LATEST POSTS
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The Witches of WIV and their Magical Cave of Recombination
A paper published in December 2007 describes WIV’s first serious foray into making synthetic SARS-like viruses, assisted by Peking University’s Hongkui Deng. They replaced regions of a SARS related bat coronavirus spike with corresponding regions from human SARS. In the course of these experiments they discovered: In 2013, in the midst of renewed controversy about…
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The PLAngolin Capers
The release of the US ODNI report has reignited interest in pangolin coronaviruses, with a suggestion WIV may have tried to isolate live viruses from pangolins. But I question whether such viruses even exist, or whether they’re genuinely from pangolins or synthetic biology. Background There is some confusion about the provenance of the pangolin coronaviruses…
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SARS-1: Evidence of an Artificial Origin
As the world debates the origin of SARS-COV-2, the common assumption is the first SARS outbreak of 2002-04 was a natural event. But revisiting the evidence I found many parallels with the current outbreak, individual and institutional linkages, and many unresolved questions. Rather than the precedent for a natural origin, it may instead be the…
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DARPA officers on Proximal Origins: “based not on scientific analysis, but unwarranted assumptions”
A scathing critique by two US Department of Defense scientists of Andersen et al’s Proximal Origin paper has been leaked. Many scientists who have read Proximal Origin would concur, and yet it remains one of the most widely cited pieces of evidence of a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. Also mystifying, why has it taken such…
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The Furin Cleavage Site Part 1: Nexus
The interface between S1 | S2 • US | China • Military | Civilian • SARS | MERS The FCS has been the standout feature of the SARS-CoV-2 both in its awkward protrusion from a previously conserved part of the spike sequence, and in the controversy and discussion it has raised. Several theories have been…
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Uncanny Inserts in the N-Terminal Domain
Early in the pandemic IIT scientists Pradhan et. al. attracted controversy when they identified 4 sites in the spike of SARS-CoV-2 as having inserts from HIV. I propose alternative explanations that are equally “uncanny”. The Pradhan et al controversy marked the end of any semblance of reasonable discussion about pandemic origins and seems to have…
Why does it matter?
The origin of Covid-19 isn’t merely a scientific puzzle of academic interest. It’s tied to the struggle against the totalitarian regime in China, and the corruption of science, media and democratic institutions in the West.
Origin of Covid-19 