OPINION | By Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News – In 2004, on the heels of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, I examined the devastating impact that the fear of SARS had on our society as opposed the risks posed by the virus itself.
In retrospect, it appeared that we had overestimated the risks of worldwide devastation. But Dr. Tony Fauci was deeply concerned about SARS or a virus like it causing a widespread pandemic.
Fauci believed that we had come close, and was motivated to try to overcome the fact that SARS had been obscured and hidden by China until it had already spread beyond their borders.
He told me on “Doctor Radio” on SiriusXM this past week that SARS was a main motivation for extending our resources to try to study emerging coronaviruses in China.
The problem with Fauci’s approach wasn’t that he was wrong about coronaviruses, it was that he was naïve about the Chinese Communist Party.
He and others relied on the cooperation and veracity of Chinese scientists who may well have been compromised by their association with the Chinese government.
The Chinese military, as is now widely known, is involved with some of the research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dr. Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the institute, studies bat coronaviruses similar in structure to SARS COV 2 and in fact has manipulated them with gain of function research designed to test a virus’ potential to affect and spread among humans.
I believe this kind of research is far too dangerous and should be universally banned.
Dr. Zhengli also has collaborated on research with Dr. Ralph S. Baric at the University of North Carolina. A 2015 paper by Baric – published in Nature Medicine in 2018 and entitled “Revised TRN SARS COV Mutants” – that describes a hybrid virus, is eyebrow-raising.
Of course, Dr. Zhengli has denied repeatedly that the SARS COV 2 virus comes from her lab in Wuhan, but the circumstantial evidence has continued to pile up that this virus could have been bioengineered and leaked out.
Viruses don’t simply jump from one species to the next – they evolve, via mutation, via repeated contact, over time … Click here to read more.
