Boston University scientists have been “playing with fire” as they have been working to create an extremely deadly strain of COVID-19. The laboratory has spent untold amounts of money building the lethal Omicron strain of COVID-19 that has killed eight out of ten mice, which is eighty percent. The extremely deadly virus combines the original COVID-19 strain that originated in Wuhan, China, with the highly-contagious Omicron variant that surged in the United States back in January 2022.
Scientists were allegedly trying to figure out whether the “spike protein” on the Omicron variant, which made it the most transmissible variant of the virus, also made it have a mild effect on people. However, the scientists found out that the variant of COVID-19 that they created was still extremely deadly, which indicated that the special spike protein was not responsible for the virus’s relatively mild effect on infected hosts.
The Boston University team found that their lab-created variant “inflicted severe disease” while it also “robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity.” The combination of these two traits makes it an extremely deadly variant that could wreak havoc upon the United States if it were accidentally released into the wild from the Massachusetts lab.
An Israeli Government scientist named Professor Shmuel Shapira slammed the Boston University researchers for “playing with fire.” Shapira added, “This should be totally forbidden!”
Conspiracy theorists continue to claim that the virus that first originated in Wuhan was created in a lab, which has been proven false. Nevertheless, the practice of gain function research has been highly restricted in the United States since 2017, when Donald Trump was president.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, spoke to the Daily Mail about the occurrence and explained that this type of research could be very dangerous.
“The research is a clear example of gain of function research,” Dr. Ebright told the British publication. “If we are to avoid a next lab-generated pandemic, it is imperative that oversight of enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research be strengthened.”
The Boston University researchers teamed up with scientists from Florida to explore how dangerous they could make a COVID-19 strain using the Omicron spike protein that made it highly contagious to human beings.
Compared to the strain of COVID-19 that first emerged in Wuhan, the Omicron mutation was not as deadly. The variant that emerged in China killed 100 percent of lab mice, while this new strain only killed eight out of ten mice.
The scientists wrote, “In…mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent.” The research has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Dr. Ebright told DailyMail.com: “The research is a clear example of gain of function research of concern and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (ePPP) research. It is especially concerning that this new US-government ePPP research – like the previous US-government ePPP research on chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology that may have caused the pandemic – appears not to have undergone the prior risk-benefit review mandated under US-government policies.”
Do you think scientists should be able to do this type of research?