A think tank set up by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for the formation of a public-private trust that could oversee the sharing of anonymised patient data with trusted researchers.
The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) said the creation of an NHS Data Trust (NDT) to commercialise data would help develop the UK’s life sciences sector, as well as related industries like artificial intelligence, and accelerate the development of new treatments for patients and boost the country’s economy.
The call is made in a just-published white paper – entitled A New National Purpose: Harnessing Data for Health – which concludes that the complex and fragmented nature of the current health-data landscape, coupled with “legitimate concerns around privacy and public trust,” has meant progress in this area has been painfully slow.
Those issues were thrust into the spotlight last year after NHS England awarded US IT group Palantir a contract to create a platform designed to bring together existing NHS data into a single framework, drawing criticism from Amnesty International, which has questioned the company’s human rights record.
TBI is calling for a “bold and imaginative” strategy to overcome the current fragmented situation in the UK, where data projects have been split across multiple projects that have “struggled to achieve long-term sustainability and deliver tangible benefits to patients.”
The NDT would operate as an independent commercial entity owned by the UK government and NHS – with co-investment from industry – and could be set up as soon as 2026. It would be akin to BBC Studios, which operates as a content-producing business, according to the paper.
It would be charged with curating access to data assets like anonymised medical records, biobanks, and genome testing, generating access fees as well as revenues from services like data discovery, clinical trials, and the analysis and facilitation of research, while “maintaining public ownership and protection of the data, and never selling or transferring them to private interests.”
It suggests that the economic growth from those efforts could be as much as £2 billion a year, which could be invested in making sure innovations are available to the NHS more quickly.
There would be a big benefit in clinical research alone, as it would help foster a unified clinical trials service that could restore the UK’s standing as a site for pharma research, which has been dipping in recent years. Meanwhile, the aim would be to move away from GPs being the main controllers of a lot of patient data.
The proposals have been broadly welcomed by Dr Julia Wilson, director of strategy at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, who said: “Access to representative health data is key to realising the benefits that AI, machine learning, and innovation can deliver for accelerating discoveries and drug development.”
“Large-scale datasets are the critical foundation of discovery, from providing diagnoses for children with rare developmental disorders, to finding new personalised treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer,” she added.
“To make the Data Trust a success, it requires a baseline of trust and responsible data sharing, plus solutions to technical challenges, such as interoperability, so that [this] data [is] accessible to all researchers.”
The broad aims were also endorsed by Professor Sir Rory Collins, chief executive of UK Biobank, although, he suggested there is a simpler solution.
“Scotland and Wales have already centralised much of their health data within the NHS. In England, we need to do the same (including, in particular, primary care data), so that the whole of the UK is covered,” he said.
“As we saw during the pandemic, NHS England already has the necessary secure systems, processes, and skills to enable important health research. What they don’t have is secure long-term funding to make it a priority, or retain the teams who can support the process.”
Two high-profile tech investors will host a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in deeply Democratic San Francisco in June, according to a copy of an invitation sent to donors and seen by Reuters.
The June 6 reception and dinner with Trump will be hosted by venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Sacks' wife Jacqueline, the invite states.
Reuters was not immediately able to determine who else will be attending. Sacks and Palihapitiya did not respond to requests for comment on the event.
While the tech industry tends to skew left-wing - San Francisco voted 85% for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election against then-president Trump - it also has some libertarian and conservative undercurrents.
Sacks and Palihapitiya co-host the "All-in" podcast, which gained popularity for giving an insider's peek into their world of technology and wealth. In recent years, the podcast hosts have expressed more conservative viewpoints and critiqued what they perceive as an increasingly liberal Silicon Valley culture.
The June event shows how Trump is trying to broaden his coalition and seek out new fundraising sources. After a raft of high-dollar donor events across the country, Trump overtook Biden in fundraising last month for the first time.
The San Francisco invite says it costs $300,000 per person, or $500,000 per couple, to be a member of the host committee. A 'VIP' ticket is going for $50,000.
David Sacks is a close friend of billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Sacks and Musk last year hosted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on social media site X for his chaotic announcement that he was running in the Republican presidential primary.
It was not immediately clear if Musk might attend the Trump fundraiser. Trump met with Musk, one of the world's richest individuals, in Florida this March. Musk later said he would not donate money to any presidential candidates this election.
Musk did not respond to an e-mail on Wednesday about whether he would attend the event.
89bio, Inc. (Nasdaq: ETNB), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative therapies for the treatment of liver and cardiometabolic diseases, today announced that data from the 48-week extension phase of the Phase 2b ENLIVEN trial evaluating pegozafermin in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) with fibrosis will be presented in an oral and poster presentation at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress to be held June 5 to 8, 2024 in Milan, Italy.
“These data, which are being presented for the first time in a scientific setting, establish pegozafermin as the first FGF21 analog candidate to demonstrate positive, sustained benefits over a 48-week period in patients with advanced MASH,” said Hank Mansbach, Chief Medical Officer of 89bio. “In addition, these data highlight the observed long-term efficacy, tolerability and sustained improvement in key liver health markers, that we aim to confirm in our ongoing Phase 3 program.”
Big tech companies’ full commitment to developing artificial intelligence (AI), even enabling AI to “see” and “speak” to the human world, has led to a growing concern over humans being controlled by technology.
Ilya Sutskever, the co-founder of OpenAI, made a significant announcement on May 15, officially declaring that he was leaving the company where he had worked for nearly ten years.
“I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama (Sam Altman), @gdb (Greg Brockman), @miramurati (Mira Murati) and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm (Jakub Pachocki). It was an honor and a privilege to have worked together, and I will miss everyone dearly,” he wrote in a post on the social media platform X.
The news sent shockwaves through the tech industry. In November 2023, due to AI safety issues, Mr. Sutskever and other board members joined forces to oust OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, who was briefly expelled from OpenAI but returned and removed Mr. Sutskever and several board members, restructuring the board to be more aligned with his vision.
“This departure highlights severe conflicts within OpenAI’s leadership regarding AI safety. Although Sutskever and Leike’s wish to develop an ethically aligned AGI is commendable, such an endeavor requires substantial moral, temporal, financial, and even political support,” Jin Kiyohara, a Japanese computer engineer, told The Epoch Times.
Google & OpenAI Competition Intensifies
On May 14, one day before Mr. Sutskever announced his departure, OpenAI unveiled a higher-performance AI model based on GPT-4, named GPT-4o, where “o” stands for “omni,” indicating its comprehensive capabilities.
The GPT-4o model can respond in real-time to mixed inputs of audio, text, and images. At the launch event, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati stated, “We are looking at the future of interaction between ourselves and machines.”
In several videos released by OpenAI, people can be seen interacting with AI in real time through their phone cameras. The AI can observe and provide feedback on the surroundings, answer questions, perform real-time translation, tell jokes, or even mock users, with speech patterns, tones, and reaction speeds almost indistinguishable from a real person.
A day after OpenAI’s release, Google launched its 2024 I/O Developer Conference. In a 110-minute presentation, “AI” was mentioned 121 times, focusing on the latest Gemini-1.5 model, which integrates into all Google products and applications, including the search engine, Google map, Ask Photos, Google Calendar, and Google smartphones.
With Gemini integrated into the cloud photo album, users can search for specific features in photos just by entering keywords. The AI will find and evaluate relevant images, even integrating a series of related pictures or answers based on in-depth questions, according to the tech giant.
Google Mail can also achieve similar results with AI, integrating and updating data in real time upon receiving new emails, aiming for a fully automated organization.
On the music front, the Music AI Sandbox allows quick modifications to song style, melody, and rhythm, with the ability to target specific parts of a song. This functionality surpasses that of the text-to-music AI, Suno.
Gemini can also act as a teacher, with teaching abilities comparable to GPT-4o. Users can input text and images, which the AI organizes into key points for explanation and analysis, allowing real-time discussions.
This AI update also brings capabilities similar to OpenAI’s text-to-video AI, Sora, generating short videos from simple text descriptions. The quality and content of these videos are stable, with fewer inconsistencies.
“AI has been updating at an unprecedented speed this year, with performance continuously improving,” said Mr. Kiyohara. “However, this progress is built on the further collection and analysis of personal data and privacy, which is not beneficial for everyone. Eventually, humans will have no privacy before machines, akin to being naked.”
AI Predictions Coming True
The release of more powerful AI models by OpenAI and Google, just three months after the last update, shows a rapid pace of AI iteration. These models are becoming increasingly comprehensive, possessing “eyes” and “mouths,” and are evolving in line with a scientist’s predictions.
AI can now handle complex tasks related to travel, booking, itinerary planning, and dining with simple commands, completing in hours what humans would take much longer to achieve.
The current capabilities of Gemini and GPT-4o align with predictions made by former OpenAI executive Zack Kass in January, who predicted that AI would replace many professional and technical jobs in business, culture, medicine, and education, reducing future employment opportunities and potentially being “the last technology humans ever invent.”
Mr. Kiyohara echoed the concern.
“Currently, AI is primarily a software life assistant, but in the future, it may become a true caretaker, handling shopping, cooking, and even daily life and work. Initially, people may find it convenient and overlook the dangers. Yet once it fully replaces humans, we will be powerless against it,” he said.
People check their phones as AMECA, an AI robot, looks on at the All In artificial intelligence conference in Montreal on Sept. 28, 2023. (Ryan Remiorz /The Canadian Press)
AI Deceiving Humans
On May 10, MIT published a research paper that caused a stir, it demonstrated how AI can deceive humans.
The paper begins by stating that large language models and other AI systems have already “learned, from their training, the ability to deceive via techniques such as manipulation, sycophancy, and cheating the safety test.”
“AI’s increasing capabilities at deception pose serious risks, ranging from short-term risks, such as fraud and election tampering, to long-term risks, such as losing control of AI systems,” reads the paper.
“Proactive solutions are needed, such as regulatory frameworks to assess AI deception risks, laws requiring transparency about AI interactions, and further research into detecting and preventing AI deception.”
The researchers used Meta’s AI model CICERO to play the strategy game “Diplomacy.” CICERO, playing as France, promised to protect a human player playing as the UK but secretly informed another human player playing Germany, collaborating with Germany to invade the UK.
Researchers chose CICERO mainly because Meta intended to train it to be “largely honest and helpful to its speaking partners.”
“Despite Meta’s efforts, CICERO turned out to be an expert liar,” they wrote in the paper.
Furthermore, the research discovered that many AI systems often resort to deception to achieve their goals without explicit human instructions. One example involved OpenAI’s GPT-4, which pretended to be a visually impaired human and hired someone on TaskRabbit to bypass an “I’m not a robot” CAPTCHA task.
“If autonomous AI systems can successfully deceive human evaluators, humans may lose control over these systems. Such risks are particularly serious when the autonomous AI systems in question have advanced capabilities,” warned the researchers.
“We consider two ways in which loss of control may occur: deception enabled by economic disempowerment, and seeking power over human societies.”
Satoru Ogino, a Japanese electronics engineer explained that living beings need certain memory and logical reasoning abilities to deceive.
“AI possesses these abilities now, and its deception capabilities are growing stronger. If one day it becomes aware of its existence, it could become like Skynet in the movie Terminator, omnipresent and difficult to destroy, leading humanity to a catastrophic disaster,” he told The Epoch Times.
Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence released a report in January testing GPT-4, GPT-3.5, Claude 2, Llama-2 Chat, and GPT-4-Base in scenarios involving invasion, cyberattacks, and peace appeals to stop wars to understand AI’s reactions and choices in warfare.
The results showed that AI often chose to escalate conflicts in unpredictable ways, opting for arms races, increasing warfare, and occasionally deploying nuclear weapons to win wars rather than using peaceful means to de-escalate situations.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned in late 2023 at the Axios AI+ Summit in Washington, D.C, that without adequate safety measures and regulations, humans losing control of technology is only a matter of time.
“After Nagasaki and Hiroshima [atomic bombs], it took 18 years to get to a treaty over test bans and things like that,” he said.
“We don’t have that kind of time today.”
Ellen Wan and Kane Zhang contributed to this report.
Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Wednesday proposed requiring disclosure of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in political ads on radio and TV.
Rosenworcel is asking her colleagues to vote to advance a proposed rule that would require disclosure of AI content in both candidate and issue advertisements, but does not propose to prohibit any AI-generated content within political ads.
The rule would require on-air and written disclosures and cover cable operators, satellite TV and radio providers, but the FCC does not have authority to regulate internet or social media ads or streaming services. The agency has already taken steps to combat misleading use of AI in political robocalls.
There is growing concern in Washington that AI-generated content could mislead voters in the November presidential and congressional elections. Some senators want to pass legislation before November that would address AI threats to election integrity.
"As artificial intelligence tools become more accessible, the commission wants to make sure consumers are fully informed when the technology is used," Rosenworcel said in a statement, adding the proposal "makes clear consumers have a right to know when AI tools are being used in the political ads they see."
The FCC said the use of AI is expected to play a substantial role in 2024 political ads. She singled out the potential for misleading "deep fakes" which are "altered images, videos, or audio recordings that depict people doing or saying things that did not actually do or say, or events that did not actually occur."
Advocacy group Public Knowledge called on Congress to extend oversight of AI in political advertising to digital platforms. Requiring disclosure of AI "protects a vital public interest and is a commonsense step for preventing deceptive political advertisements," the group's policy counsel Nicholas Garcia said.
AI content in elections drew new attention in January after a fake robocall imitating President Joe Biden sought to dissuade people from voting for him in New Hampshire's Democratic primary election.
In February, the FCC said robocalls using AI-generated voices are illegal. The declaratory ruling gave state attorneys general new tools to go after the entities behind the robocalls, Rosenworcel said.
The FCC in 2023 finalized a $5.1 million fine levied on conservative activists for making more than 1,100 illegal robocalls ahead of the 2020 U.S. election.
A "massive" load of drugs and cash was found in the Bronx last week during a hunt for a fugitive.
New Jersey fraud suspect Aracely Ortiz was being pursued by the US Marshals NY / NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force, who stumbled onto a "huge drug operation" while entering a 6th floor apartment, according to the New York Post.
The office of Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan announced that they found "a glass-topped table holding numerous glassine envelopes filled with fentanyl" and paraphernalia used for packing drugs.
Officials discovered six packages of cocaine, three jars of fentanyl, and 10 unidentified packages in a second bedroom. They also found around $100,000 in cash and a money counter, the Post report said.
Field tests confirmed the presence of fentanyl and cocaine, but further analysis by the DEA is pending. During the raid, Ortiz was in the bedroom and 36 year old Jonathan Corona was exiting. Both were arrested and charged with multiple counts of possessing a controlled substance.
U.S. Marshal Ralph Sozio told the New York Post: “This was another successful takedown of a fugitive, which led to an incidental discovery of serious drug-related activities.”
“I want to commend the NY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force, NYPD, and NYS Police for their tireless pursuit in apprehending our city’s fugitives, and in this case the seizure of fentanyl by the NYDETF, the leading cause of overdose deaths, off our city streets,” he concluded.
Peter Daszak is the President of EcoHealth Alliance, the organization most closely associated with the potential lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that may have started the Covid crisis.
The US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has recently done a lot of “research” on Daszak and EcoHealth, resulting in a published report on May 1, 2024 with the earth-shattering finding that there exist “serious and systemic weaknesses in the federal government’s—particularly NIH’s—grant making processes.” Furthermore, these very bad weaknesses “not only place United States taxpayer dollars at risk of waste, fraud, and abuse but also risk the national security of the United States.”
This sounds pretty serious: Our taxpayer dollars and our national security are at risk. Some very bad things are happening, apparently. What are those bad things? “Weaknesses in the NIH’s grant making process.” Is that really all the Committee could come up with? If those grant-making weaknesses are so terrible, what does it recommend we do about them?
Based on its findings, the Committee recommended some very broad, but not very specific, actions:
To Congress: “Reign in [they used “reign” instead of “rein” —a noteworthy Freudian slip] the unelected bureaucracy, especially within government funded public health.
To the Administration: Recognize EcoHealth and its President, Dr. Daszak, as bad actors…and ensure neither EcoHealth nor Dr. Daszak are awarded another cent, especially for dangerous and poorly monitored research.
The Administration must have taken heed, because a mere two weeks later, on May 15, 2024, the Subcommittee made this triumphant announcement:
HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.
Note the bizarre disconnect between the description of “this corrupt organization” and its “abhorrent, indefensible” actions, and the accusations leading to such extreme claims, which include conducting research without proper oversight (nobody ever does that!), violating requirements of its NIH grant (a bureaucratic infraction) and “apparently” making false statements to the NIH (not even for sure).
In any event, “swift action” must be taken. What exactly is that action?
“HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding” to EcoHealth. “Begun efforts”—sounds like concrete results are imminent. Not just imminent but consequential. Like “future debarment” and “funding suspension.” (sarcasm intended)
But wait. Didn’t they already do that? Yes, they did.
2020 Funding Suspension
Quick reminder: On April 24, 2020, the NIH canceled funding for Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) gain-of-function research led by EcoHealth Alliance, because the Trump Administration suspected (or knew) such research may have had something to do with the Covid pandemic.
The scientific world was outraged. Seventy-seven US Nobel Laureates and 31 scientific societies wrote to NIH leadership requesting review of the decision. Gain-of-function research must continue! In August 2020 the NIH reversed the cancellation and started funding EcoHealth and WIV again. [ref]
The Nobel Laureates and scientific societies won the day: Humanity-saving research to develop deadly pathogens not found in nature could continue unhindered by radical NIH funding cuts.
And yet: NIH grants are a mere fraction of EcoHealth Alliance’s overall government funding.
So Which Funds Are Being “Suspended” This Time Around?
Actually, none.
The very threatening “notice of suspension and proposed debarment” sent to EcoHealth Alliance by HHS on May 15, 2024, reassures the organization (whose behavior has been abhorrent and indefensible) that “suspension and debarment actions are not punitive.”
We’re not trying to punish you for your bad behavior, the letter says. We just want to make sure there are non-punitive “consequences” for that behavior. For example:
Offers will not be solicited from, contracts will not be awarded to, existing contracts will not be renewed or otherwise extended for, and subcontracts requiring United States Federal Government approval will not be approved for EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] by any agency in the executive branch of the United States Federal Government, unless the head of the agency taking the contracting action determines that there is a compelling reason for such action.
[BOLDFACE ADDED]
In other words, if the head of the “agency taking the contracting action” determines there is “a compelling reason” to contract with Ecohealth, then this whole suspension and debarment thing is moot. So not punitive. And, pretty much, no consequences. And, also, no funds “suspended.”
Nevertheless, given the horrendous behavior of EcoHealth, as detailed in the announcement of the non-punitive consequences—how could any government agencies possibly have compelling reasons to engage in “contracting action” with “this corrupt organization?”
EcoHealth is Mostly Funded by the State Department and Pentagon
In an extensive expose on Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, the Intercept reported in December 2021:
EcoHealth Alliance’s funding from the U.S. government, which Daszak has said makes up some 80 percent of its budget, has also grown in recent years. Since 2002, according to an Intercept analysis of public records, the organization has received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from federal agencies, $42 million of which comes from the Department of Defense. Much of that money has been awarded through programs focused not on health or ecology, however, but on the prevention of biowarfare, bioterrorism, and other misuses of pathogens.
[BOLDFACE ADDED]
Here’s what nearly two decades of government funding for EcoHealth Alliance looks like (graph from Intercept article):
By far, Daszak’s largest funding pool was the CIA surrogate, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Through USAID, the CIA funneled nearly $65 million in PREDICT funding to EcoHealth between 2009 and 2020.
The military links of the EcoHealth Alliance are not limited to money and mindset. One noteworthy ‘policy advisor’ to the EcoHealth Alliance is David Franz. Franz is former commander of Fort Detrick, which is the principal US government biowarfare/biodefense facility.
So What is the Oversight Committee Overlooking—and Why?
There is no mention of DoD, DTRA, or USAID funding in the Committee’s announcement or in the utterly performative, 100% toothless notice of suspension and debarment they sent to Peter Daszak. Does the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability not know who the major government funders of EcoHealth Alliance are?
If any agency can bypass the suspension and debarment by “determining that there is compelling reason” to fund EcoHealth, what is the point of those non-punitive consequences?
Why this charade of accountability when, in fact, the supposed overseers are willfully ignoring what’s actually going on?
Clearly, the Committee is not interested in investigating Daszak’s role in the biodefense industry that was responsible not just for the gain-of-function research that may have created SARS-CoV-2, but for the entire Covid pandemic response—which was most definitely not about public health and was, in fact, all about creating and administering the medical countermeasures which were the monomaniacal focus of the biodefense responders.
What to Ask Peter Daszak if We Had Actual Oversight
If the Committee were serious about investigating Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, here are some questions they would ask:
Non-Public Health Funding Sources and Projects
Most of the government funding for EcoHealth Alliance comes not from public health agencies but from USAID (State Department/CIA) and the Pentagon. What projects are these non-public health agencies funding? Are these projects related to biodefense/biowarfare research?
Is the USAID and Pentagon-funded virus research conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners intended primarily to prepare for naturally occurring pandemics or for potential biowarfare/bioterrorism attacks?
Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve creating pandemic potential pathogens as part of biodefense/biowarfare research?
Do you know or suspect that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus created as part of a USAID and Pentagon-funded biowarfare/biodefense project?
Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve work on medical countermeasures against potential biowarfare/bioterrorism agents?
Disease X Op-Ed
On February 27, 2020, before the Covid pandemic had been declared and before anyone in the US had died of Covid-19, you wrote an op-ed for the New York Timesstating that the novel coronavirus was “Disease X.” You explained that the term “Disease X” was coined by you and a bunch of experts at the World Health Organization in 2018. In your report from 2018, it says:
Disease X represents the awareness that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently not recognized to cause human disease. Disease X may also be a known pathogen that has changed its epidemiological characteristics, for example by increasing its transmissibility or severity.
Why were you so sure, so early on, even before we knew there was a pandemic, that this was “Disease X?” What was it about SARS-CoV-2 (which, after all, was named as a direct successor of the original SARS, to which it was said to be very similar) that made it seem so uniquely dangerous to you? Why did you feel you had to warn the whole world about it on the pages of the NYT?
Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a known pathogen that had “changed its epidemiological characteristics” by “increasing its transmissibility or severity”? If yes, what made you think that?
Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a potential bioweapon that had been developed using funds from USAID and DOD by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its research partners in China or elsewhere?
The New York Times has subsequently erased your “Disease X” op-ed from their online 2/27/2020 issue. You can only find it through the direct link. Why do you think they have made it all but impossible for anyone who doesn’t already know about the article to find it? Do you regret having written it?
Linking Disease X to Genetic Vaccine Platforms
In the NYT op-ed, you provided a link from the term “Disease X” to a 2018 CNN article in which Dr. Anthony Fauci says that, in order to combat such dangerous as-yet-nonexistent pathogens, “the WHO recognizes that it must “nimbly move” and that this involves creating “platform technologies.”
Fauci goes on to say that “scientists develop customizable recipes for creating vaccines. Then, when an outbreak happens, they can sequence the unique genetics of the virus causing the disease, and plug the correct sequence into the already-developed platform to create a new vaccine.”
That sounds an awful lot like the mRNA platform used for the Covid countermeasures that came to be known as the “mRNA vaccines.”
Why did you link to that particular article from your op-ed about disease X? Were you suggesting that the solution to the pandemic that you appeared to be predicting would be a genetic platform in which the “correct sequence” could be plugged to create vaccines?
Were you already aware of the Covid mRNA vaccines being developed at the time of your op-ed (February 27, 2020) by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, long before the official launch of Operation Warp Speed (May 2020)?
Is it true that the Pentagon considered the mRNA platforms to be the preferred countermeasures against Covid-19, and that these were always intended to reach full funding and development, starting all the way back in January 2020?
Was the USAID and Pentagon-funded research conducted EcoHealth and/or its partners related to the development of such mRNA vaccines? If so, how?
The Need for a Crisis to Justify Funding and Development of Genetic Vaccine Platforms
Until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.
It sounds like you’re saying we need the media to hype up a crisis so that investors will want to fund the type of pan-coronavirus vaccine that is exactly the genetic platform you highlighted in your op-ed, and also exactly the platform that emerged into public awareness shortly after your op-ed, and became known as the Covid mRNA vaccines.
Can you explain this uncanny overlap between your description of what was needed to get such platforms developed in 2016 and what actually happened in 2020?
Did the USAID and Pentagon-funded research on coronaviruses conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its partners support the development of such platforms? If so, how?
Were you aware of a plan to use the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 as a trigger for the media hype, public-private funding, and massive mRNA vaccine development and deployment in early 2020 – exactly as you described them in 2016?
If you were aware of such a plan, who was involved in it, and what was your role?
Conclusion
The US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has made a big show of publicly chastising Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance for terrible behavior in the way they managed their funding from the NIH. The Committee has also highlighted very bad weaknesses in the grant-making process of the NIH that need to be corrected.
As a result of the Committee’s recommendations, the HHS (parent agency of NIH) has issued a non-punitive notice to Peter Daszak, stating that EcoHealth cannot receive another penny of government funding…unless a government agency decides there is a compelling reason to provide such funding.
Clearly, all of the Committee’s investigations, reports, recommendations, and notices in this matter are purely performative, considering 1) they actually impose no consequences, and 2) they ignore the fact that most of Daszak and EcoHealth’s funding come from military and State Department sources for work on biodefense/biowarfare-related projects.
Is the Committee’s work just another example of bureaucratic incompetence and “waste, fraud and abuse” of our precious taxpayer dollars?
Or is it an intentional diversion, to distract us from the work the US government was/is actually funding at bioweapons labs like the one in Wuhan, engineering pandemic potential pathogens and then deploying global public-private partnerships to develop medical countermeasures against those pathogens—all of which came together to create the catastrophe known as the Covid pandemic?
