Ralph Baric’s lab under a cloud: US’ unknown “super virus” closet
Professor Ralph S. Baric. (Screenphoto/MIT Technology Review）
Just as some U.S. Republican politicians have gone full swing on the
so-called “lab-leak theory”, slandering the Wuhan Institute of Virology
(WIV) in a report published on Aug 2, 2021 and claiming there’s “ample
evidence” that COVID-19 “leaked from a Chinese lab”, an online petition
requesting that the World Health Organization (WHO) probe Fort Detrick
has drawn more than 25 million signatures by Aug. 8.
A probe into Fort Detrick - home to the US Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) - is warranted, as it stores
some of the most deadly and infectious viruses in the world and has a
notorious history of life-threatening leak incidents. However, in the
international effort to trace the source of COVID-19, the global
community also deserves transparency from another highly suspicious
laboratory – Professor Ralph S. Baric’s lab at the University of North
Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.
Baric 's profile on UNC-Chapel Hill's staff information site. (Screenphoto/UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health)
Shady experiments
Led by virologist Ralph S. Baric, a scientist who specialises in the
study of coronaviruses (CoV), the lab is responsible for UNC-Chapel
Hill’s global advances in CoV research.
According to UNC-Chapel Hill’s staff information site, “the Baric Lab
uses coronaviruses as models to study the genetics of RNA virus
transcription, replication, persistence, pathogenesis, genetics and
cross-species transmission”. To put it more simply, Professor Baric and
his team are capable of modifying a certain virus according to gene
segment.
What’s specifically noteworthy is his 20-year ongoing research called
“gain of function”. Baric himself told MIT Review in July that his
research focuses on “the introduction of a mutation that improves the
function or property of a gene”, but what makes such experiments
suspicious is that they can amplify the contagiousness of a virus,
making it easier to infect animals, and even humans. According to Baric,
such measures are designed to prepare human beings ahead of epidemics
of any kind such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) or the
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
The highly suitable scientific conditions Baric and his team possessed
even before the COVID-19 pandemic make suspicions over the
origin-tracing process inevitable.
“With a more mature environment for lab virus synthesis and operations,
as well as more virus leak cases historically, the virus was obviously
more likely to have leaked from US labs if the ‘lab leak’ claim is
true,” Chinese biosecurity specialist Li (pseudonym), who works at a
research institute in eastern China, was quoted as saying by the Global
Times.
Notorious lab leak record
As the foremost coronavirus biologist in the United States and one of
the best in the world, Baric and his lab used to get large amounts of
funding from the US government. Due to frequent life-threatening
incidents that have occurred over the years, the Obama administration
temporarily halted funding in 2014.
However, according to a report by MIT Technology Review on June 29,
Baric’s lab continued its gain-of-function experiment on coronavirus,
when the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) included a clause
granting exceptions along with the ban, saying “if head of funding
agency determines research is urgently necessary to protect public
health or national security”. Not only were Baric’s studies allowed to
move forward, but so were all studies that applied for exemptions. The
funding restrictions were lifted in 2017 and replaced with a more
lenient system. It is no surprise that Baric and his lab have raised
enormous concerns amongst the public.
From Jan. 1, 2015 through June 1, 2020, UNC-Chapel Hill reported 28 lab
incidents involving “genetically engineered organisms” to safety
officials at NIH, six of which involved “various types of lab-created
coronaviruses”, according to ProPublica, a New York City-based
independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism
in the public interest. This report was provided to ProPublica by UNC,
and also published in UNC’s own annual report.
News coverage on UNC-Chapel Hill's reported lab incidents on Aug 7, 2020. (Screenphoto/ProPublica)
A scary incident recorded on April 2020 noted that “a UNC scientist
underwent 14 days of self-quarantine at home after a mouse bite caused
potential exposure to a strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes
COVID-19, that had been adapted for growth in mice.”
This incident is only the tip of the iceberg. Among the 107 leak cases
that the UNC reported in its own annual reports from 2015 to 2018, six
could be directly held accountable for a fatal wave of infections that
threatened the entire human race.
“UNC declined to answer questions about the incidents and to disclose
key details about them to the public, including the names of viruses
involved, the nature of the modifications made to them and what risks
were posed to the public, contrary to NIH guidelines,” ProPublica wrote
in their article.
If the WIV needs to conduct a transparent probe for the origin tracing
of COVID-19, then UNC-Chapel Hill, Ralph Baric and Baric’s lab, which
WIV cooperated with in 2015 and has not been willing to open up and
share its data with the world, should be the first ones to be looked
into.
“A can of worms”
The Insider wrote on June 3 this year that “staff in two US government
bureaus warned the leaders of US not to keep pursuing an investigation
into the origins of COVID-19”, because it would "open a can of worms,"
according to an “internal memo” viewed by Vanity Fair. The question
remains, what do they mean by “a can of worms”? What “worms” are they
afraid of letting out? Does this imply that they know something the US
government wouldn’t want people to know if they keep digging?
"With the investigation into Baric's team and their lab, it will be
clear whether the coronavirus research will produce the novel
coronavirus or not," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao
Lijian at a media briefing on July 30.
For the public, the ultimate question is as simple as common logic: The
WHO international team came twice to China to investigate. The team
visited various places, including the WIV. Why should Baric’s be left
out?
(Web editor: Guo Wenrui, Du Mingming)
Ritu Madan 
Post
![](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.italiachiamaitalia.it/italiani-allestero-schiavone-cgie-non-molla-rinviare-le-elezioni-comites-vogliamo-garantire-la-partecipazione/&media=https://www.italiachiamaitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/schiavone-mic.jpg&description="Se non ci sarà una decisione per prolungare le elezioni, la scelta sarà ridotta a un concorso di bellezza, a una sfilata di moda. Non è questo il p){kind=link}
