Wuhan Institute of Virology

Three State Department Cables

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Posted on by Sainath Suryanarayanan

On May 24, 2021, the U.S. State Department released more records in response to our FOIA lawsuit. These may be of interest:

  1. “PRC claims of COVID transmission via cold chain food imports growing”: A November 18, 2020 State Department cable expressed skepticism of Chinese state media claims that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted via imported cold chain food. These claims were used to raise doubts on a Wuhan origin for the novel coronavirus.
  2. “China’s interest in the Global Virome Project presents an opportunity for global health cooperation”: A September 28, 2017 State Department cable conveyed the Chinese government’s interest in collaborating with the U.S. government on the Global Virome Project (GVP) — an ambitious effort to map the global diversity of potential pandemic pathogens. The GVP is a successor of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s PREDICT project. PREDICT supported scientists from WIV and the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance to gather bat coronaviruses from a mineshaft in Yunnan, China, including RaTG13 — SARS-CoV-2’s closest-known relative to date. In 2012, six miners who entered this mineshaft fell sick with Covid-like pneumonia of unknown origin, with three eventually dying.
  3. “Wuhan Institute of Virology cancels meeting”: A December 2017 State Department cable, titled “A Most Inconvenient Year: Central China’s Interference in U.S. Activities in 2017,” reported that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) canceled a meeting with diplomats from the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan. The meeting was reportedly intended to set the stage for the U.S. Consul General’s official visit to WIV’s maximum-security BSL-4 laboratory. In 2018, the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan repeatedly warned of safety issues and risky bat coronavirus research at WIV.

For more information:

U.S. State Department records, which U.S. Right to Know obtained via FOIA litigation are here: State Department Batch #3 (114 pages)

Also see: State Department Batch #2 (37 pages) and State Department Batch #1 (92 pages)

Background page on U.S. Right to Know’s investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

Colorado State University documents on bat pathogen research

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Posted on by Sainath Suryanarayanan

This post describes documents of Colorado State University (CSU) Professors Rebekah Kading and Tony Schountz, which U.S. Right to Know obtained from a public records request. Kading and Schountz are virologists who study bat-associated pathogens in hot-spots across the world. They collaborate with EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. military’s research and development arm.

The documents offer a glimpse into the military-academic complex of scientists who study how to prevent spillovers of potential pandemic pathogens from bats. The documents raise questions about contagion risks, for example, of shipping of bats and rats infected with dangerous pathogens. They also contain other noteworthy items, including:

  1. In February 2017, DoD coordinators of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Cooperative Biological Engagement Program announced a new global bat alliance “to build and leverage country and regional capabilities to generate an enhanced understanding of bats and their ecology within the context of pathogens of security concern.” Associated with this, the emails show a collaboration between CSU, EcoHealth Alliance and the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories to build a bat research site at CSU to expand bat infection studies.
  2. The global bat alliance evolved into a group called Bat One Health Research Network (BOHRN). By 2018, key BOHRN scientists were working with DARPA on a project called PREEMPT. CSU records on PREEMPT show that Rocky Mountain Laboratories, CSU and Montana State University are developing “scalable vectored” vaccines to spread through bat populations “to prevent emergence and spillover” of potential pandemic viruses from bats to human populations. Their goal is to develop “self-disseminating vaccines” — which spread contagiously between bats — in hopes of eliminating pathogens in their animal reservoirs before spillover into humans. This research raises concerns about unintended consequences of releasing genetically engineered self-spreading entities into the open, and the ecological risks of their unknown evolution, virulence and spread.
  3. Shipping bats and rats infected with dangerous pathogens creates the potential for unintended spillover into humans. Tony Schountz wrote to EcoHealth Alliance VP Jonathan Epstein on March 30, 2020: “RML [Rocky Mountain Labs] imported the Lassa virus reservoir by having them born in captivity in Africa, then the offspring were imported directly to RML. Don’t know if horseshoe bats can be born in captivity, but that could be an avenue to alleviate CDC concerns.” Lassa virus is spread by rats that are endemic to west Africa. It causes an acute illness called Lassa fever in humans, which leads to an estimated 5,000 deaths every year (1% death rate).
  4. On February 10, 2020, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak sent an email soliciting signatories for a draft of The Lancet statement “to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that 2019-nCoV does not have a natural origin.” In the email, Daszak wrote: “Drs. Linda Saif, Jim Hughes, Rita Colwell, William Karesh and Hume Field have drafted a simple statement of support for scientists, public health and medical professionals of China fighting this outbreak (attached), and we invite you to join us as the first signatories.” He did not mention his own involvement in drafting the statement.  Our prior reporting showed that Daszak drafted the statement that was published in The Lancet.
  5. Tony Schountz exchanged emails with key Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists Peng Zhou, Zhengli Shi and Ben Hu. In an email dated October 30, 2018, Schountz proposed to Zhengli Shi a “loose association” between CSU’s Arthropod-borne and Infectious Disease Laboratory and WIV, involving “collaboration on relevant projects (e.g., arboviruses and bat-borne viruses) and training of students.” Zhengli Shi responded positively to Schountz’s suggestion. The records do not suggest that any such collaboration was initiated.

For more information

A link to the entire batch of Colorado State University documents can be found here: CSU records

U.S. Right to Know is posting documents obtained through public freedom of information (FOI) requests for our Biohazards investigation in our post: FOI documents on origins of SARS-CoV-2, hazards of gain-of-function research and biosafety labs.

No peer review for addendum to prominent coronavirus origins study?

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Posted on by Sainath Suryanarayanan

The journal Nature did not assess the reliability of important claims made in a November 17 addendum to a study on the bat-origins of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, correspondence with Nature staff suggests.

On February 3, 2020, Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists reported discovering the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2, a bat coronavirus called RaTG13. RaTG13 has become central to the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 originated in wildlife.

The addendum addresses unanswered questions about the provenance of RaTG13. The authors, Zhou et al., clarified they found RaTG13 in 2012-2013 “in an abandoned mineshaft in Mojiang County, Yunnan Province,” where six miners suffered acute respiratory distress syndrome after exposure to bat feces, and three died. Investigations of the symptoms of the sickened miners could provide important clues about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Zhou et al. reported finding no SARS-related coronaviruses in stored serum samples of the sick miners, but they did not support their claims with data and methods about their assays and experimental controls.

The absence of key data in the addendum has raised further questions about the reliability of the Zhou et al. study. On November 27, U.S. Right to Know asked Nature questions about the addendum’s claims, and requested that Nature publish all supporting data that Zhou et al. may have provided.

On December 2, Nature Head of Communications Bex Walton replied that the original Zhou et al.  study was “accurate but unclear,” and that the addendum was an appropriate post-publication platform for clarification. She added: “With regards to your questions, we would direct you to approach the authors of the paper for answers, as these questions pertain not to the research that we have published but to other research undertaken by the authors, upon which we cannot comment” (emphasis ours). Since our questions related to research described in the addendum, the Nature representative’s statement suggests Zhou et al.’s addendum was not evaluated as research.

We asked a follow up question on December 2: “was this addendum subjected to any peer-review and/or editorial oversight by Nature?” Ms. Walton did not answer directly; she replied: “In general, our editors will assess comments or concerns that are raised with us in the first instance, consulting the authors, and seeking advice from peer reviewers and other external experts if we consider it necessary. Our confidentiality policy means we cannot comment on the specific handling of individual cases.”

Since Nature considers an addendum to be a post-publication update, and does not subject such post publication addenda to the same peer-review standards as original publications, it seems likely that the Zhou et al. addendum did not undergo peer-review.

Authors Zhengli Shi and Peng Zhou did not respond to our questions about their Nature addendum.