STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jan 31 (IPS) – On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) – a move experts say makes the U.S. and other countries less safe from infectious diseases and other public-health threats. It might thus be opportune to return to the global COVID 19 pandemic. Has the threat really gone away? Can something similar not erupt again?
A great amount of material from the infamous Japanese Unit 731 was after World War II brought to both the Soviet Union and the U.S. In the USSR it became the basis for the development of the Sverdlovsk facilities and in the U.S. it were brought to the Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, where it, just as in the USSR, were further developed. Strangely enough, the facilities at Fort Detrick were shut down in August 2019, only three months before the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported from China. The reason for the closure was cited as “a risk of severe threats to public, animal, or plant health, as well as animal or plant products.” No further details were provided.
Unit 731 was a secret biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, where horrific human experimentation occurred – no one survived these experiments, which nevertheless was meticulously recorded by the researchers who performed them, leaving behind a vast documentation. Between 1936 and 1945, approximately 14,000 victims were murdered in Unit 731, established in occupied Manchuria, while at least 300,000 individuals died due to infectious illnesses originating from Unit 731 and spread across China.
So, what is currently happening within intensely guarded and well protected microbiological facilities around the world? First and foremost, vaccines and drugs are being developed to eradicate and cure a variety of often life-threatening diseases. However, like all research, this can also have its downsides. Ron Fouchier is known for his research on respiratory viruses; how they can mutate, and through zoonosis spread from animals to humans. His research is also evidence of how viruses and microbes can be manipulated and altered within a laboratory environment. In 2003, at the annual meeting of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza, assembled microbiologists listened as Fouchier described how he had transferred avian (bird) influenza from one animal to another, thus making the virus significantly more contagious.
He mutated the genetic sequence of the avian virus in many different ways, until, as he later put it, “someone convinced me to do something really, really stupid.” He spread the virus by allowing it to mutate in the nose of a ferret and then implanted the animal’s nasal fluid into the nose of another ferret. After ten such manipulations, from one ferret to another, the virus spread by itself among the animals and within a few days killed most of them. Fouchier found five new mutations of the virus and then managed to combine them into a single super-virus, turning out to be far more deadly than the original avian virus. He had thus achieved something that could probably happen in nature, where a virus mutates when transferred from one animal to another and thus become increasingly deadly. What happens in nature can be done much faster and more efficiently in a laboratory. Fouchier’s virus is now securely stored in an underground facility in Rotterdam.
China is the country that so far suffered the most from biological warfare. When Unit 731 had been destroyed and some of its researchers captured by Russians and Americans, the Chinese might not have had much interest, or time, to focus on the scientific results of the Japanese Biological – and Chemical warfare programmes. The country was torn apart by violent fighting between Chiang Kai-shek’s republican forces and Mao Zedong’s communists. However, there were branches of Unit 731 in Chinese-controlled areas. Unit 731’s largest auxiliary facilities had been established in Beijing, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, and it is likely that Chinese forces succeeded in securing some of the material from these installations
After the war and the Communists’ victory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ facilities in Beijing became the centre for the country’s microbiological research and branches were soon established throughout China. Wuhan’s microbiological laboratory was founded in 1956 and initially focused on research concerning zoonotic transmission of viral diseases.
The so-called Hong Kong flu struck China in the summer of 1968 and spread to Hong Kong, where half a million people fell ill, and after the disease had spread worldwide more than a million people died. This served as a warning for the Chinese authorities, who, despite the general chaos reigning in the country, discreetly began cooperating with international epidemiologists. This cooperation deepened over the years. Wuhan’s laboratory developed an intimate collaboration and exchange with researchers from Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas, Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, and Centre international de recherche en infectiologie in Lyon, France.
The SARS virus, a group to which the deadly coronavirus belongs, first appeared in November 2002, causing a relatively mild epidemic, with about 8,500 cases, of which 800 died. It was a group of researchers from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology who found that China’s horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the SARS-like coronavirus. Wuhan’s researchers collected samples from thousands of horseshoe bats across China and isolated over 300 bat coronavirus sequences. In 2015, an international team, including two researchers from the Wuhan Institute, published their research results concerning the probability that a bat’s coronavirus could infect a human cell line. They had constructed a hybrid virus by combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus, which was then adapted to grow in mice and subsequently replicate human diseases. It was found that this hybrid virus could infect human cells.
We are still stuck with the question – where did SARS-CoV-2 originate? Can it be traced all the way back to Unit 731? Probably not. Did it come from a bat? It is very possible. Did it leak from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology? This continues to be an open question. The prestigious British scientific weekly journal Nature, stated in 4 December 2024 that most researchers now agree that SARS-CoV-2 finds its origins in animals. However, since the virus’ definitive origin has not yet been traced to any animal, some researchers continue to claim that the virus may have been developed in and then leaked – either by accident or intentionally – from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology.
In August of the same year, an editorial in the equally prestigious British medical journal The Lancet did in its monthly issue Lancet Microbe call for an end to all unscientific conspiracy theories about the virus leaking from Wuhan’s research laboratory, stating that “SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus that found its way into humans through mundane contact with infected wildlife that went on to cause the most consequential pandemic for over a century. While it is scholarly to entertain alternative hypotheses, particularly when evidence is scarce, alternative hypotheses have been implausible for a long time and have only become more-so with increasing scrutiny. Those who eagerly peddle suggestions of laboratory involvement have consistently failed to present credible arguments to support their positions.”
The Lancet’s editorial writer continued to state that zealous attacks from amateurs might intimidate and even scare scientists, who are trying to objectively pursue their research.
“A worrying potential consequence of this saga is that it might have a chilling effect on the pursuit of answers in the future on both COVID-19 and new potential threats. With researchers unwilling to ask questions freely for fear of being persecuted when facts lead to inevitable refinement or revision of earlier conclusions.”
Accordingly, we have to let science continue to work undisturbed, though under supervision. However, this does not mean that we have to yield to unfounded conspiracy theories and leave global scientific cooperation. By leaving WHO, the U.S. is taking a first step on a dangerous road. This becomes even more worrisome while considering President Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F Kennedy Jr, a man without medical expertise and prone to believe in conspiracy theories, to become U.S. health secretary, overseeing everything from medical research to food safety and public welfare programmes. One of the mandates Trump will provide Kennedy with is to remove “corruption” from health agencies, whatever he might mean by that?
Main sources: Harris, Sheldon H. (2002) Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-1945, and The American Cover-up. New York: Routledge, and Specter, Michael (2012) “The deadliest Virus”, The New Yorker, March 4.
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© Inter Press Service (2025) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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