These are just two of the countless animals used in secret genetic engineering tests in labs – many with appalling biosecurity. No wonder so many experts say Covid DID leak from Wuhan research center
In a Chinese city, Wuhan – where the Covid-19 pandemic originated – scientists have created more than 1,000 genetically engineered animals, including monkeys and rabbits. Lab animals are also injected with gene-altered viruses, some very similar to the organism that caused Covid-19. The fact is that China has a reputation for recklessly encouraging, or at least tolerating, all kinds of experiments that are not permitted elsewhere in the world.
And since the lucrative global biotech investment boom started, Chinese researchers seem to be taking even more daring risks with experiments on animals – and even humans – that would be deemed unethical in most Western countries.
The great secrecy behind such research is partly driven by China's determination to get a commercial advantage in the potentially very profitable field. But there is also a more sinister reason. Much of the work is supervised by the People's Liberation Army, which closely monitors two areas – any gene modification that can create better soldiers, and micro-organisms that can be gene-edited to make new biological weapons to which people have no defense. These laboratories are meant to be biosecure, but dealing with live animals poses unique safety challenges. After all, monkeys run about, bite and scratch, unlike a pathogen kept in a test tube. They also excrete, have parasites and shed skin and fur. All of this carries the risk of contamination.
An article by two Chinese academics, titled The Possible Origins Of 2019-nCoV Coronavirus, said the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention kept disease-ridden animals in its laboratories, including 605 bats. It also mentioned that bats once attacked a researcher and that 'blood of bat was on his skin'. Other Chinese articles have described how a Wuhan researcher captured bats in a cave without protective measures and 'bat urine dripped from the top of his head like rain drops'. As a result of countless stories about the possible origins of Covid-19, China's most well-known bat expert is the Wuhan virologist Shi Zhengli – nicknamed Bat Woman – who visited the remote caves. In 2015, she jointly published a paper in Nature Medicine about bat coronaviruses that 'showed potential for human emergence'. It described her team's efforts to create a highly infectious virus which targeted the human upper respiratory tract from a horseshoe bat. Next, they tried to experiment with a live mouse to see if this man-made virus could enter the lungs of a mouse and infect it. And it did. They concluded that this proved that the SARS virus from a bat could infect humans. So was it possible that Zhengli created Covid-19 in her lab? What else have she and her team been doing in Wuhan?