Retired LtCol Lawrence Sellin: A Primer for the House Select Committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party Part 1: The Laboratory Origin of COVID-19
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 lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.
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