao-fan Wang made recommendations for the further development of China’s Talents programs, like “Thousands Talents Plan” and The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.
Lastly, having contributed to it, in 2021, Xiao-fan Wang remarked about the future supremacy of China:
“Influenced by the domestic political and economic situation in the U.S. and the new cooperative and competitive relationship between China and the U.S. in the field of science and technology, one foreseeable change is that the channels for doctoral studies and postdoctoral research training in the U.S. are likely to be gradually narrowed, and the number of young talents who have received rigorous research training from top U.S. academic institutions will likely decline significantly after a few years.””…leading to talents ‘Made in China’.”
Today, U.S. research laboratories are de facto extensions of the CCP’s fused military-civilian research program, in which Chinese scientists working in the United States actively collaborate with scientists in China including those connected to China’s biowarfare program.
In essence, China colonized U.S. research programs that are being financed by U.S. taxpayers, likely amounting to billions of dollars.
To this day, there is virtually nothing that happens in U.S. research laboratories about which China’s military is not intimately aware. And the U.S. government is doing nothing about it.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is [email protected].