American researchers concealed their intention to conduct high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan under lax safety standards from the Pentagon the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know.

A 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology & American scientists, has stoked concern that the pandemic resulted from a lab accident.

It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS & SARS-CoV-2. Most worrying to some scientists: The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins w/ furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. Indeed, some scientists have likened DEFUSE to a blueprint for generating SARS-CoV-2 in the lab.

New documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know now show that these experiments were proposed to occur in part in Wuhan w/ fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S. — apparently to save on costs. American scientists @ the center of the “lab leak theory” controversy appear to have concealed this from their desired funder — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — in order to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China.

The documents call into question the credibility of these scientists’ assurances that the pandemic could not have sprung out of their collaboration on coronavirus engineering research w/ the lab in Wuhan.

U.S. Right to Know has obtained an early draft of DEFUSE w/ comments from “PD” & “BRS.” Emails show these commenters to be “Peter Daszak” & “Baric, Ralph S.”

Daszak leads EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that discovers novel viruses. Baric helms a University of North Carolina lab w/ a focus on coronaviruses. Both Daszak & Baric have worked w/ the Wuhan Institute of Virology on gain-of-function research making coronaviruses more deadly or infectious.

The formal DEFUSE grant proposal states that Baric in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, will engineer the coronavirus spike proteins & test their ability to infect human cells.

But in a comment on an early draft of the proposal, Daszak clarifies that the Wuhan Institute of Virology will in fact do much of this work, but that this is excluded from the formal proposal to make DARPA “comfortable.” The comment is addressed to Baric & Wuhan Institute of Virology Senior Scientist Zhengli Shi.

“Ralph, Zhengli. If we win this contract, I do not propose that all of this work will necessarily be conducted by Ralph, but I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable w/ our team,” Daszak wrote. “Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, & I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well…”

In another comment, Daszak said that he sought to “downplay the non-US focus of this proposal” to DARPA by not highlighting the involvement of the Chinese researchers, Shi & Duke-NUS Medical School Professor Linfa Wang.
EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak

“I’m planning to use my resume & Ralph’s,” Daszak wrote. “Linfa/Zhengli, I realize your resumes are also very impressive, but I’m trying to downplay the non-US focus of this proposal so that DARPA doesn’t see this as a negative.”

In addition to the national security risks, conducting coronavirus engineering & testing work in Wuhan entailed greater biosafety risks, the American researchers privately acknowledged.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research on SARS-related coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 in biosafety level two (BSL-2) conditions. Biosafety levels range from one (BSL-1) to four (BSL-4), w/ BSL-4 being the most stringent.

BSL-2 labs involve ventilated biosafety cabinets, w/ researchers in surgical masks & lab coats. Many scientists say viruses that may be transmitted through the air should @ minimum be studied in BSL-3 conditions...