By Ariel Fernández

By now, many of us have heard of Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, the company awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant that subcontracted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. Like Anthony Fauci, his boss at NIH, Daszak vociferously denied he had any responsibility in the catastrophic coronavirus spillover that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci’s and Daszak’s denials appear to be at odds with documents from the public domain on NIH-funded research. Those documents inform on dangerous research conducted at WIV involving gain-of-function manipulation of natural viruses to make them transmissible to humans. These findings place both men at the center of the controversy on the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, the agent causative of COVID-19.

May 1^st, 2024, may prove to be a tough day for Daszak, or maybe not. That day, he has been summoned to appear for public hearing at the US Congress and testify on the origin of COVID-19. He is given a chance to rectify demonstrably false statements he made to extricate himself from any responsibility in the catastrophe. Furthermore, he will need to ascertain whether WIV engaged in NIH-funded gain-of-function virus manipulation that allegedly enabled SARS-CoV-2 transmission to humans. Unlike in previous hearings, this time Congress is alerted that Daszak has allegedly lied in regards to the origin of the pandemic and his own alleged responsibility in the disaster. It may be a difficult juncture for Daszak because if he does not rectify his previous statements, he may be accused of false testimony, a federal crime, and if he does rectify, his alleged responsibility in the catastrophe may be unequivocally established. On the other hand, Daszak has allegedly lied before even when confronted with the evidence, so we should not keep expectations high…

I had never heard of Daszak before late May of 2021. At that time, I probably became the first scientist to report in a professional journal that SARS-CoV-2 was the product of a gain-of-function manipulation of a bat virus conducted in a laboratory. My conclusions followed from direct examination of the virus genome and an assessment of the chemical composition of its constitutive proteins. At that early stage, and solely using information publicly available, I was able to identify two smoking guns: a) an artificially inserted site for enzymatic priming of the virus to enable entrance in a human cell, and b) an unnatural way of coding for SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

To support the claims in my paper, I pointed out the following verified scientific facts on SARS-CoV-2: 1) Prior to the pandemic, WIV had constructed chimeric SARS-related coronavirus able to infect human airway cells with demonstrated enhanced viral growth and lethality in humanized mice engineered to display human SARS receptors. 2) In an NIH grant proposal dating back to 2018, Daszak and WIV collaborators proposed to construct novel chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses that replace the natural spike gene with novel spike genes encoding spikes that have higher binding affinities to human cells. 3) In a DARPA grant proposal dating back to 2018, Daszak and WIV collaborators proposed to construct SARS-like coronaviruses, inserting a furin cleavage site (FCS) at the spike. 4) SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of 870 or so known SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a FCS. This does not completely rule out Daszak’s alleged natural origin, but is much more easily explained by a lab origin, especially since Daszak explicitly proposed inserting a FCS in his 2018 DARPA proposal. 5) The FCS of SARS-CoV-2 has codon usage highly unusual for bat SARS-related coronaviruses. Again, by itself this does not completely rule out a natural origin, but is much more easily explained by a lab origin.

Within a week, Daszak discovered my paper and frantically attacked it, calling it “unsubstantiated garbage”, “innuendo-filled”, “conspiratorial pseudoscience”, and fiercely discredited me in the media (*). Few weeks later, the journal editor received a request from NIH and its contractor demanding immediate retraction. I argued persuasively that my work was scientifically sound and correct. In the end, the paper was retained with an “expression of concern”, alerting the audience that my paper contained only my views, which may differ from those of the journal. Obviously dissatisfied with the outcome, someone kept calling me from Maryland, where NIH is based, demanding that I withdraw the paper or “steps would be taken to ruin my reputation” [sic].

Why are these people fiercely attacking me instead of simply focusing on proving that my results are incorrect? That was my initial reaction. In retrospect, it is clear why NIH and Daszak wanted me out of the picture. My paper contained the only information that was missing to clearly implicate Daszak in the disaster: My paper ruled out the colossal coincidence that SARS-CoV-2 would be an evolutionary product emerging precisely at the same time and place where gain-of-function research was being conducted under the pretext of assessing the dangers of virus spillover. In other words, it ruled out Daszak’s narrative.

Daszak’s frantic reaction to my paper is tale-telling: It strongly suggests a cover-up, reinforcing the view that he bears responsibility for the catastrophe. Had he done nothing wrong, all he needed to do to defuse the situation was to refute my paper on scientific grounds. Surely the editor would have published his refutation… provided there was one.

(*) X @PeterDaszak . Peter Daszak. Jun 5, 2021.   Why is a journal with an impact factor of 3.74 publishing such clearly erroneous, innuendo-filled, unsubstantiated garbage? @ACSPublications tagline: “Most trusted. Most cited. Most read.” Clearly false statements that are damaging to public health…

X @thackerpd. Paul Thacker. June 5, 2021. Peter Daszak calling for retraction of “conspiratorial pseudoscience”: “Molecular Biology Clues Portray SARS-CoV-2 as a Gain-of-Function Laboratory Manipulation of Bat CoV RaTG13”