New Evidence Backs Energy Department Lab Leak Conclusion

SEATTLE, March 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- This week the Wall Street Journal reported that a classified assessment from the Department of Energy concluded the COVID pandemic likely arose from a lab leak, although their confidence level in that assessment was said to be low. But today, Physician-Scientist Dr. Steven Quay, MD, PhD announced the publication of a scientific paper which reveals evidence of dangerous research, and direct sequencing data discovered in data found in GeneBank files which showed synthetic biology experiments being conducted with thegreater than 30% lethal MERS coronavirus. This follows previous publications of laboratory research on the greater than 60% lethal Nipah virus and an H7N9 influenza virus (39% lethality) contaminating laboratories in China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"Genomes don't play politics." Dr. Quay said. "This is the third example of unpublished coronavirus and influenza synthetic biology experiments contaminating laboratories in China."

"It is essential that the United States take a leadership role, both within the scientific community and from our federal government, to put safeguards in place for this kind of research, both for the safety of the American people and for all of humanity. It is my analysis that a pandemic with a >10% lethal pathogen would likely end civilization as we know it."

As reported in the paper, in January 2020 a laboratory in Wuhan, China was performing gain of function experiments on an unknown MERS coronavirus, apparently swapping out a spike protein that leads to bat infections for a spike protein that could potentially lead to human infections. An epidemic of MERS viruses that began in the Middle East in 2012, with humans being infected by camels, had a case fatality rate of greater than 30%.

The genetic data that permitted this forensic analysis was uploaded from Wuhan, China to the GenBank system of the National Institutes of Health. The GenBank files were found in an agricultural rice sequencing dataset that had nothing to do with the MERS synthetic biology experiments. This indicates contamination of the laboratory where the rice genetic sequencing was being performed with what is called a cloning vector of the MERS virus. Cloning vectors are used to make large quantities of virus genetic material for further experimentation.

The link to the paper, entitled: "Discovery of a Novel Merbecovirus DNA Clone Contaminating Agricultural Rice Sequencing Datasets from Wuhan, China." can be found here: Novel MERS Reverse Genetics System Contamination

About Dr. Steven Quay, MD, PhD

Dr. Steven Quay has 360+ published contributions to medicine and has been cited over 11,000 times, placing him in the top 1% of scientists worldwide. He holds 88 US patents and has invented seven FDA-approved pharmaceuticals which have helped over 80 million people. He is the author of the best-selling book on surviving the COVID-19 pandemic, Stay Safe: A Physician's Guide to Survive Coronavirus. He is the CEO of Atossa Therapeutics Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics for oncology and infectious diseases. His previous work on the origin of SARS-CoV-2, including the Nipah and H7N9 influenza contamination of the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratories, can be found here: Origin of SARS-CoV-2 publications

He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from The University of Michigan, was a postdoctoral fellow in the Chemistry Department at MIT with Nobel Laureate H. Gobind Khorana, a resident at the Harvard-MGH Hospital, and spent almost a decade on the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine. A TEDx talk he delivered on breast cancer prevention has been viewed over 220,000 times. His scientific manuscript entitled, "A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived," has been viewed over 230,000-times. For more information, visit www.DrQuay.com .

CONTACT: Jenn Jimenez, [email protected]

SOURCE Dr. Steven Quay