The line comes straight from “Yes Minister.” Michael Gove’s testimony to the Covid inquiry on Tuesday was cut short because he became embroiled in what a quiet government lawyer saw as a “somewhat divisive issue”.
Gove, who has been a cabinet minister for most of the past 13 years, ventured to say that “there is a significant number of judgments that assume the virus itself was man-made.”
This goes further than any British official has previously dared. Gove is an exceptionally clever man – and I have no doubt that his intervention was deliberate. He has long been aware of the overwhelming evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, was genetically engineered in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan, China, to become a human pathogen.
As Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey would put it: The Foreign Secretary appears to have forgotten what he wasn’t supposed to know. In fact, what Gove described as “significant judgment” is overwhelming.
Chinese molecular biologists have taken a coronavirus that occurs naturally in bats and altered its genes – to a degree that cannot occur naturally – so that it is exceptionally contagious to humans.
Chinese molecular biologists took a coronavirus that occurs naturally in bats and altered its genes – to a degree that cannot occur naturally – to make it exceptionally infectious to humans, writes PROFESSOR ANGUS DALGLEISH
Gove, who has been a cabinet minister for most of the past 13 years, dared to say: “There are numerous judgments that assume the virus itself was man-made.”
Any idea that this novel coronavirus came from contaminated bat meat sold in the Wuhan wet market is a fairy tale for the gullible, a childish explanation that insults the intelligence of any serious virologist.
The Chinese are to blame for the Covid pandemic and the resulting deaths (an estimated seven million worldwide) and long-term illnesses, as well as the incalculable damage to the global economy – to a degree that would not be unreasonable for nations to demand significant reparations from Beijing.
The mere fact that this disease emerged in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Biology, China’s leading high-level “biosafety” laboratory, should be enough to make any researcher suspicious.
But shamefully, Covid investigations lawyer Hugo Keith KC has criticized Mr Gove for even starting to approach the issue.
Gove’s position should be the focus of the inquiry. He admitted that the government “wasn’t as prepared as we should have been” because “the virus was new.” In other words, the medical establishment was caught off guard. This virus was unprecedented because it was partly created by humans.
I can say all of this with certainty because in March 2020 I co-authored an academic paper that first alerted government officials to the facts.
When working with my colleague in Norway, Dr. Birger Sorensen (with whom I had worked in 2006 to improve his groundbreaking therapeutic HIV vaccine), we realized that the Covid virus was simply not compatible with natural evolution.
To my great disappointment, I found that no major journal wanted to publish our evidence. Many claimed it was “not in the public interest.” Nevertheless, my warnings about the origins of the virus brought me to the attention of the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove.
Understandably, he wanted to know why an NHS cancer specialist was so interested in Covid and arranged for me to be examined quietly and without my knowledge.
It gives me little joy that my credibility was quickly established, which helped convince Dearlove that I was a skeptical scientific voice whose findings were repeatedly ignored – and proven correct again and again, far too late.
Like Cassandra in the ancient myth, I have an unwelcome habit of telling those around me news they don’t want to hear.
When I applied for the use of immunotherapy in cancer patients, a decade before it became standard practice, I was denied funding. The agency responsible for the grants concluded that immunotherapy worked in mice but would be ineffective in humans. It is one of the leading treatments for cancer today.
My suggestion that thalidomide, the drug that caused so much harm to unborn children in the 1960s, be adapted for other treatments caused shock and revulsion. But after I shared my research with a US company called Celgene, lenalidomide was developed – now the top treatment for the blood cancer myeloma on the NHS.
Most importantly, I was the first researcher to identify the role of a specific “receptor” for the HIV virus. In simple terms, this receptor is a protein on the surface of a human cell that allows a virus to enter and infect the cell, causing disease.
It was this feature of SARS-CoV-2 that piqued my interest in Covid, as the “spikes” on its surface perform a similar function, making it easier for the virus to access human cells
The Chinese are to blame for the Covid pandemic and the resulting deaths (an estimated seven million worldwide) and long-term illnesses, as well as the incalculable damage to the global economy (stock image)
It was this feature of SARS-CoV-2 that piqued my interest in Covid, as the “spikes” on its surface perform a similar function, making it easier for the virus to access human cells.
The clue that the Covid virus is man-made is actually these telltale receptors, one of which is known as the furin cleavage site. HIV binds primarily to one receptor – but the Covid virus binds to several, allowing it to take hold in cells in the nose, mouth, lungs and elsewhere in the body.
This gives the virus what we call overload, making it much more positively charged than any other virus before it.
Think of it like a refrigerator magnet that is so strong that it rips out of your hand, flies across the kitchen, and lands hard enough to dent the metal. This is the hypercharge effect.
The Covid virus is designed for maximum impact – such a structure has not occurred naturally in other coronaviruses.
And if that wasn’t enough evidence, consider this: In 2013, molecular biologists at the Wuhan Institute announced that such a virus structure had been created through genetic modification in the laboratory. They openly admitted that they were working on this technique to increase the viral load as part of so-called “gain-of-function” research.
So with SARS-CoV-2 we have an extremely contagious virus that reflects human-caused genetic mutations previously created by scientists. And all this is happening in a city that is home to China’s leading virus research labs, some of which specialize in coronaviruses isolated from bats found in caves many hundreds of kilometers from the city.
Covid investigations lawyer Hugo Keith KC hit out at Mr Gove for even starting to approach the issue
Michael Gove was warned not to speak about it as it was a “somewhat controversial topic”. As far as I can see, the only distinction is between the obvious and the willfully blind
Michael Gove was warned not to speak about it as it was a “somewhat controversial topic”. As far as I can see, the only distinction is between the obvious and the willfully blind.
If the Covid investigation were truly interested in finding out the truth behind the pandemic, its main focus would be on the origins of this novel virus – and its fascinating genetic specificity.
We need to find out why the Chinese government funded such suicidally dangerous research and to what extent Western governments, particularly the Americans, knew about it – and whether or not they actually contributed to research funding as suspected.
Given the close relationships between US and Chinese virology scientists, I am convinced that there must have been close collaboration.
The big unanswered question is “Why?” The official explanation is that this was intended to encourage vaccine research to prepare for a future coronavirus pandemic, without considering the irony that the research itself caused a pandemic.
Other people have pointed out that there is a bioweapons research team stationed at the Wuhan lab.
Additionally, major pharmaceutical companies have been interested in developing vaccines to prepare for a pandemic.
Mad scientists concocting deadly plagues in their laboratories are the stuff of B movies. It’s an image that none of us want to think about. But we have to face reality.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid was the result of genetic engineering. It is clearly a man-made disease.
If the public inquiry refuses to take this into account or even allow this idea to be expressed, the hearings will be pointless.
Professor Angus Dalgleish is with Dr. Steven Quay co-author of The Origin Of The Virus, published by Clinical Press.