U.S. Government is Funding Gain-of-Function Research in China to Make Bird Flu More Infectious

• by Carolyn Hendler, JD

• Published February 26, 2024
• Government

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The U.S government is again funding gain-of-function (GoF) research with Chinese scientists to make a dangerous virus even more potent. This time it is with birds not bats. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) gave $1 million to fund risky research on bird flu viruses to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China; the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athena, Georgia and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute in Scotland.¹

The plan is to infect ducks and geese with various strains of bird flu to render the virus more infectious and transmissible as scientists study the virus’s ability, “to jump into mammalian hosts.”

Documents outlining the research, which began in 2021 and will continue until 2026, were obtained by the White Coat Waste Project. The White Coat Waste Project is a nonprofit “bipartisan taxpayer watchdog organization” with a mission to “unite animal-lovers and liberty-lovers to find, expose and defund wasteful and cruel taxpayer-funded animal experimentation.”²

Bird Flu Research Tied to Wuhan Institute of Virology

It is worth noting that one of the research partners, the Roslin Institute, is connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) whose research is believed to have started the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. One of the researchers on the project, Wenju Liu, is affiliated with the WIV along with the “bat lady” herself, Zheng-Li Shi, well known for her long-time work on bat corona viruses.³

The research is focusing on three strains of bird flu, H5NX, H7N9 and H9N2, all three of which are capable of infecting animals and humans. H5NX is considered, “highly pathogenic” and can lead to neurological problems while H7N9 has caused severe illness in humans in the past.⁴

The experimental GoF research will use chickens, quails, geese and duck to predict the virus evolution in natural hosts and study their “potential to jump into mammalian hosts”.^{5 6}

Answers Demanded from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa has demanded answers from U.S. Secretary Agriculture Tom Vilsack about the tax payer funded research. She asked whether this research was considered GoF research, what part of the research was being conducted in China and what, if any, safeguards were put in place. The goal of GoF research is to increase the transmissibility or virulence of a pathogen for the purpose of trying to understand the likelihood of it causing a pandemic.^{7 8}

Sen. Ernst said:

The health and safety of Americans are too important to just wing it, and Biden’s USDA should have had more apprehension before sending any taxpayer dollars to collaborate with the CCP on risky avian flu research. They should know by now to suspect ‘fowl’ play when it comes to researchers who have ties to the dangerous Wuhan Lab, and simply switching from bats to birds causes concern that they are creating more pathogens of pandemic potential… We cannot allow what happened in Wuhan to happen again.⁹

The discovery of this risky research comes on the heels of former U.S. intelligence officials, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Energy and scientists agreeing that the COVID pandemic likely began when the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from the WIV while engaging in GoF research which, according to Rutgers University molecular biologist, Richard Ebright, PhD, violated federal policies on GoF research and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research.

U.S. Government May be Giving Tens of Millions for Viral Research Overseas

Sen. Ernst and Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin allege that the U.S. government is providing tens of millions of dollars for viral research abroad including $11 million in grants to EcoHealth Alliance (the U.S. group connected to the coronavirus research at the WIV) for research including, but not limited to, “viral spillover from wildlife in the Philippines”, “viral spillover bio surveillance in India” and “high-risk” pathogens in Liberia.¹⁰

USDA spokesperson Allan Rodriguez denied the allegations saying:

USDA’s funding is only being committed to the specific components carried out by our own team located in Athens, Georgia, and is not [in] any way contributing to research taking place in the U.K. or China.¹¹

U.S. is 18 Months Away from Controversial Bird Flu Vaccine for Birds

Bird flu cases have been on the rise in the U.S. In the last two years, the virus has been detected in flocks in 47 states and caused more than 81 million birds to be culled.¹² In June 2023, the USDA announced it would spend $502 million to prepare for potential future outbreaks in response to the worst ever bird flu outbreak. In the year and a half prior, 58.7 million chicken, turkeys and other birds across 47 states died from the bird flu, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).¹³

The USDA, in response to the increase in bird flu cases among the avian population, is talking about poultry vaccinations with international trading partners. The World Organization for Animal Health recommends using bird flu vaccinations as preventive measure against a potential pandemic.¹⁴

In fact, the USDA recently announced that it is about 18 months away from identifying an animal vaccine for the current strain of bird flu and are working on a process to distribute it.¹⁵

Secretary Vilsack announced:

We are probably 18 months or so away from being able to identify a vaccine that would be effective for this particular (avian flu) that we’re dealing with now.¹⁶

Vaccinating the avian population is controversial. According to Rodrigo Gallardo, PhD, DVM, professor in poultry medicine and avian virology specialist at the University of California Davis, eradication (putting down the entire flock when only case of bird flu is detected) is preferred over vaccination as vaccinating flocks creates a number of complications. Vaccinated birds could shed the virus to unprotected birds, although they may not appear sick and, therefore, may not be isolated from unprotected birds. Also, testing may not be able to differentiate between antibodies from infection and antibodies from the vaccine and evidence has shown that birds in countries that vaccinate have developed a more endemic strain that does not ever get totally eliminated.¹⁷

Yuko Sato, DVM, associate professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University warned:

The vaccine is not a silver bullet. This is not going to prevent infection of the birds, so in order to have an exit strategy as the country, you would have to make sure that if you vaccinate, if you still have positive birds, you have to be able to make sure that you could stamp out the virus. Otherwise, we’ll never be looking at eradicating the virus from the United States.¹⁸

The U.S. does not currently accept chickens from countries that vaccinate for bird flu. The National Chicken Council is against the vaccination of chickens for bird flu because the vaccine can mask the presence of the infection. They are concerned that should U.S. chickens be vaccinated, the U.S. broiler industry, which is the second largest exporter of chickens in the world, would lose out in the very valuable export world valued at more than $5 billion annually.¹⁹

Clinical Trial of mRNA Bird Flu Vaccines for Humans Also Underway

With much of the poultry community against vaccinating birds, the focus may turn to human vaccinations for the bird flu. The CDC have been conducting clinical trials of experimental mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) bird flu vaccines  for humans. One study, which showed  mRNA vaccines are immunogenic in mice and ferrets and prevent morbidity and mortality in ferrets for a strain of bird flu, was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Penn Institute for Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases.²⁰

The study on experimental mRNA bird flu vaccine for humans stated:

Our laboratory and others previously demonstrated that mRNA-lipid nanoparticle (LNP) vaccines encoding influenza virus HA induce potent immune responses in mice, rabbits, and ferrets, and clinical trials confirm their safety and immunogenicity in humans.²¹

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