Lieber, Chinese Nationals, and the theft of US secrets

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I am not viewing this in the context of the Covid-19, but instead as a modern day example of what foreign nations might have been doing in the 70's and 80's. Especially in regard to UC Davis, UCLA, and UC Irvine.



www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-three-separate-china-related

Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases

The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.

Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.

Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.

Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.

Dr. Charles Lieber

According to court documents, since 2008, Dr. Lieber who has served as the Principal Investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University, which specialized in the area of nanoscience, has received more than $15,000,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense (DOD). These grants require the disclosure of significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or foreign entities. Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017. China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security. These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information. Under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT paid Lieber $50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT. In return, Lieber was obligated to work for WUT “not less than nine months a year” by “declaring international cooperation projects, cultivating young teachers and Ph.D. students, organizing international conference, applying for patents and publishing articles in the name of” WUT.

The complaint alleges that in 2018 and 2019, Lieber lied about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan and affiliation with WUT. On or about, April 24, 2018, during an interview with investigators, Lieber stated that he was never asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Program, but he “wasn’t sure” how China categorized him. In November 2018, NIH inquired of Harvard whether Lieber had failed to disclose his then-suspected relationship with WUT and China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Lieber caused Harvard to falsely tell NIH that Lieber “had no formal association with WUT” after 2012, that “WUT continued to falsely exaggerate” his involvement with WUT in subsequent years, and that Lieber “is not and has never been a participant in” China’s Thousand Talents Plan.

Yanqing Ye

According to the indictment, Ye is a Lieutenant of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China and member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On her J-1 visa application, Ye falsely identified herself as a “student” and lied about her ongoing military service at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), a top military academy directed by the CCP. It is further alleged that while studying at Boston University’s (BU) Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering from October 2017 to April 2019, Ye continued to work as a PLA Lieutenant completing numerous assignments from PLA officers such as conducting research, assessing U.S. military websites and sending U.S. documents and information to China.

According to court documents, on April 20, 2019, federal officers interviewed Ye at Boston’s Logan International Airport. During the interview, it is alleged that Ye falsely claimed that she had minimal contact with two NUDT professors who were high-ranking PLA officers. However, a search of Ye’s electronic devices demonstrated that at the direction of one NUDT professor, who was a PLA Colonel, Ye had accessed U.S. military websites, researched U.S. military projects and compiled information for the PLA on two U.S. scientists with expertise in robotics and computer science. Furthermore, a review of a WeChat conversation revealed that Ye and the other PLA official from NUDT were collaborating on a research paper about a risk assessment model designed to decipher data for military applications. During the interview, Ye admitted that she held the rank of Lieutenant in the PLA and admitted she was a member of the CCP.

Zaosong Zheng

In August 2018, Zheng entered the United States on a J-1 visa and conducted cancer-cell research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston from Sept. 4, 2018, to Dec. 9, 2019. It is alleged that on Dec. 9, 2019, Zheng stole 21 vials of biological research and attempted to smuggle them out of the United States aboard a flight destined for China. Federal officers at Logan Airport discovered the vials hidden in a sock inside one of Zheng’s bags, and not properly packaged. It is alleged that initially, Zheng lied to officers about the contents of his luggage, but later admitted he had stolen the vials from a lab at Beth Israel. Zheng stated that he intended to bring the vials to China to use them to conduct research in his own laboratory and publish the results under his own name.

The charge of making false, fictitious and fraudulent statements provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of visa fraud provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of acting as an agent of a foreign government provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of conspiracy provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of smuggling goods from the United States provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling; Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Field Division Joseph R. Bonavolonta; Michael Denning, Director of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Boston Field Office; Leigh-Alistair Barzey, Special Agent in Charge of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Northeast Field Office; Philip Coyne, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General; and William Higgins, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Export Enforcement, Boston Field Office made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorneys B. Stephanie Siegmann, Jason Casey and Benjamin Tolkoff of Lelling’s National Security Unit are prosecuting these cases with the assistance of trial attorneys William Mackie and David Aaron at the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

The details contained in the charging documents are allegations. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

These case are part of the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, which reflects the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforces the President’s overall national security strategy. In addition to identifying and prosecuting those engaged in trade secret theft, hacking and economic espionage, the initiative will increase efforts to protect our critical infrastructure against external threats including foreign direct investment, supply chain threats and the foreign agents seeking to influence the American public and policymakers without proper registration.

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The most memorable and far-fetched research project was Barry’s proposal to use featherless chickens to mimic dermal exposure of applicators to pesticide spray. The featherless chicken, developed by Professor Abbott in Avian/Animal Sciences, was a good model for human dermal exposure. No feathers! The chemicals of interest in this project were neuropathic organophosphorus insecticides (OPs), and leg muscle control was the target of toxicity. When exposed to OPs, chickens could not stand upright—an effective dose-response endpoint.

Barry was also internationally recognized for his expertise in cholinesterase inhibition with organophosphorous insecticides, particularly in the blood of chickens. Both Jim Knaak and Chuck Becker of UC San Francisco were collaborators, also contributing to the featherless chicken project. However, it was Barry’s idea to take featherless chickens into cotton fields near Hanford and Corcoran and place them right behind the driver of the spray rig to see if there was sufficient exposure for organophosphate-induced delayed neuropathy (OPIN). While the approach raised a lot of questions from amused onlookers, the model worked! The State of California was able to prevent the registration of offensive OPs, ultimately protecting a large number of applicators, farmworkers and consumers; an outcome that made Barry quite happy!

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Barry was also known to tackle significant food-related toxicology issues, such as one involving toxic watermelons. One year, just before the Fourth of July, hundreds of people became ill from eating melons. The cause, which Barry proved, was illegal use of the N-methyl carbamate insecticide aldicarb to promote the growth of melons. Unfortunately, the insecticide was absorbed into the melons and passed along to people eating them. Fortunately, as Barry also proved, the poisoning was short term and reversible. One day I mentioned to Barry that our studies with both hawks and watermelons killed two birds with one stone! He became quiet, then he looked at me and said “Seiber, don’t ever use that quote again.” He truly loved those birds!

Barry and I also worked on a US Air Force-sponsored project involving non-pesticide organophosphorous contaminants found near the runways at Beale Air Force Base (near Marysville, CA), and other bases in both California and Nevada. Obtaining funding from the Air Force that ultimately supported students and resulted in publications made Barry very happy!

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If Abbott wasnt looking for the gene to improve the commercial aspects why was she looking for the gene?


"UC Davis was the first place to find the gene, “'In 1954, the American researchers Abbott and Asmundson found several featherless mutants among New Hampshire chicks that hatched at the University of California at Davis. The mutation, named “Scaleless”, has been bred and maintained since then in.” Using this information, “Cahaner started 12 years ago to pursue his interest in the “naked neck” and “frizzle” genes that reduce the feather coverage of chickens, and a few years ago he came across the idea of using the scaleless mutant to breed a completely featherless broiler. In an interview with World Poultry, he said that the idea was to backcross the small scaleless chickens into a large, fast-growing broiler line in order to develop..."

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I really do love some orange chicken. One of the uses for NEwcastle disease is the cure of cancer.


"My friends who love their fowl-feathered pets depend on UC Davis for chicken health tips and research. The latest news is rather inspiring: We are developing a new breed that promises to help with food security in Africa.

Specifically, our poultry experts, led by Huaijun Zhou, director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Genomics to Improve Poultry, are taking an innovative genomic approach that promises to outmaneuver Newcastle disease, which is the leading killer of chickens in the developing world."

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Huaijun Zhou's research while affiliated with University of California, Davis and other places. This is one of his more interesting articles. Do you think he might be a strong candidate for China's Thousand Talent Plan? As posted above, "China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development" If Lieber had a lab in China, could Zhou or one of his assistants also?

www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/38876720_Huaijun_Zhou

Identification of differentially expressed miRNAs in chicken lung and trachea with avian influenza virus infection by a deep sequencing approach

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Regardless if it was a bioweapon, manmade, or found, collected, and then studied, China did a terrible job of quarantine, and a poor job covering it up.

www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a-lab-lacks-evidence-67229

"Mosher agrees that animals were the likely origin. “That doesn’t mean [the virus] wasn’t collected, brought to the lab, and was being tested on in various ways, and escaped from the lab,” he says. Mosher also does not claim that China genetically engineered the virus. “I’m not saying this has been genetically engineered to be a bioweapon that’s escaped from the lab. . . . I’m just saying that [China is] collecting dangerous pathogens, [and] they have a history of letting them escape from the lab,” he says.

Transmission from an animal, with no lab experiment or genetic manipulation involved, fits best with what scientists know about how other coronaviruses have made the jump to humans. In the past, these viruses have spread through wild bats that infect another type of animal—an intermediate host—that then spreads it to humans. SARS-CoV, for example, was transmitted from bats to civets to humans, while camels were an intermediate host in MERS, according to Quanta. The civet version of SARS-CoV was 99.8 percent similar to the one found in humans—much more closely related than the bat and human varieties of SARS-CoV-2—so researchers believe the new coronavirus also infected another type of animal on its way from bats to humans. But they have not found a candidate so far, according to Nature."

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Coronavirus research

In 2005, a group including researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology published research into the origin of the SARS coronavirus, finding that China's horseshoe bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-like coronaviruses.[6] Continuing this work over a period of years, researchers from the Institute sampled thousands of horseshoe bats in locations across China, isolating over 300 bat coronavirus sequences.[7]

In 2015, the Institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect HeLa. A team from the Institute engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.[8][9]

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Even the resident expert at the lab has questioned whether the virus came from the Wuhan Lab.


Shi—a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years—walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”

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So 8 months of scouring China for the bats that carry the virus and no luck. Until they find them in abundance in a cave near Kunming, which is 720 miles away from Wuhan. 720 miles. Did someone from the Wuahn market go and catch these bats and offer them up for dinner? Did someone eat one of these bats and say "Gee, this bat tastes funky. Pass me some orange sauce. Damn. Is this one of those Kunming bats again?" Arent the odds in favor of Kunmmig being the epicenter? And not Wuhan?



"But sample after sample turned up no trace of genetic material from coronaviruses. It was a heavy blow. “Eight months of hard work seemed to have gone down the drain,” Shi says. “We thought coronaviruses probably did not like Chinese bats.” The team was about to give up when a research group in a neighboring lab handed it a diagnostic kit for testing antibodies produced by people with SARS.

There was no guarantee the test would work for bat antibodies, but Shi gave it a go anyway. “What did we have to lose?” she says. The results exceeded her expectations. Samples from three horseshoe bat species contained antibodies against the SARS virus. “It was a turning point for the project,” Shi says. The researchers learned that the presence of the coronavirus in bats was ephemeral and seasonal—but an antibody reaction could last from weeks to years. So the diagnostic kit offered a valuable pointer as to how to hunt down viral genomic sequences.

Shi’s team used the antibody test to narrow down locations and bat species to pursue in the quest for these genomic clues. After roaming mountainous terrain in the majority of China’s dozens of provinces, the researchers turned their attention to one spot: Shitou Cave on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan—where they conducted intense sampling during different seasons throughout five consecutive years.

The efforts paid off. The pathogen hunters discovered hundreds of bat-borne coronaviruses with incredible genetic diversity. “The majority of them are harmless,” Shi says. But dozens belong to the same group as SARS. They can infect human lung cells in a petri dish, cause SARS-like diseases in mice, and evade vaccines and drugs that work against SARS.

In Shitou Cave—where painstaking scrutiny has yielded a natural genetic library of bat viruses—the team discovered a coronavirus strain in 2013 that came from horseshoe bats and had a genomic sequence that was 97 percent identical to the one found in civets in Guangdong. The finding concluded a decade-long search for the natural reservoir of the SARS coronavirus."

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Ofcourse this paragraph was going to be in the article. Is it simply a question of whether Shi could not find a record of Covid-19 in her samples. Do you believe her, the Chinese Gov, WHO???


Shi instructed her team to repeat the tests and, at the same time, sent the samples to another laboratory to sequence the full viral genomes. Meanwhile she frantically went through her own laboratory’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”

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Definitely need more research.



"Chinese scientists found that the first reported case of the Wuhan coronavirus from December had no link to the wet market, according to Science, which cited a report published in the medical journal The Lancet.

What's more, 13 of 41 coronavirus cases had no link to the Huanan marketplace, the researchers said. More research is needed to pinpoint the outbreak's starting point with certainty."

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If You trust the NY Post. I am sure they have had much more time to consider this idea. But if it were true, then the items to be deleted would have been the records and samples of Shi's work.

nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab/


"And then there is this little-known fact: Some Chinese researchers are in the habit of selling their laboratory animals to street vendors after they have finished experimenting on them.

You heard me right.

Instead of properly disposing of infected animals by cremation, as the law requires, they sell them on the side to make a little extra cash. Or, in some cases, a lot of extra cash. One Beijing researcher, now in jail, made a million dollars selling his monkeys and rats on the live animal market, where they eventually wound up in someone’s stomach."

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WASHINGTON — In late November 2018, just over a year before the first coronavirus case was identified in Wuhan, China, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Detroit Metro Airport stopped a Chinese biologist with three vials labeled “Antibodies” in his luggage.

The biologist told the agents that a colleague in China had asked him to deliver the vials to a researcher at a U.S. institute. After examining the vials, however, customs agents came to an alarming conclusion.

“Inspection of the writing on the vials and the stated recipient led inspection personnel to believe the materials contained within the vials may be viable Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) materials,” says an unclassified FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News.

The report, written by the Chemical and Biological Intelligence Unit of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD), does not give the name of the Chinese scientist carrying the suspected SARS and MERS samples, or the intended recipient in the U.S. But the FBI concluded that the incident, and two other cases cited in the report, were part of an alarming pattern.

“The Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate assesses foreign scientific researchers who transport undeclared and undocumented biological materials into the United States in their personal carry-on and/or checked luggage almost certainly present a US biosecurity risk,” reads the report. “The WMDD makes this assessment with high confidence based on liaison reporting with direct access.”

The report, which came out more than two months before the World Health Organization learned of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan that turned out to be COVID-19, appears to be part of a larger FBI concern about China’s involvement with scientific research in the U.S. While the report refers broadly to foreign researchers, all three cases cited involve Chinese nationals.

In the case of the suspected SARS and MERS vials, the intelligence report cites another classified document that is marked “FISA,” meaning it contains information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Another case cited in the report appeared to involve flu strains, and a third was suspected E. coli.

The FBI does not state precisely what sort of biosecurity risk these cases could present, but Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the FBI appears to be concerned with dual-use research that would be used for bioterrorism. And if the illicit samples cited in the report were being brought into the U.S., she says, the traffic is likely to be both ways.

“How do you know what they’re bringing in and out unless you have a comprehensive surveillance point?” she asked. “If it’s going one way, it’s going the other way. You’d be very naive to assume otherwise.”

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, who worked on China issues on the National Security Council under the Trump administration, said “there is a threat” posed by Chinese nationals carrying biological samples but believes it’s “likely the carrier ... would be someone who is unwitting,” making it hard to determine the intent. “Some likely could be deliberate, to test our ability to identify and intercept. Others could be opportunistic,” he said.

The FBI report refers to both biosecurity, which typically refers to the intentional misuse of pathogens, such as for bioterrorism, and biosafety, which covers accidental release. The FBI declined to comment on the report.

Concerns about Chinese biosafety are not new. For example, the SARS outbreak in 2003 was followed by several incidents of infections caused by laboratory accidents, including eight cases that resulted from mishandling at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing.

“There have been cases in the past where a variant of some kind of flu pandemic had escaped from a laboratory because of mismanagement,” said Elsa Kania, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

But the problem is not limited to Chinese researchers, even if those cases have been prominent, she continued. “Certainly it is a biosecurity risk when anyone is transporting materials in a manner that is clandestine because … there have been several incidents when this has occurred with researchers of a variety of nationalities.”
University researchers conducting Lab test in finding the genomic sequence of the Sars associated coronavirus in April 2003. (Edward Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)
University researchers conducting Lab test in finding the genomic sequence of the Sars associated coronavirus in April 2003. (Edward Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)

Concerns about China’s flouting of biosafety precautions may be long-standing, but the coronavirus pandemic is likely to exacerbate tensions between Beijing and Washington. The outbreak comes amid already rising tensions in U.S.-China relations over issues that range from trade to espionage.

Andrew Weber, who worked during the Obama administration as the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said the relationship with China in the biological sciences has gotten worse in recent years.

“After SARS, when China needed technical help, it had a strong relationship with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. They were transparent, because they realized covering up an outbreak cost them dearly,” said Weber, now a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. “In recent years they’ve tightened up, making international cooperation more difficult.”

In recent weeks, however, these tensions have rapidly boiled over, with President Trump calling COVID-19 “the Chinese Virus,” while Beijing in turn has promoted conspiracy theories claiming the virus originated in a U.S. weapons lab.

Scientists have been adamant that the virus is not a weapon, either from the United States or China. “There’s no basis to suspect it’s a laboratory construct,” says Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University. “It has none of the expected signatures that would be present for deliberate construction.”

However, Ebright doesn’t exclude the possibility that the virus’s spread started from poor biosecurity in China. A leading theory is that the virus jumped from wildlife to humans. Some researchers speculate this happened at a live-animal market where exotic species are sold for food. But Ebright also notes that such wildlife viruses are collected in laboratories, including in Wuhan. “Therefore, it’s also a possibility that this virus entered the human population through accidental infection of a lab worker carrying out field collection, or an accident by a lab worker characterizing the sample in a laboratory,” he said.

Independent of the coronavirus, the FBI’s focus on China’s biosecurity appears to be part of long-standing suspicion in the U.S. government about China’s involvement in the biological sciences. Several recent high-profile Justice Department cases involving the export of sensitive technology have involved Chinese scientists, or persons with alleged ties to the Chinese government.

Most prominently, the Justice Department in January announced charges against Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, for concealing ties to the Chinese government. “It’s a clear-cut case of a conflict of interest, and unfortunately, it’s not an isolated incident,” said FBI special agent Joseph R. Bonavolonta, head of the Boston field office, in announcing the charges.

Lieber, who is free on a $1 million bond, has not yet entered a plea on the charges.
Charles Lieber leaves federal court in Boston on Jan. 30, after he was charged with lying to federal authorities in connection with aiding China. (Reuters/Katherine Taylor)
Charles Lieber leaves federal court in Boston on Jan. 30, after he was charged with lying to federal authorities in connection with aiding China. (Reuters/Katherine Taylor)

But the FBI’s focus on China and Chinese scientists is also raising concerns among some academics, who fear it smacks of profiling. “I am concerned that the current trend in national security is toward profiling against people of Chinese descent,” said Nicholas Evans, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who specializes in medical ethics. “That’s not only racist, it’s bad practice. FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement attempts at profiling have very often been harmful without making us any safer.”

Evans also questioned the FBI’s focus on scientists hand-carrying biological samples as a unique threat. He pointed to previous examples, like a U.S. lab in Maine that was fined more than a decade ago for importing highly pathogenic avian flu viruses from Saudi Arabia.

“The FBI claims that it is impossible to determine the contents of samples accurately, even if declared under current import laws,” he wrote in an email. “That’s true. But I am skeptical about the degree to which this particular behavior adds significant risks to security given that there are many other ways to get biological organisms into the country.”

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it’s true that China has long had loopholes in its biosafety regulations. “That’s why [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] in February talked about beefing up the legislation for biosafety and biosecurity,” he said.

That history has already encouraged rumors like the idea that the coronavirus originated as a bioweapon.

Now, with relations between China and the U.S. deteriorating, Huang expects collaboration on biological research to grow even more difficult, reversing decades of cooperation. “I often argue that U.S. engagement with China is the most successful in the area of public health,” he said. Such cooperation even survived the difficult period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Now, however, those relations are being set back as hostilities between the two countries grow.

“You could argue, health is borderless, especially when two countries face these common challenges. This would be a time for them to collaborate mostly closely,” he said. “That turned out to not be the case.”

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This paper is an interesting read.

1. The first SARS virus is said to have emerged in South China. Wuhan isnt in South China. According to Shi, herself, she traveled to Kunming to find the horseshoe bats which were containing the SARS viruses.

2. She already knew how deadly the Coronaviruses were since she helped research the original SARS virus, the outbreak, and its origination.

3. She actually applied for a Chinese patent of the Gilead drug Remdesivir in the name of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

4. Caixin reported Shi made further public statements against "perceived tinfoil-hat theories about the new virus's source", quoting her as saying: "The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory". [I had to post this. I hope China reads this and laughs just a bit. I would hope the Chinese can see they have the same problem the rest of the world has. It isnt the fault of the mad scientists, or greedy politicians, or the makers of weapons, the fault is only in the hands of the great unwashed.
We the people are the ones to fear and the ones to blame. They are just trying to save us from ourselves.]

5. According to the paper's website, it had only been generating a couple of hundred views a month, until last Jan2020, when it skyrocketed up to 7900 and has been viewed widely since then.

6. Shi knew in 2005 that SARS was a member of a larger group of SARS-like viruses that resided in the bat population. But still her research, and her collection of SARS-like viruses continued, and was paid for by the Chinese.

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