11 Comments
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Ralph Baric's Attorney's avatar

Have you shown the mutational distribution plots to an independent expert like Bloom? He's probably broad-minded enough to at least endeavor to explain some of this.

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D. Janković's avatar

I've tried to contact Bloom and his Washington U colleague Starr. I didn't get a response - note their lab now collaborates with WIV. But I have had some interest from scientists within NIH.

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D. Janković's avatar

This recent joint Washington/WIV work (from David Veesler) also has potential bioweapon design/misattribution applications. I suspect WIV has cultivated them to try mute Bloom's contribution to the origins debate. He was a keynote speaker at the 2024 conference in Japan organized (but not attended) by Shi Zhengli, and has been defending their collaboration on social media.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39478224/

I also tried to contact your client, and was again ignored. Perhaps you can pass this on for me?

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Ralph Baric's Attorney's avatar

That’s disappointing.

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Tommy Cleary's avatar

Did you contact Bloom or

D Vesser

David Veesler: dveesler@uw.edu

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D. Janković's avatar

I wrote to Tyler Starr (now at Utah apparently) and Bloom warning him to treat WIV's ACE2 sequences with caution. I'll write to Veesler and others, invite them to read this article. They can't then say they weren't warned.

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Tommy Cleary's avatar

Do you see a connection here between methods in persuasion?

Drosten…Bloom…there are not that many it seems that find a point of logic and follow up with an appropriate act of knowledge claim as stark even in the face of attempts to coopt and neutralise…

Why ask these questions if all that you will do is capitulate to false equivalence arguments afterwards?

Do scientists need help with the politics of dual use research of concern in the context of a democracy and an institution working within a democracy and their relationship with the opposite…a bioscience institute in a authoritarian dictatorship and the impossibility of certain critiques being even acknowledged.

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BILLY BOSTICKSON's avatar

very interesting, thanks!

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Dr. Valentin Bruttel's avatar

very interesting. so Baric & co took a the RBD of SHC014 to build a chimera (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4797993), but SHC014 was actually already a lab made RBD chimera?

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D. Janković's avatar

Yes - that's what I think.

I've tried to contact Baric, Menachery and others who worked on that 2015 paper to point this out and ask if they recognized, or had any suspicions of this. I've had no response. I'm used to it.

I also think RsSHC014 contributed to the design of SARS-CoV-2 - particularly the RBD. More about that in a future article.

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