NIH doctor sounded alarms about Wuhan lab safety in 2017, report shows

 A doctor working for the US government visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in October 2017 and raised safety concerns almost exactly two years before the COVID-19 pandemic began to emerge in the central Chinese city.

“It is clear to me by talking to the technician that certainly there is a need for training support,” Dr. Ping Chen, who worked at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), wrote in a report the following month, according to excerpts seen by The Post.

“I think the institute would welcome any help and technical support by NIAID.”

Now, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is pursuing additional information about the concerns Chen raised.

A 2018 State Department cable Johnson believes referenced Chen and other scientists’ misgivings about the lab was more pointed.

China infamously restricted domestic travel out of Wuhan when the virus first surfaced, but permitted international travel.

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Sen. Ron Johnson has accused the Health and Human Services Department of stonewalling his requests.

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“[D]uring interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted that the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the cable said.

Some of Chen’s private worries about the lab have previously been documented.

Johnson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pressed the Department of Health and Human Services for additional information back in 2021 and ultimately acquired a redacted copy of Chen’s report and were granted an in camera review of it.

“It is clear to me by talking to the technician that certainly there is a need for training support,” Dr. Ping Chen wrote.

Sen. Ron Johnson's office

But Johnson was irritated by the redactions in the version of the report given to his team after the review. HHS officials conceded that not all the redactions pertained to national security concerns.

“In the public FOIA document, HHS redacted Dr. Chen’s entire report claiming that it contains privacy and deliberative information,” Johnson wrote in a letter to the head of HHS and the National Institutes of Health on Thursday.

“It seems apparent that the only reason that HHS redacted this information was to hide the report’s contents from the American people. Perhaps HHS did not want the public to fully understand the fact that NIH and NIAID officials were aware of safety concerns at the WIV dating as far back as 2017.”

Senators have voiced concerns about riskier gain of function research and sought to bar the government from funding that.

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Proponents of the so-called “lab leak” theory have long suggested that the coronavirus that triggered the pandemic emerged from the WIV, where risky so-called “gain-of-function” research on bat coronavirus was performed, some of it funded by US taxpayer dollars.

On Tuesday, HHS informed Congress that the Wuhan Lab has been “disbarred” from receiving US government support until at least July 2033.

HHS cited failure to comply with government regulations, but there had been mounting political pressure as well.

Scientists are split over whether or not the virus came from a lab leak or a natural spillover.

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Johnson, the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is demanding an interview with Chen, unredacted copies of her 2017 report and private communications about it, as well as other material referring to the Wuhan Lab.

“HHS and NIH continue to obstruct my oversight efforts. It is unacceptable that HHS and NIH had Dr. Chen’s report in its possession and only provided a slightly-less redacted version for my staff to review in camera,” Johnson said.

His letter detailing those demands was sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and NIH acting director Lawrence Tabak.

Ron Johnson wants an interview with the NIAID doctor who sounded the alarms about the Wuhan Lab in 2017.

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HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

COVID-19 has caused 6.9 million deaths globally, with 1.1 million occurring in the US, per data from the World Health Organization.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/22/niaid-doctor-sounded-alarms-about-wuhan-lab-in-2017/

WW Up on BCBS Michigan's Revised Authorization For Wegovy, Other Weight Loss Drugs

 Shares of WW International Inc WW spiked as much as 15% on Friday after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network announced changes to the prior authorization coverage criteria for certain brand-name weight loss medications.

What Happened: Starting Oct. 1, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Michigan and Blue Care Network will implement changes to the prior authorization approval criteria for several weight loss drugs under commercial PPO and HMO plans. The adjustments are designed to promote healthy lifestyle modifications in tandem with pharmaceutical interventions.

Notably, while the implementation will impact several weight loss medications, one of the drugs on the list is Wegovy, a widely-utilized weight loss drug by Novo Nordisk A/S NVO.

Others include Contrave, Qsymia, Saxenda, and Xenical.

The revised policy mandates members to demonstrate engagement in lifestyle modifications for a minimum of six months prior to gaining approval for weight loss medication. BCBS said lifestyle modifications may range from participation in recognized weight loss programs like Noom and Weight Watchers, to adaptations in diet and exercise regimens under provider supervision.

Providers are required to verify and attest to their patients' compliance with lifestyle interventions and ensure ongoing engagement after initiating therapy on weight loss drugs.

The adjustment in prior authorization criteria also forces providers to submit the current weight of the members, ensuring members meet the weight criteria to continue therapy.

The new approach is aimed at fostering the best results from weight loss drug therapy.

Earlier this month, BCBS changed its prior authorization requirements for certain weight loss medications — including Wegovy — shortening the initial prior authorization approval duration from 12 months to four months for members initiating the therapies for the first time.

BCBS said providers should meticulously verify members' eligibility for weight loss drug coverage under their pharmacy benefit, as not all members are entitled to weight loss drug coverage under their pharmacy benefit.

Providers are encouraged to corroborate member eligibility prior to prescribing weight loss drug therapy, ensuring adherence to the revised policies, BCBS said.

https://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/23/09/34832242/ww-international-shares-jump-on-bcbs-michigans-revised-authorization-for-wegovy-other-weight-loss

Cancers Appearing In Ways Never Before Seen After COVID Vax: Yale's Risch

 by  Efthymis Oraiopoulos and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There is evidence that cancers are occurring in excess after people receive COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Harvey Risch.

Dr. Risch is professor emeritus of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His research has focused extensively on the causes of cancer as well as prevention and early diagnosis.

In an interview for EpochTV’s "American Thought Leaders," Dr. Risch said patients must now wait months, not weeks, to get an appointment at an oncology clinic in New York.

here is difficulty in observing whether a vaccine can cause cancer, because cancer usually takes time to develop, Dr. Risch said. It can take anywhere from two years to 30 years, depending on the different types of cancer, from leukemia to colon cancer.

“What clinicians have been seeing,” said Dr. Risch, “is very strange things: For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don't have family histories of the disease—that's basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they're seeing in very young people."

He said this is not how cancer normally develops.

"There has to be some initiating stimulus to why this happens," he said.

Fighting Cancer

Dr. Risch said that in his opinion, cancer is something a healthy human body can fight and disable, as the non-normal cancerous cells are gobbled up when detected in a body with a functional immune system. If the immune system is compromised, however, it cannot cope with the task of neutralizing cancerous cells, and cancerous cells are left to multiply and grow, leading to symptoms of cancer.

“That’s the mechanism I think is most likely here,” Dr. Risch said. “We know that the COVID vaccines have done various degrees of damage to the immune system in a fraction of people who have taken them.”

That damage could translate to getting COVID more often, getting other infectious diseases, or getting cancer.

Another example Dr. Risch gave was breast cancer, which normally, if there is a remanifestation after surgical removal, the remanifestation occurs after two decades. However, vaccinated women are now seen to remanifest breast cancers in much shorter periods of time.

“Those are the initial signals that we’ve been seeing, and because these cancers have been occurring to people who were too young to get them, basically, compared to the normal way it works, they’ve been designated as turbo cancers,” Dr. Risch said.

“Some of these cancers are so aggressive that between the time that they're first seen and when they come back for treatment after a few weeks, they've grown dramatically compared to what oncologists would have expected for the way cancer normally progresses,” he added.

“Be attuned to your body,” Dr. Risch recommended, for noticing any new signals the body might give.

Adverse Events After Vaccination

Dr. Risch also talked about the aspect of official medical agencies not recognizing someone as being vaccinated inside the first two weeks of vaccination. This happens, he said, because the medical agencies say that the effects of the vaccine need two weeks to start manifesting. Adverse effects occurring a few days after vaccinations were officially counted as health conditions manifesting in unvaccinated people, he said.

However, serious adverse events after receiving the vaccine have occurred within the first four days, Dr. Risch said. He said three-quarters of adverse effects are being recorded as happening to unvaccinated people.

The decision makers who were in charge during the pandemic "threw out the principles of public health six days into the pandemic and did the opposite of everything that we knew should be done for respiratory viruses," he said.

One example was the denial of effective early treatment and unnecessary vaccinations, which show a “colossal failure of public health through this period," he said.

Dr. Risch said that a lot of people are now less likely to be “propagandized” regarding COVID, and that news reports about a new variant that is going to take over the world in the next month are “propaganda to sell the next batch of vaccines coming out in a few weeks.”

“People are fed up with this and it’s going to be a lot more pushback,” he said.

Risks to Society

Dr. Risch said that while the individual risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine is relatively low, once that risk manifests itself at a greater scale, when millions of people have received the vaccine, the result is that hundreds of thousands of people are left with injuries and serious adverse events that are often worse than the virus itself.

Dr. Risch’s opinion is that nobody should get vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, as the new variants are mild and not life threatening. He has heard of a few hospitalizations that lasted for some days, but as most people had COVID in the past, they have some immunity to these new variants as well.

"There is no reason for people to be vaccinated now, to any degree," he said.

He said COVID has become an illness similar to the flu in its degree of severity, and that propaganda to scare people is being pushed by the government on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to sell more vaccines.

“We live in social contact with each other and therefore spread low-level infections. This is part of human life that we take for granted and we try to treat it the best we can," he said. "That’s how we should be managing this."

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/cancers-appearing-ways-never-seen-after-covid-vaccinations-dr-harvey-risch

Sunak may ban cigarettes in UK for future generations

 British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is considering introducing measures that would ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, The Guardian reported on Friday, citing government sources.

Sunak is looking at anti-smoking measures similar to laws New Zealand announced last year, which include a ban on selling tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, the report said.

"We want to encourage more people to quit and meet our ambition to be smokefree by 2030, which is why we have already taken steps to reduce smoking rates," a British government spokesperson said in an emailed response to Reuters.

Those measures include free vape kits, a voucher scheme to incentivise pregnant women to quit, and consulting on mandatory cigarette pack inserts, the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson declined to comment further on The Guardian report.

The policies under consideration are part of a new consumer-focused drive from Sunak's team before next year's expected election, the report said.

Britain in May announced it would close a loophole that let retailers give free samples of vapes to children in a clampdown on e-cigarettes.

Separately, councils in England and Wales in July called on the government to ban the sale of single-use vapes by 2024 on both environmental and health grounds.

https://news.yahoo.com/sunak-may-ban-cigarettes-uk-203222133.html

AbbVie terminates deal with I-Mab to develop cancer drug

 China-based biotech company I-Mab said on Friday that AbbVie has terminated a 2020 deal to co-develop and market I-Mab's lead cancer drug candidate lemzoparlimab.

AbbVie's decision to scrap the deal comes after it pulled the plug on an early-stage study in August last year that was testing lemzoparlimab in combination with two other drugs for treating two types of blood cancers, myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myelocytic leukemia.

The deal termination will be effective Nov. 20 this year, and will not affect upfront and milestone payments of $200 million that the company has received from AbbVie, according to I-Mab.

I-Mab said it will explore future development opportunities with lemzoparlimab.

In 2020, AbbVie acquired the rights to I-Mab's antibody-based drug candidates, including lemzoparlimab, outside China for $180 million upfront payment and additional $1.74 billion in milestone payments.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/abbvie-terminates-deal-mab-develop-210910326.html

Taiwan raises concerns about situation 'getting out of hand' with China drills

 The increased frequency of China's military activities around Taiwan recently has raised the risk of events "getting out of hand" and sparking an accidental clash, the island's defence minister said on Saturday.

Taiwan has said that the past two weeks has seen dozens of fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese carrier the Shandong, operating nearby.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has in recent years carried out many such drills around the island, seeking to assert its sovereignty claims and pressure Taipei.

Asked by reporters on the sidelines of parliament whether there was a risk of an accidental incident sparking a broader conflict given the frequency of the Chinese activities, Taiwan Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said: "This is something we are very worried about".

Warships from China's southern and eastern theatre commands have been operating together off Taiwan's east coast, he added.

"The risks of activities involving aircraft, ships, and weapons will increase, and both sides must pay attention," Chiu said.

China has not commented about the drills around Taiwan, and its defence ministry has not responded to requests for comment.

Chiu said that when the Shandong was out at sea, which Taiwan first reported on Sept. 11, it was operating as the "opposing force" in the drills. Ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang added that China's Eastern Theatre Command forces were the "attacking force", simulating a battle scenario.

Taiwan's traditional military planning for a potential conflict has been to use its mountainous east coast, especially the two major air bases there, as a place to regroup and preserve its forces given it does not directly face China unlike the island's west coast.

But China has increasingly been flexing its muscles off Taiwan's east coast, and generally displaying its ability to operate much further away from China's own coastline.

China normally performs large-scale exercises from July to September, Taiwan's defence ministry has said.

On Saturday the ministry said China had largely dialled back its drills, reporting that over the previous 24 hour period it had only spotted two Chinese aircraft operating in its air defence zone.

Taiwan has frequently said that it would remain calm and not escalate the situation, but that it won't allow "repeated provocations" from China, whose forces have so far not entered Taiwan's territorial seas or airspace.

https://news.yahoo.com/taiwan-raises-concerns-situation-getting-023242117.html