Oh boy, so this is where you stumbled. I should have known it would be The Intercept article.

The documents are ancillary, huh? You cited the exact same grant proposal I sent you. So is it ancillary or not?

Here are some really critical points I’m willing to bet you misunderstood:

“We will construct chimeric SARSr-CoVs using WIV1 backbone and the S genes of selected SARSr-CoV strains and assess capacity to infect hACE2, bACE2, and cACE2 Vero cells…”

The WIV1 backbone is NOT the backbone found in SARS-CoV-2. It’s from a completely different human-infectious coronavirus strain. Furthermore, the spike proteins they’re studying would be gathered from bat coronaviruses found in the wild. So, this method is NOT considered GoF research by the NIH nor is it even potentially possible it resulted in the pandemic. They proposed assessing transmissibility by using an already known infectious backbone and an uncharacterized spike protein, not engineering a more deadly virus. WIV1 is already infectious in humans. The spike proteins gathered are the exact same sequences as those already present in the wild. You may still have reservations about this approach, but I’d argue it’s actually safer for studying viruses in this way because you use what’s known as a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) to infect the cells rather than live virus. Meaning, no storage, handling, or serial passaging of viral samples is required past the initial isolation and the plaque assessments.

You may argue that any viral research which can result in genetic change should be classified unilaterally as GoF, and is too dangerous to be performed, much less at labs we don’t directly regulate. I would disagree on those points, but you’d join a rich debate on the subject which The Intercept article actually points out as well. But the fact remains that none of the above studies were designed to engineer more deadly pathogens for humans, and is ultimately a red herring for the SARS-CoV-2 debate. We know the backbone sequences and they do not match, so you and The Intercept article are barking up the wrong tree.

The same is true for the PLOS study you cited. Same viral backbone, same process. It’s there to assess transmissibility of a naturally occurring virus and try to predict future pandemic potential (of the original SARS-CoV, in their case), not to engineer more effective viruses. Same misunderstanding on its classification as GoF research, too. Even in the Intercept article you cite it talks about the results of other studies as technically “loss of function” in relation to some strains, which is true. But again, all of this is a red herring. SARS-CoV-2 did NOT use the backbone referenced here, and thus this study did not result in a genetically engineered virus that caused the pandemic.

As for citations, I’d point you to this snippet from a review article in Cell:

A near identical nucleotide sequence is found in the spike gene of the bat coro- navirus HKU9-1 (Gallaher, 2020), and both SARS-CoV-2 and HKU9-1 contain short palindromic sequences immediately up- stream of this sequence that are indicative of natural recombina- tion break-points via template switching (Gallaher, 2020). Hence, simple evolutionary mechanisms can readily explain the evolu- tion of an out-of-frame insertion of a furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2).

You keep insisting that I think a lab leak is impossible, when I’ve made it very clear that a lab leak is still a possibility. There were safety concerns at Wuhan long before this whole thing. But a “lab leak” of a stored sample is completely different than “Fauci paid incompetent Chinese labs to engineer deadly pathogens”, and I’ve never seen evidence for the latter. Yet you’ve stated that sentiment here in the comment section, so somehow that unsubstantiated belief lives on. Until our pool of evidence changes, the most likely scenario is a zoonosis from a natural reservoir, or a lab leak from a gathered or cultured sample.

I’m curious why you seem so insistent that the evidence is being hidden and that everyone is silencing you. You come in here with unsubstantiated accusations, and then get angry when people call you out for it. Had you started with sources for your claims, I would have been happy to engage with you on that level. Acting like an ass in any forum isn’t going to get you far. Stop playing the victim.

Yeah, it’s pretty sad. But I have fun digging into the sources for the misinformation, so there’s that.

Quite a fast reader, aren’t you?

Please cite the spot in those documents that “prove gain of function research was being performed on SARS in the area the pandemic first started”

Funny, you haven’t “questioned” anything. You’ve just regurgitated your same tired disproven talking points. Then you act like your viewpoint deserves respect. It doesn’t. No sources, no evidence, no respect.

If you’d like my sources, here you go. Let me know when you find the spot that says “I, Fauci, personally oversaw the development of a virus that looks absurdly natural in origin.”

The original grant proposal for EcoHealth Alliance: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304

Every relevant follow up study produced under that grant proposal:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6171170/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7094983/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148670/

Grant Project Number: 2R01AI110964-06

“Aim 1. Characterize the diversity and distribution of high spillover-risk SARSr-CoVs in bats in southern China. We will use phylogeographic and viral discovery curve analyses to target additional bat sample collection and molecular CoV screening to fill in gaps in our previous sampling and fully characterize natural SARSr-CoV diversity in southern China. We will sequence receptor binding domains (spike proteins) to identify viruses with the highest potential for spillover which we will include in our experimental investigations (Aim 3). Aim 2. Community, and clinic-based syndromic, surveillance to capture SARSr-CoV spillover, routes of exposure and potential public health consequences. We will conduct biological-behavioral surveillance in high-risk populations, with known bat contact, in community and clinical settings to 1) identify risk factors for serological and PCR evidence of bat SARSr-CoVs; & 2) assess possible health effects of SARSr-CoVs infection in people. We will analyze bat-CoV serology against human-wildlife contact and exposure data to quantify risk factors and health impacts of SARSr-CoV spillover. Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”

Color me shocked, but that’s the funding proposal and there’s nothing in there even approaching whatever you’re talking about. But hey, maybe you’re referring to the rejected DARPA grant proposal leaked by DRASTIC:

“THE PROPOSAL PLANNED TO INTRODUCE “KEY RBD RESIDUES” INTO LOW RISK STRAINS TO TEST PATHOGENICITY IN HUMAN AIRWAY-CELLS”

Wowie, looks like we have a hit! Rather than reading their spin though, I went and found the REJECTED grant proposal:

“We will sequence spike proteins, reverse engineer them to conduct binding assays, and insert them into bat SARSr-CoV backbones (these use bat-SARSr-CoV backbones, not SARS-CoV, and are exempt from dual-use and gain or function concerns)”

If you’re not aware, these backbones are common lab vectors which aren’t pathogenic themselves, made from different viruses. Their sequences are significantly different than either SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2. So, chimeric receptor/backbone pairs are used to assess viral entry into humanized cells more so than virulence. You may disagree with whether or not that’s still too dangerous of a method, but it’s a moot point here because 1. The backbones proposed here are completely different than COVID, so it can’t be the same viral agent and 2. This is a REJECTED PROPOSAL. None of this was actually done and it’s fantasy to pretend it is.

Next claim: aerosolized droplet for vaccines:

“We will complement [broad scale immune boosting with bat interferon] by coupling agonist treatments with SARSr-CoV recombinant spike proteins to boost pre-existing adaptive immune response in adult bats… we will incorporate [recombinant spike proteins] into nano particles or raccoon pox virus vectors for delivery to bats”

They’re not proposing aerosolizing whole droplets with competent SARS-CoV in them you moron, they’re basically saying “hey, you know those nasal sprays we use for the flu every year? Let’s give that to bats”.

Ooh, my favorite. No scientist with integrity says that the genome wasn’t manipulated.

You’re gonna have to tell that to the couple hundred scientists who have been studying this for a while:

“There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an un- usual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering. The only previous studies of artificial insertion of a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 boundary in the SARS-CoV spike protein uti- lized an optimal ‘‘RRSRR’’ sequence in pseudotype systems (Belouzard et al., 2009; Follis et al., 2006). Further, there is no ev- idence of prior research at the WIV involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.”

There really isn’t any evidence of manipulation at all. The backbone isn’t a standard lab construct. The cleavage site could have arisen from recombination. In the spirit of good science, I would never rule anything out, but the evidence very much supports a natural origin. Lab leak from a sample? Maybe, but that’s different than genetic engineering. For that you need stronger evidence. The strongest bit of evidence we have is the stonewalling from WIV and China, which is certainly suspicious. But, it’s unfortunately incidental and that isn’t good enough to jump to conclusions.

Try actually reading the text of these proposals before reading someone else’s spin on it.

The original grant was to the EcoHealth Alliance, which then subcontracted the Wuhan institute to collect wild samples from bats. In other words, the whole point of the research was to try and catalogue viruses that existed in the wild with pandemic potential.

It’s not coincidence that lab samples there or in other facilities exist that are close in sequence to viruses later identified in humans. That was, in fact, the goddamn point of surveying bat coronaviruses: to identify those with spillover potential. And it’s absolutely possible one of these collected samples was mishandled and leaked from the lab. After all, lab leaked viral outbreaks happen almost every other year, and there were already safety concerns at this particular site published long before the pandemic.

But what you and every other mouthbreathing idiot is trying to say is that Fauci, a director of the NIAID at the time, personally directed gain of function research to engineer new viruses to infect humans and then that virus escaped. Which, speaking as a molecular biologist myself, is laughably backwards.

No self-respecting scientist concluded that either a natural origin or a lab leak were the definitive cause of the pandemic. This is clear if you actually read scientific literature. It’s why phrases akin to “the most supported hypothesis is X” or “the Y theory is unlikely without more supporting evidence” are used. Both hypotheses were and are still possible explanations.

It’s people who get their scientific info from sources like the Telegraph that keep jumping to conclusions. Or people who don’t understand what a section leader at the NIH does, how research grants work, or what gain of function research is. You know, like yourself.

It’s a red flag when I’m making new friends too.

It just screams “I don’t read up on any viewpoints presented to me”

I know two things. I really like to be right about stuff and if we’re going by the usual tests a majority of people are going to be near average intelligence.

So I’m most likely average and real smug about it.

I’m going door to door trying to gather pledges from all technology subscribers.

Will YOU downvote all Musk posts in this community until people post them in their proper place (c/enoughmuskspam)?

Me freezing my glove in leftover LN2

I was kinda hoping the enoughmuskspam community would be focused on talking about innovative tech/engineering work happening at other companies. I guess that’s more the point of “futurology”, but still…

But, enoughmuskspam is just… Musk spam

I long so desperately for the days when I didn’t know who Elon Musk was

Is every vaguely prominent leader in Russia dumb as rocks? How did he think he’d get away with an attempted coup while leaving the dictator in power?

Did he expect to get points for being bad at a coup?

The admin note there was pretty hilarious.

“We’re being censored because big instances defederated from us!” Bitch you can still scream your shit into whatever instances that still want to share the cesspool with you.

This is the real world equivalent of shouting into a megaphone outside a bar and claiming censorship when they close their doors to shut out the noise.

This is an obvious exaggeration, but I can’t help but feel like we’re witnessing a death match between American democracy and the Republican Party.

Look, I’m all for reforestation efforts, and if Rs are willing to start a large environmental project like that, great. But, it’s really not a solution for climate change on a global scale. At best it’s a repair effort for the damage already done.

Even if they get the scale right, and somehow manage to plant and cultivate a trillion trees successfully, trees are more of a short-term carbon sink when you’re talking about a geological time scale. They die, they burn, they get chopped down. When that happens, the carbon is liberated again. Sure, you can plant more trees, but all you’re doing is changing the equilibrium point for atmospheric CO2. With each gallon of gas burned, more CO2 enters the cycle that would have otherwise remained in the ground long term. Trying to solve climate change by reforestation is like trying to fill a leaky bucket with water. No matter how much you pour in there, at some point you’ll have to stop the leak.

The answer to climate change is the same, yesterday, today, and forever: long term carbon sinks (fossil fuels and chemical weathering) cannot liberate CO2 at the rate we’re currently running. Reduction is the only real answer.

Not in humans, no! While in some animals sex determination is purely about X dosage (Drosophila), in humans the Y chromosome is actually sex-determining. In females the second X chromosome actually gets inactivated as a means of gene dosage compensation.

I just wrote a comment above but I believe OP is mixing XXY with what the comment was about, which is likely Swyer Syndrome: XY individuals with female anatomy and gonadal dysgenesis. While they have a Y chromosome, a defective sex-determining gene leads to a failure to sexually differentiate into male gonadal tissue and leads to subsequent loss of downstream sex hormone production.

Not to nitpick but to me the title of this post is implying that XXY individuals are born female. Generally they’re born male.

What the comment is referring to is likely Swyer Syndrome, where the individual has an XY configuration but a dysfunctional gene in the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome. This means the embryo develops female anatomy and the resulting children tend to identify female, but they lack functional gonadal tissue. It’s estimated to occur at a rate of about 1 in a 100,000 females.

By the by, treatment for these individuals usually involves removing the dysfunctional gonadal tissue as it often becomes cancerous (which often gets misunderstood as “gender reassignment surgery”) and supplemental hormone replacement therapy. They would be affected too by any bans on hormone administration to kids often connected with trans people. One of the reasons why blanket bans should be a no-go regardless of how you feel about any other trans issue.