Five years ago, the Italian state-owned media company, Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana, exposed China’s dark efforts at viruses.
The video, which aired in November 2015, showed how Chinese scientists were doing biological experiments on a SARS-linked virus believed to be Coronavirus, derived from bats and mice, asking if it was worth the risk to be able to modify the viruses for compatibility with human organisms.
Below is a transcript of the Italian broadcast translated into english:
Chinese biological experiments
Chinese scientists have created a bat and mouse lung supervirus just for study reasons, but there are many questionable aspects. Is it worth the risk? It is an experiment, of course, but it is troubling.
Many scientists are concerned: it is a group of Chinese researchers who link a protein taken from bats to the SARS virus, acute pneumonia, derived from mice.
The exit is a super coronavirus that could affect man. It stays closed in the labs and is for study purposes only, but is it worth the risk: creating such a big threat just for testing purposes?
The debate about the risks of research is as old as science itself. Like the myth of Icarus, who launched himself from the sky and perished in the sea, having gotten too close to the Sun with the wax wings designed by his father!
Chinese scientists experiment with the SARS virus to infect humans. Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana
Here is an experiment in China, in which a group of scientists has managed to develop a chimera, an organism modified by binding the surface protein of a coronavirus found in bats of the common species called Great Horseshoe Bat, to a virus that causes SARS in mice, although not fatally.
The protein was suspected of making the chimeric hybrid organism suitable for affecting humans, and the experiment confirmed this.
It is precisely this molecule, called SHCO14, that allows the coronavirus to adhere to our respiratory cells and trigger the syndrome.
According to the researchers, the two organisms, the original and even more the designed one, can infect humans directly from bats, without going through an intermediate species such as the mouse, and it is this eventuality that generates many controversies.
Just a year ago (this broadcast is from 2015), the US government. USA It suspended funding for the research, which aimed to make viruses more contagious.
The moratorium did not stop the Chinese work on SARS, which was already in advanced stages and seemed relatively harmless.
According to a section of the scientific community, it is not actually dangerous. The probability of the virus passing into our species was negligible compared to the benefits of the virus, an argument that many other experts rejected.
First, because the relationship between risk and benefit is difficult to assess, and second, because especially in these times, it is wiser not to put into circulation an organism that can escape or be removed from the control of laboratories.
As soon as this transmission went viral on Italian social media, journalists and experts began to explain it saying that the virus in the video was not COVID-19.
Even the British magazine Nature, which wrote the same publication on which this Italian program is based, clarified that the virus of which the transmission spoke it was not related to the “Natural” COVID-19.
However, that is irrelevant. This does not mean that viruses are literally the same.
This means that the information presented in the video is consistent with the information that China is doing a lot of research on biological weapons , and that the impact of the virus on transmission has much in common with the general information on the symptoms of COVID -19.
The central monitor room at the China National Biosafety Laboratory. Nature
Furthermore, Nature itself had made a piece in February 2017 at the BSL-4 laboratory in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology , raising valid concerns and theories, and wondering out loud if experimenting with deadly viruses was a good idea.
“BSL-4 is the highest level of biocontainment: its criteria include filtering air and treating water and waste before leaving the laboratory, and stipulating that researchers change clothes and shower before and after using the facilities. of the laboratory. Such laboratories are often controversial …
“Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also does not require a BSL-4 laboratory, before moving on to Ebola and West African Lassa virus, which yes … Concerns surround the Chinese laboratory … The SARS virus he has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing several times …
“The plan to expand to a network increases such concerns. A BSL-4 laboratory in Harbin is already awaiting accreditation; The next two are expected to be in Beijing and Kunming. “
In January 2020, Nature later timidly added an editor’s note to the top of the article, saying that there is, in fact, “no evidence” that this laboratory plays a role in the coronavirus outbreak and that scientists believe that the source is likely ‘an animal market’.
Meanwhile, Italian scientists from the University of Milan are doing research if the coronavirus outbreak really started in Italy in the last quarter of 2019.
The administrative region of Milan and Lodi, in the administrative region of Lombardy, reported a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and influenza in October and December 2019.
Meanwhile, amid worldwide criticism, $ 20 Billion Lawsuit Filed Against China for Biological Warfare with the coronavirus.
