we write the music but can we face it? Synthetic viruses

10-29-2003   A scientist funded by the US government has deliberately created an extremely deadly form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus, through genetic engineering.  The new virus kills all mice even if they have been given antiviral drugs as well as a vaccine that would normally protect them.  The work has not stopped there. The cowpox virus, which infects a range of animals including humans, has been genetically altered in a similar way.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4318-us-develops-lethal-new-viruses/#ixzz6L9NZfiAb

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1-6-2006  "In my opinion this is not fanciful and there is good reason for concern," says Dr. David Yandell, Director of the Vermont Comprehensive Cancer Center. The expertise and technology to create lethal new strains of viruses and bacteria are available at almost any university in the United States and abroad.   https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=11720

4&page=1

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3-10-2013  Although bioweapons have been used in war for many centuries, a recent surge in genetic understanding, as well as a rapid growth in computational power, has allowed genetic engineering to play a larger role in the development of new bioweapons. In the bioweapon industry, genetic engineering can be used to manipulate genes to create new pathogenic characteristics aimed at enhancing the efficacy of the weapon through increased survivability, infectivity, virulence, and drug resistance (2). While the positive societal implications of improved biotechnology are apparent, the “black biology” of bioweapon development may be “one of the gravest threats we will face” (2). https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2013/03/10/genetically-engineered-bioweapons-a-new-breed-of-weapons-for-modern-warfare/

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7-1-2014  A controversial scientist who carried out provocative research on making influenza viruses more infectious has completed his most dangerous experiment to date by deliberately creating a pandemic strain of flu that can evade the human immune system.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population defenceless against its reemergence. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-controversial-us-scientist-creates-deadly-new-flu-strain-for-pandemic-research-9577088.html

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12-6-2018   Possible future pandemics may not depend on the chance meeting of different animal species and chance mutations, but may be deliberately designed instead. New tools from the field of synthetic biology could endow scientists with the frightening ability to design and manufacture maximally dangerous pathogens, leapfrogging natural selection.  https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/6/18127430/superbugs-biotech-pathogens-biorisk-pandemic

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5-22-2019    "What we've learned how to do is reprogram that immune system to attack itself," says Paul Garofolo, the company's CEO.  "We load the viruses up with CRISPR constructs, which essentially work like little Pac-Men.  They go into a target bacteria cell, and they chew up the DNA of that target.  It makes them much more potent killers."  https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/22/723582726/scientists-modify-viruses-with-crispr-to-create-new-weapon-against-superbugs

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tools like Crispr allow for cheaper and easier creation of synthetic biological organisms

3-25-2019    the threat that someone could create and unleash a synthetic virus.  In June the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a 231-page study warning that even existing viruses like the common flu could be tweaked in a lab to evade immune responses and resist therapeutics…. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has announced its own initiative to find better methods for detecting and evaluating synthetic bioweapons.  The system is designed to prevent rogue actors from getting their hands on the building blocks needed to make a dangerous virus….

  But as tools like Crispr allow for cheaper and easier creation of synthetic biological organisms, technology is quickly surpassing enforcement measures. …

There’s no telling when a manufactured disease will become a reality.  If that occurs, the culprit might be a lab-trained terrorist or a basement biohacker, a bumbling grad student or a Russian microbiologist on the lam.  https://www.wired.com/story/synthetic-biology-vaccines-viruses-horsepox/157
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  Mist blinds the worldly eye, but the one who can observe the realities of life also beholds the flow of events.  Our gates, once conquered, lead toward untold wealth.  Each golden beam of sunlight is a shield against the lunar light reflected onto Earth.  Between the paths of Sun and moon must one choose.  The Sun fills the day with miracles. The moon begets fleeting phantoms.  Walk in sunlight open-eyed and your day will become a wondrous fairy tale.
278.  The blade of grass rejoices in sunlight.  Can it be that only the human eye turns from the light?  A shield cannot long hide the leper nor can a helmet long conceal an empty head.  Our call is plainer than a child's request.  Accept the treasure prepared for you.  Just as muscles hold one's physical strength so must the spirit encompass God.  A fool's harvest is always poor.  But Our grain is of the best, and We sell it cheaply.  Can it be that you choose to devour yourselves through your own ignorance?  I beseech you and also warn you - there will be revelations, for the veil is being raised.  No spectacles can help if your eyes are clouded with dust.  Go, seek a physician!     -Leaves of Morya's Garden 1924 

antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of virus infection

2003.   The ADE of virus infection is a phenomenon in which virus-specific antibodies enhance the entry of virus, and in some cases the replication of virus, into monocytes/macrophages and granulocytic cells through interaction with Fc and/or complement receptors.  This phenomenon has been reported in vitro and in vivo for viruses representing numerous families and genera of public health and veterinary importance. These viruses share some common features such as preferential replication in macrophages, ability to establish persistence and antigenic diversity.  For some viruses, ADE of infection has become a great concern to disease control by vaccination.     

  Consequently numerous approaches have been made to the development of vaccines with minimum or no risk for ADE.  Identification of viral epitopes associated with ADE or neutralization is important for this purpose.  In addition clear understanding of the cellular events after virus entry through ADE has become crucial for developing efficient intervention. However the mechanisms of ADE still remain to be better understood. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12725690

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   Sars-Cov-2’s affinity for the ACE2 receptor is somewhere between 10 and 20 times higher than SARS, and it also creates viral loads thousands of times higher than SARS.  These two characteristics point towards COVID-19 using antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE, to enter human cells.  This is when the virus is able to hijack white blood cells to more easily enter into the rest of our body's cells, allowing it to seep deep into its hosts' nervous systems, creating permanent neurological damage in the hosts it doesn't kill outright. …

 Curiously Zhengli Shi, of U North Carolina and Wuhan fame, co-authored a 2019 paper which used inert viral shells to figure out exactly how SARS, with its affinity to the ACE2 receptor just like COVID-19, was able to harness ADE to hijack white blood cells for enhanced cell entry.  A gain-of-function extension of this research would be exactly the kind of experiment that could've given birth to COVID-19, especially considering that 2019 paper managed to fine-tune the exact concentration of antibodies that would best facilitate ADE.

  Both HIV and Dengue fever use antibody-dependent enhancement to boost their virulence, however its generally a phenomenon that takes a long time to occur when it happens in nature….Sars-Cov-2 also appears immediately to be able to enter its hosts nervous systems, killing many of its victims by attacking the region of the brain that controls breathing, drastically lowering white blood cell counts early on in infections and apparently re-infecting individuals who had already appeared to clear their infection….Additionally an unnaturally juiced-up ability to use ADE would also explain what other front-line medical workers are observing in their patients:  "I'm seeing people who look relatively healthy with a minimal health history, and they are completely wiped out like they've been hit by a truck.  This is knocking out what should be perfectly fit, healthy people.  Patients will be on minimal support, on a little bit of oxygen, and then all of a sudden they go into complete respiratory arrest, shut down and can't breathe at all.  That seems to be what happens to a lot of these patients: they suddenly become unresponsive or go into respiratory failure." … So this high lethality may be due in part to the multiple variants that had time to circulate in Wuhan, a hallmark of ADE since each subsequent variant is able to escape detection by our immune systems while still hijacking our white blood cells to increase its virulence.

http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Propaganda/Fear_as_propaganda_tool/Covid19/bioweapon_angle.shtml#Emergence_of_gain_of_function_bio_experiments

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Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry   12-05-2019

Yushun Wan, Jian Shang, Shihui Sun, Wanbo Tai, Jing Chen, Qibin Geng, Lei He, Yuehong Chen, Jianming Wu, Zhengli Shi, Yusen Zhou, Lanying Du, Fang Li

  However, detailed molecular mechanisms for ADE of coronavirus entry are still unknown.  We previously discovered a monoclonal antibody (MAb) (named Mersmab1) which has strong binding affinity for MERS-CoV RBD and efficiently neutralizes MERS-CoV entry by outcompeting DPP4 (48); this discovery allowed us to comparatively study the molecular mechanisms for antibody-dependent and receptor-dependent viral entries.

  In this study we examined how Mersmab1 binds to MERS-CoV spike, triggers the spike to undergo conformational changes and mediates viral entry into Fc receptor-expressing cells.  We also investigated the pathways and antibody dosages for Mersmab1-dependent and DPP4-dependent viral entries.  Our study sheds lights on the mechanisms of ADE and provides insight into vaccine design and antibody-based antiviral drug therapy......

Next we investigated whether Mersmab1 mediates MERS-CoV entry into Fc receptor-expressing cells. To this end we performed a MERS-CoV pseudovirus entry assay in which retroviruses pseudotyped with MERS-CoV spike (i.e., MERS-CoV pseudoviruses) were used to enter human cells expressing CD32A on their surface.  The main advantage of pseudovirus entry assay is to focus on the viral entry step (which is mediated by MERS-CoV spike) by separating viral entry from the other steps of viral infection cycles (e.g., replication, packaging and release)....

To understand the pathways of Mersmab1-dependent MERS-CoV entry we evaluated the potential impact of different proteases on MERS-CoV pseudovirus entry; these proteases are distributed along the viral entry pathway.  First, proprotein convertase inhibitor (PPCi) was used for examining the role of proprotein convertases in the maturation of MERS-CoV spike and the impact of proprotein convertases on the ensuing Mersmab1-dependent viral entry (Fig. 5A).  The results showed that when MERS-CoV pseudoviruses were produced from HEK293T cells in the presence of PPCi, the cleavage of MERS-CoV spike by proprotein convertases was significantly inhibited (Fig. 5B).   In the presence of Mersmab1, MERS-CoV pseudoviruses packaged in the presence of PPCi entered CD32A-expressing cells more efficiently than those packaged in the absence of PPCi (Fig. 5A)....

DISCUSSION       ADE of viral entry has been observed and studied extensively in flaviviruses, particularly dengue virus (3–6).  It has also been observed in HIV and Ebola viruses (7–10).  For these viruses it has been proposed that primary viral infections of hosts led to production of antibodies that are subneutralizing or nonneutralizing for secondary viral infections; these antibodies cannot completely neutralize secondary viral infections but instead guide virus particles to enter Fc receptor-expressing cells.  ADE can lead to worsened symptoms in secondary viral infections, causing major concerns for epidemiology.  ADE is also a major concern for vaccine design and antibody-based drug therapy, since antibodies generated or used in these procedures may lead to ADE.  ADE has been observed in coronaviruses for decades, but the molecular mechanisms are unknown.  Recent advances in understanding of the receptor recognition and cell entry mechanisms of coronaviruses have allowed us to use coronaviruses as a model system for studying ADE....

 Taken together our results show that RBD-specific neutralizing MAbs bind to the same region on coronavirus spikes as viral receptors do, trigger conformational changes of the spikes as viral receptors do, and mediate ADE through the same pathways as viral-receptor-dependent viral entry.  In other words RBD-specific neutralizing MAbs mediate ADE of coronavirus entry by functionally mimicking viral receptors....

Finally, we analyzed ADE of coronavirus entry at different antibody dosages.  MERS-CoV entry into cells expressing both viral and Fc receptors demonstrates complex MAb-dosage-dependent patterns.  As the concentration of MAb increases, (i) viral entry into DPP4-expressing cells is inhibited more efficiently because MAb binds to the spike and blocks the DPP4-dependent entry pathway, (ii) viral entry into Fc receptor-expressing cells is first enhanced and then inhibited because MAb binds to the Fc receptor to enhance the ADE pathway until the Fc receptor molecules are saturated, and (iii) viral entry into cells expressing both DPP4 and Fc receptor is first inhibited, then enhanced, and finally inhibited again because of the cumulative effects of the previous two patterns.   https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/early/2019/12/05/JVI.02015-19.full.pdf

find correct move in race-to-capture go game (ddd-btb)

ddd9230g (1600) vs. btb8545g (1510)  https://www.playok.com/p/?g=go13889869#162   4-28-20

instead of marked stone,

 what is the critical move here?

                                             
                                           

white appears to have fewer liberties

photo set

Wake up, America! Wake up now!

2-26-2019   A Saudi Arabian man accused of murder in the US is unlikely to face justice because he has fled the country, a US State Department official has said.

  Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah is believed to have fled the US state of Oregon with the help of Saudi officials and returned to his home country.

In a condolence letter to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a senior US diplomat wrote that extradition was unlikely.

  The letter does not mention what effort the US will go to to seek extradition.

"The United States and Saudi Arabia do not have a bilateral extradition treaty, and Saudi Arabia does not extradite its nationals to the United States," wrote Mary Elizabeth Taylor, the State Department's assistant secretary of legislative affairs, in a letter provided by Senator Wyden's office to BBC News.

"Therefore, the law enforcement options available are limited."

• Saudis 'helped car death suspect flee US'

  The letter included condolences to the family of 15-year-old Fallon Smart - who Mr Noorah is accused of killing in a hit-and-run crash in 2016 - and said the State Department "fully understands their desire to see Mr. Noorah prosecuted".    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47377888

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  Why is a single Saudi Arabian national allowed into the USA?  Why is even a single US-Saudi deal allowed to continue under this situation??  Why aren’t Sens. Wyden and Merkley (D-OR) filibustering the US Senate???  4-28-20    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8265435/City-Portland-pay-400-000-compensation-family-teen-girl-killed-2016-hit-run.html

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  (Another) Saudi fled the country and escaped American justice.  Since then, the Oregonian has identified numerous similar cases--in fact almost two dozen such cases across the United States. That includes 19 in just the last 7 years….

  I felt then, and I do today, this raises an important and a serious 

question: How does a foreign national charged with manslaughter, whose passport was seized, disappear from the United States without a trace?  How does this person escape the country and make it thousands of miles back to Saudi Arabia with there being no record of his doing so?  -Sen. Wyden to US Senate, 10-17-19, which passed Saudi Fugitive 

Declassification Act of 2019    https://fas.org/irp/congress/2019_cr/saudi-declass.html

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Vat-man of Cornell U

   Until very recently the Henipaviruses, carried by fruit bats, were not known to infect humans.  That changed in 1999 when the first outbreak of Nipah virus occurred in Malaysia and Singapore.  Other outbreaks followed over the course of the next two decades in Bangladesh, the Philippines and India in the summer of 2018.  “Nipah virus kills from 40 to 100 percent of infected individuals,”

Hector Aguilar-Carreno at Cornell U. says.  “All of these outbreaks were eventually contained. They happened in remote villages, but if even one of those infected people had gotten into a big city with a dense human population, it may have been a completely different story.”…

  Since Nipah virus requires the highest-level biosafety lab, which Cornell does not have, Aguilar collaborates with the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia to work with the live virus.  Much of his research however does not require the full virus.  “We do 99% of our work right here at Cornell in my lab,” he says.  “We’ve engineered ways to look at viral entry and viral assembly without using the full, live virus.”…

  Aguilar and his lab are part of a large project headed by Raina Plowright at Montana State University that recently received a grant for about $10 million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Involving at least a dozen labs the DARPA project will look at Henipaviruses carried by fruit bat populations around the world.  The bats carry the viruses without becoming ill themselves and transmit the virus through their urine, saliva and feces. Aguilar’s collaborators will take urine samples from fruit bats and sequence them to obtain the RNA sequences of Henipaviruses the bats are carrying.  Then those sequences will be sent to Aguilar’s lab where he and his colleagues will analyze the likelihood of a particular virus leaping into humans….

  “We want to see how closely related these other Henipaviruses are to Nipah and Hendra.…They are basically a piece of genetic material. The Nipah virus for example is just six genes.  A human being has over 20,000 genes, yet these six genes are able to overcome a whole human being.  It’s amazing to see this, to discover how this happens.”   https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/deadly-virus-carried-fruit-bats

contact for Hector Aguilar, Associate Professor

Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine:  e: ha363@cornell.edu

p: (607) 253-4029

IF YOU LOVE SYNTHETIC DNA, RAISE YOUR HAND

May 3, 2017   In recent years however the military--mostly under the umbrella of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--has created a new suite of programs that take a very different approach to harnessing the power of nature:  synthetic biology.  Among other initiatives researchers at DARPA are attempting to biologically engineer insects to deliver protective genes to plants; to transform bacteria and yeast into factories to produce on-demand chemicals and fuels; and to develop methods to reverse any threats posed by gene drives.  (Gene drives are a mechanism, both natural and human-induced, that drives genetic traits through a population, in some instances to suppress a population.)

  These programs represent a new and controversial approach to leveraging the natural world--one that in essence militarizes the environment.  The technologies that emerge will not only be a big deal for the innovations they will bring but also for the legal and ethical lines they may cross.  Many of these projects are strictly for defense, rather than offense, but given the size of the budgets here the U.S. military investment makes up a rather large portion of the money in synthetic biology research.  It’s possible then that DARPA’s work is bending the entire field of synthetic biology toward military applications.

  Before 2008 the federal government invested basically negligible amounts in synthetic biology.  But between 2008 and 2014 it poured approximately $819 million into synbio research.  Since 2012 the majority of that funding came not from the budgets of civilian organizations like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health but from DARPA and other Defense Department initiatives. DARPA created at least five programs, most of which are now housed at its Biological Technologies Office, that demonstrate the agency’s interest in ecological manipulations.

  At first DARPA focused on developing organisms that can create materials, fuel and other chemical compounds.  DARPA launched its first synthetic biology program, Living Foundries, in 2013.  It seeks to “increase the speed of the biological design-build-test-learn cycle” in order to create hundreds of new molecules that can be used for manufacturing biological products ranging from antibiotics to super-strong building materials.

  In subsequent years the organization began taking a slightly different path.  First it added Biological Robustness in Complex Settings, a program designed to overcome a major synthetic biology obstacle:  Most synthetically designed organisms don’t live or function very well outside of highly controlled conditions, let alone in the natural environment.  DARPA also created Safe Genes, which focuses on creating gene drives--a technology that promotes inheritance of specific traits in a species that can be safely introduced or combatted in the environment.  (For example, researchers are looking into creating gene drives that will make it impossible for mosquitoes to spread certain diseases.)  The program aims to study predictable and reversible gene editors and other measures that might counter undesirable outcomes.

  Then there’s the Insect Allies program, which aims to use advanced biotechnologies to engineer insects that can help protect crops from naturally occurring or intentionally designed pathogens.  And in late 2016 DARPA issued a call-out for academics to submit grant proposals to develop ecological niche-preference engineering technologies, which would “enable the genetic engineering of an organism’s preference for a niche (e.g., temperature, range, food source and habitat)” in order to lessen their “economic, health and resource burdens.”   Imagine an agricultural pest that has a niche, or preference, for a particular crop.  Maybe the leaves of that plant produce a certain chemical compound that the pest is attracted to or the flower gives off an appealing scent.  If you could engineer the insect to change its “niche preference” for that particular trait, or change the crop to prevent that niche from being produced, you could reduce the impact that insect has because it will have lost its niche.

  So why is DARPA making investments in synthetic biology?  DARPA clearly states that the existing initiatives focus on countering biological threats (be it from nation-states, rogue actors or possibly “mistakes” from other scientific research), and I don’t doubt they serve this need.  However the optics of these programs are problematic on a number of fronts, particularly because of who is funding them.  If we agree that agriculture is under threat from biological attacks “either naturally occurring or are intentionally designed and released to cause harm,” as the Insect Allies program states, then why not have the Agricultural Department lead this program?  If the government is concerned about the threats posed by gene drives, then why isn’t the National Science Foundation or the Environmental Protection Agency funding the Safe Genes research?  Because the U.S. is funding these initiatives through the Department of Defense rather than a civilian organization it’s not hard to see how some in the international community may perceive these as potential bioweapons programs rather than investments in purely defensive technologies.  After all, if the U.S. is able to engineer an insect to carry a virus for protective purposes, it wouldn’t be hard to engineer that same insect to carry a deadly virus for offensive ones.  It’s a classic dual-use technology scenario.  https://slate.com/technology/2017/05/what-happens-if-darpa-uses-synthetic-biology-to-manipulate-mother-nature.html

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12-4-17  “Many countries [will] have concerns when this technology comes from DARPA, a US military science agency,” one dipllomat said.  “You may be able to remove viruses or the entire mosquito population, but that may also have downstream ecological effects on species that depend on them.  My main worry,” he added, “is that we do something irreversible to the environment, despite our good intentions, before we fully appreciate the way that this technology will work.”  

  Jim Thomas, a co-director of the ETC group which obtained the emails, said the US military’s influence in furthering this technology would strengthen the case for a moratorium.  “The dual-use nature of altering and eradicating entire populations is as much a threat to peace and food security as it is a threat to ecosystems,” he said.  “Militarization of gene drive funding may even contravene the Enmod convention against hostile uses of environmental modification technologies.”…

  Todd Kuiken, who has worked with the GBIRd (genetic biocontrol) program, which receives $6.4 million from DARPA, said that the US military’s centrality to genetic technology funding meant that “researchers who depend on grants for their research may reorient their projects to fit the narrow aims of these military agencies,” which could include doomsday genetic weapons.  Between 2008 and 2014, the US government spent about $820 million on synthetic biology.  Since 2012, most of this has come from DARPA and other military agencies, Kuiken says.

  DARPA believes that a sharp decrease in the costs of gene-editing toolkits has created a greater opportunity for hostile or rogue actors to experiment with the technology.  “This convergence of low cost and high availability means that applications for gene editing--both positive and negative--could arise from people or states operating outside of the traditional scientific community and international norms,” the official said.  “It is incumbent on DARPA to perform this research and develop technologies that can protect against accidental and intentional misuse.”

  Interest in the technology among US army bureaus has shot up since a secret report by the elite Jason group of military scientists last year “received considerable attention among various agencies of the US government,” according to an email by Gerald Joyce, who co-chaired a Jason study group in June.  A second Jason report was commissioned in 2017 assessing “potential threats this technology might pose in the hands of an adversary, technical obstacles that must be overcome to develop gene drive technology and employ it ‘in the wild’,” Joyce wrote.

  The paper would not be publicly disclosed but “widely circulated within the US intelligence and broader national security community”, his email said.

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/us-military-invests-in-doomsday-genetics-technology-my-main-worry-is-that-we-do-something-irreversible_12042017

Tracking Origin of Sars-Cov-2--video at youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bXWGxhd7ic

CAN the USA come back from being a mile or so over the brink??

Live Science is a science news website run by Future via Purch, which it purchased from Imaginova in 2009.^[1] Stories and editorial commentary are typically syndicated to major news outlets, such as Yahoo!, MSNBC, AOL, and Fox News.^{[citation needed]}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Science

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2-21-2019    A new study, published today (Feb. 20) in the journal Science, supports the latter proposition: Scientists have recently molded a new kind of DNA into its elegant double-helix structure and found it had properties that could support life.

  But if natural DNA is a short story, this synthetic DNA is a Tolstoy novel.

The researchers crafted the synthetic DNA using four additional molecules, so that the resulting product had a code made up from eight letters rather than four.  With the increase in letters this DNA had, a much greater capacity to store information.  Scientists called the new DNA "hachimoji" — meaning "eight letters" in Japanese — expanding on the previous work from different groups that had created similar DNA using six letters.  [Genetics by the Numbers: 10 Tantalizing Tales]  https://www.livescience.com/64829-hachimoji-dna.html

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4-22-19   An argument has been brewing on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that boils down to the theory that US taxpayers are fronting billions of dollars’ worth of public research that translates into early-stage products that are later sold to companies, go on to win FDA approval and then reap millions or billions in sales, although the government never sees a dime of those earnings.

With the help of a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published Friday and some other materials, here's a break down on what’s happening.

1. Do taxpayers pay for billions in research?

Yes.  In FY 2018, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had a budget of more than $34 billion to support more than 300,000 scientists and research personnel working at over 2,500 institutions across the US and abroad. And from FY 1998 to FY 2003, Congress doubled the NIH budget. The total NIH appropriation for FY 2019 is $39 billion….

But drugs with a patent held by NIH or NIH-funded researchers represent a small portion of all approved drugs by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A Health Affairs study from 2011 found that 9% of the new drugs approved by FDA from 1988 to 2005 were based on a patent held by either a government agency or a nongovernmental institution that had received government support.

  Another study from the New England Medical Journal in 2011 found that of the 1,541 drugs approved by FDA from 1990 through 2007, 143, or 9.3%, resulted from work conducted in public sector research institutions.  Another study from the New England Medical Journal in 2011 found that of the 1,541 drugs approved by FDA from 1990 through 2007, 143, or 9.3%, resulted from work conducted in public sector research institutions, including all universities, research hospitals, nonprofit research institutes and federal laboratories in the US.

  But when the direct and indirect impact of NIH funding is considered, the results show a larger NIH impact. For instance, a PNAS study from 2018 found that NIH was “directly or indirectly associated with every one of 210 NMEs [new molecular entities] approved from 2010-2016.”…

  as NIH’s Steven Ferguson noted in the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology in 2012, it’s not as if NIH can take these early-stage products to market. And as with biopharma companies, the number of failures continues to heavily outnumber the approvals. Ferguson said: “Because many, if not most of the technologies developed at the NIH and FDA, are early stage biomedical technologies, the time and development risks to develop a commercial product are high.”   https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2019/4/how-biopharma-companies-use-nih-and-vice-versa

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There’s a lot of collusion between big pharma, lobbyists, Congress, political parties.  The Industry Standard in a word is Money.  That’s the US picture.

-r, mt. shasta

In order not to get infected you have to fly in a gas mask for 7 hours

(Google translation:)  He didn’t explain anything else, he left.

On the way behind the bus with the doctors, a truck was (un?)loaded with seriously ill patients who had to be taken away from the station - as it turned out, on the same side as the doctors.

The plane is the most common.  It is not equipped with a separate box for transporting patients.

Flight time is longer than seven hours.  It is clear that through the ventilation system everyone will be infected - both doctors and flight personnel.  No suit will help, because infection will occur through the respiratory tract.  In order not to get infected you have to fly in a gas mask for 7 hours, only this option works.

The board itself after the flight will need to be disinfected and the ventilation cleaned.  Even cleaners cannot go there to tidy up - everyone will get sick.

The shift workers, apparently, have a massive outbreak of coronavirus.  Because of this, they sent doctors to the station to take smears.  https://www.mk.ru/politics/2020/04/23/mozgi-rulyashhikh-pri-koronaviruse-upravlencev-pora-perestroit.html

Professor Chumakov: “There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome"

4-23 

Professor Chumakov, chief researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, said:  "For example, inserts in the genome, which gave the virus the ability to infect human cells.  Now all this has been analysed.  The picture of the possible creation of the current coronavirus is slowly emerging.”

He told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper:  “There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties.”  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11462934/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-russia-microbiologist-claims/ 

a key prophecy by Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, in commenting on Reagan's astrological chart, gave this:

-p. 71 of https://books.google.com/books?id=hMRP0f-zVK0C&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=clare+prophet+killing+lincoln&source=bl&ots=hyt6wI64cQ&sig=ACfU3U0GGfgEUW_fxXV0WKibIqoe5m5knQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjGhsHuh_3oAhXWl54KHVt7A_cQ6AEwAnoECCMQAQ#v=onepage&q=clare%20prophet%20killing%20lincoln&f=false

-ECP

Swine flu, or H1N1, had been dead for 20 years when it suddenly reemerged in 1977 with a curious twist.

   Australia had 37,537 confirmed cases of H1N1 Influenza 2009   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Australia

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  Swine flu, or H1N1, had been dead for 20 years when it suddenly       reemerged in 1977 with a curious twist.  The new strain was genetically similar to one from the 1950s, almost as though it had been sitting frozen in a lab since then.  Indeed it eventually became clear that the late-70s flu outbreak was likely the result of a lowly lab worker’s snafu….

  That worries people like Marc Lipsitch and Alison P. Galvani, two epidemiologists who write in a PLoS Medicine editorial today that creating these types of new infectious agents puts human life at risk.  They estimate that if 10 American laboratories ran these types of experiments for a decade, there would be a 20% chance that a lab worker would become infected with one of these new super-flus and potentially pass it on to others.    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/when-viruses-escape-the-lab/371202/

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  before relaxing the guidelines on social distancing the U.S. urgently needs to expand its ability to test for the viru, and to shore up hospitals with sufficient supplies.  These recommendations are sensible, but they hinge on the expectation that the U.S. can recover the ground it lost due to its early inaction.  It might not be able to.  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/

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5-29-17  In examining the entire genome from the CRISPR-treated mice they found that the tool had successfully corrected the specific gene they were targeting, but it also potentially caused a great deal of other genetic changes.  In two CRISPR-treated animals more than 100 large gene deletions or insertions and over 1,500 single-nucleotide mutations were identified.

 Most significantly, all of these identified mutations were not picked up by the general computer algorithms most researchers use to look at the off-target effects of CRISPR-editing.  There were no obvious or immediately deleterious effects in the animals from these unexpected mutations, but it is unknown what longer term effects the altered genes could have.    https://newatlas.com/crispr-gene-editing-causes-mutations/49762/

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   60% of Americans are rejecting protesters’ calls to reopen America while the coronavirus outbreak continues, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.  Just 22% say they support the protesters.  https://www.newsmax.com/us/protests/2020/04/21/id/963915/

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4-19-20  Dr. Luc Monagnier (translated):  Well, some of it, I’m not saying all of it, y’know. There’s a part which is obviously the classic virus and there’s another mainly coming from the bat, but that part has added sequences, particularly from HIV. The AIDS virus….No, it’s not natural.  It was a professional job.  It was a job for molecular biologists.  It’s a very meticulous job, you could say clockwork of sequences….There is a possibility that maybe they wanted to make--we don’t know who “they” are--but they wanted to make an AIDS vaccine.

  So a small sequence of the virus is taken and put into the larger coronavirus sequence….A very, very, very famous Indian research group had published the same thing and they were forced to retract it.

https://rairfoundation.com/breaking-nobel-prize-winning-scientist-coronavirus-was-leaked-from-a-chinese-laboratory-and-has-hiv-dna-watch/

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