Scientists Behaving Badly

“Follow the Science” became a politically tinged catch-phrase during the Pandemic. For someone like me, fascinated by science from childhood, and willing to spend a lot of time and effort learning established scientific facts, and more importantly understanding the scientific method, this seemed like the most basic of no-brainers. But the Pandemic’s dislocations provided a hard stop on many of life’s basic functions and assumptions. When we finally learned, after a period of organized stonewalling from prominent scientists, and their willing partners in the media, that the Chinese had been doing dangerous gain of function research on Corona viruses in poorly secured laboratories, that hard stop should have superseded anyone’s political leanings, as a dire warning. Whether you believe that the Pandemic had a completely natural origin, or was the result of a lab leak is immaterial, because your belief is merely a guess. The more important question is whether you think it is a good idea for scientists to be manipulating the genetic structure of viruses to make them more lethal for humans, and whether it is wise for the United States to be funding such research in laboratories ultimately controlled by the military-industrial complex of states which are our direct geo-political enemies. When it comes to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, our intelligence agencies knew it is was under the control of the Chinese military. Everything in China is under the control of the autocratic regime, and certainly any activity which has potential significance to the military objectives and National/Party security is doubly so. People who cross the CCP, be they businessmen, Uyghuirs, politicians, human rights activists, writers or scientists can simply disappear. How smart could it be to assume that scientists living in such an environment will provide you fully factual and un-redacted accounts of ALL the experiments they are performing? The following quote from Robert Oppenheimer highlights the fact that high level intellectual ability is not always accompanied by wisdom.

‘When you see something technically sweet, YOU GO AHEAD AND DO IT, and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

Well gosh darn those Chinese scientists have been busy again, zipping up new and improved Corona viruses. A very recent pre-print reveals the fruits of their labors—let’s take a close look on what they whipped up. They started with a Corona virus they isolated from pangolins, which could infect mice and Golden Hamsters, but was not very pathogenic. Then through serial passage of the virus in specialized cell cultures they isolated mutants which had the properties they were aiming for—increased virulence in “humanized” mice. These are not mice who can calculate, write sonnets or sing Nessun dorma, but are genetically altered to express the human ACE2 receptor on their cells. That receptor is the portal for Corona viruses to hijack human cells. When the mice were infected with the new Corona virus mutant 100% of them died within days, with massive viral infection of their brains. Oh gee, a new and fascinating attribute for a lab concocted Corona virus! The scientists were actually stunned, they had prepared to document the course of the infection by measuring the weight, food consumption, behavior of the mice—no need for that, the mice all died. Now this does not fit the rather tortured definition of GOF (gain of function) that Dr. Anthony Fauci trotted out to deflect criticism of the NIH funding of experiments at the Wuhan Institute, but it does not pass the basic sniff test of what reasonable scientists should be doing. No, they did not directly manipulate the genetic code of the natural, fairly harmless virus; but they did provide it with the opportunity to grow exponentially in specially selected cell cultures, and then tease out a mutant with their desired quality (increased lethality in the human stand-in mice). They further purified this mutant and proceeded to catalogue what made it so lethal, mutations in various X,Y and Z genes.

Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR) | bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.03.574008v1

Now the supporters of GOF research will say, this is critical research, in case this exact virus randomly appears in nature, and crosses over to humans (odds increased because the Chinese have a taste for endangered species, butchered alive in crowded “wet markets”, and also not so endangered bats). And I will tell you that the exact mutant appearing in this lab after serial passage in cell culture will NEVER be the exact virus to cause a pandemic by crossing over to humans. In the meantime the Chinese military are now in possession of a virus with potentially catastrophic virulence for humans; and also a virus which any molecular biology grad student with a lab easily funded by a group with evil intent can whip up—“just chop out some genetic material like it says here on the internet”. Let’s see a show of hands whether you think this sort of thing is good idea.

There is some good news on the COVID front which I am happy to share—it appears the winter surge has peaked and showing early signs of retreating. Hospitalizations have declined from their peak of 36,000/week to 32,800/week. In the two weeks since my last post there has been a significant drop in the waste water COVID measurements as well, supporting evidence that this winter wave is beginning to fade. As is usual deaths are continuing their upward trend, likely to persist for another week or two, and currently at 4.3% of all deaths in the country. Higher percentages of total deaths due to COVID continue along the Eastern seaboard from South Carolina straight up to Maine, and in the Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. Influenza admissions are also trending downward, but secondary peaks later in the winter season are not uncommon for this virus, so stay tuned and be vaccinated—this year’s vaccine appears to be a good match for the circulating flu strains.

JN.1, the “dark horse variant” is banishing just about all other COVID strains around the country and the world. As seen below JN.1 is now 85% of all US COVID isolates, running through our population with huge but uncounted numbers of infections, and giving us a nice dose of natural immunity to the large number of mutations it carries. Perhaps we will get a bit of a reprieve from the usual late summer wave as a result.

The last infectious disease issue I’d like to touch on today is the need for physicians in the US to be alert to a likely pending rise in diseases they may not have much familiarity with. A recent small cluster of cases of neurocysticcercosis in Belgium serves as an example. Several young children in one school there presented with seizures and were found to have cerebral infection with pork tape worm larvae. The disease does not exist in the pork herds of Belgium or Europe and the children had not traveled. Furthermore, you don’t get this disease by eating the meat of infected pigs, you only contract it by eating the eggs shed by an adult tape worm living in the GI track of an infected human. A food preparer at the school is highly suspected, but not proven. About 20 years ago a larger outbreak of this disease occurred in the Orthodox Jewish community of New York (no pork sausage there please) and was ultimately traced to a cook from Latin America who was asymptomatic but infected. While the disease does not exist in the pork herds of North America, it is endemic in Latin America and much of the world. Some of the diseases we will see are common in many areas of the world but never transmitted in the US, like cutaneous leishmaniasis, or Chagas disease, both transmitted through the bite of infected arthropods. This is occurring at a time when applicants for infectious disease fellowship training has been decreasing, despite an increased number of training program opportunities. In 2010 there were 342 applicants for 300 training positions, by 2014 the number of applicants had dropped to 254 with 327 training positions available. This past year only 50% of programs filled their available positions during the Match Program. With an aging population frequently afflicted by complex life threatening infections, an ever expanding group of people on immune suppressing therapies, and over 8 million migrants from countries all over the world entering the US in the last few years, the trajectory for trained Infectious Disease specialists doesn’t look good.

The Fact Checking Department is prepared now to dispel some internet rumors, and perhaps start some fresh conspiracy theories, since we seem to be running low on new and exiting ones. 1. It has been suggested that there was significant confusion and dithering surrounding the decision to remove the Houthi Iranian proxies from the list of International Terror organizations, only to place them back on the list again this week. President Biden was under the impression that Houthi was a member of the excellent all American band the Blowfish when he rescinded the terrorist label. Now that the intelligence defect has been cleared up, the Houthis are back where they belong.

2. Alec Baldwin is planning an insanity defense now that he has been charged with Involuntary Manslaughter. This is not true, even thought he stated during an interview that, “the gremlins inside that gun were completely insane”.

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