First, Sen. Rand Paul broached an alleged lover’s spat among government biolab workers that resulted in the jaded lover poking a hole in the other’s hazmat suit at a facility studying weaponized Ebola, potentially exposing him/her to the virus and, by extension, risking an outbreak — an incident that the director, Dr. Connie Schmaljohn, apparently didn’t believe even warranted reporting, much less punishment.
Via Daily Mail (emphasis added):
“A US government lab studying the world’s deadliest diseases been shut down over safety concerns after a spat between two scientists who were romantically involved.
Speaking anonymously, an HHS source revealed that one of the researchers poked a hole in the other’s protective equipment during a vicious ‘lovers’ spat’. Dr Connie Schmaljohn, the lab’s director, was also placed on administrative leave after she allegedly failed to report the incident to other officials.”
The fine specimen overseeing our collective public health, Dr Connie:
The truly horrific line of questioning from Paul, however, concerned his allegation that a DHS lab close to the infamous Fort Detrick facility is working on aerosolized Ebola:
“I am told in public records that they are doing experiments or have done experiments to aerosolize Ebola at the Impact lab, that’s the DHS lab nearby Fort Detrick… The idea of aerosolizing Ebola, I think is, uh, and/or training Ebola to be aerosolized is incredibly dangerous and probably goes against the Biological Weapons Convention.”
On that score, I had known there was a concern that The Science™ might undertake such a reckless project, but I wasn’t aware there was already evidence in the public domain that they had actively looked into how to make aerosolized Ebola infectious to humans.
Back in 2012, researchers at now-shuttered Fort Detrick, which also developed SARS-CoV-2, sought to manipulate, with success, mouse genetics to make them more susceptible to aerosolized Ebola.
Via Viruses (emphasis added):
“In order to identify wild-type, inbred, mouse strains in which exposure to aerosolized [mouse-adapted Ebola virus] is uniformly lethal, 60 BXD (C57BL/6 crossed with DBA/2) recombinant inbred (RI) and advanced RI (ARI) mouse strains were exposed to aerosolized MA-EBOV, and monitored for disease severity…
The family Filoviridae includes two genera, Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus and a third putative genus Ceuvavirus. Filoviruses have caused extremely lethal sporadic human outbreaks, primarily in central Africa, and are classified as Category A Bioterrorism Agents by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The primary threat of filoviruses, as weapons of bioterrorism, is thought to be as aerosols. Appropriate animal models are therefore needed for discovery and testing of filovirus countermeasures and for gaining a better understanding of the pathogenesis of airborne filovirus infection. Aerosol models have been developed in non-human primates (NHPs) for Sudan virus (SUDV), Ebola virus (EBOV) and Marburg virus (MARV). Filovirus infection of NHPs may provide the best representation of the disease process in humans…
Mouse strains were generated by a special scheme of crossing of B6 and D2 mice and their progeny leading to accumulation of recombinations in the genome of each strain….
Five BXD mouse strains had uniform lethality upon exposure to aerosolized MA-EBOV.”
This research opens up the door for weaponization because, if they can pinpoint what genetic changes in humans might make them susceptible to airborne Ebola, nefarious actors can induce those changes and create a pandemic — possibly via mRNA “therapy.”
Alternatively, they could just cook up a new strain that doesn’t require any pre-manipulation of the human genome and let it slip through any of the one hundred “accidental” “leaks” emanating from U.S. biolabs alone every year.
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