Lose Them Pounds

Mead is a village in Saunders County, Nebraska, with a population of just 580 people.1 Their website focuses on what they do best: small town living. “If you’re ready to escape the city, come join us in Mead, Nebraska,” their official site reads.2 This close-knit farming community is also home to AltEn,3 an ethanol plant that is producing toxic byproducts that are poisoning the community.
“It’s definitely within sniffing distance. I come out here to do yard work and I can barely breathe,” Jody Weible, who lives half a mile from the plant, told a news outlet.4
The stench is coming from a byproduct of ethanol production called distillers grain, which is produced after the starch is removed from corn. Also known as “wet cake,” distillers grain is sold by most U.S. ethanol plants as livestock feed, but AltEn’s waste is different.
The company secured a free source of corn to make ethanol by billing itself as a “recycling” plant that accepts seeds treated with pesticides, including toxic neonicotinoids. The resulting waste is too contaminated to sell as feed for animals, so AltEn has been spreading the waste on farmland and holding the rest of it — a “smelly, lime-green mash of fermented grains” — on the grounds surrounding its plant.5
Pesticide Contamination ‘Off the Charts’

Neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides worldwide.6 If you were to visit a conventional farm, you’d likely see evidence of their use in the form of brightly colored red corn seeds and blue soybean seeds, which are color-coded to denote treatment with neonicotinoids. Even when used agriculturally, these seeds have been found to harm pollinators like bees at alarming rates.7
There are other concerns as well, like the fact that planting neonicotinoid seeds kills off insects that prey on slugs — prominent corn and soybean pests — thereby reducing crop yields.8
They’re also known to persist in the environment. When researchers screened oilseed crops in the European Union for neonicotinoids during the five-year moratorium, they found neonicotinoids in all the years it was banned in bee-attractive crops, with residue levels depending on soil type and increasing with rainfall.
They concluded that this poses a “considerable risk for nectar foraging bees” and supports “the recent extension of the moratorium to a permanent ban in all outdoor crops.”9 In 2018, the European Union banned the outdoor use of three neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam), while the United Nations has also recommended severely restricting their use.10
They’re still widely used in the U.S., however, and in Mead, where the excess waste from the treated seeds is piling up, astronomical levels of the chemicals have been detected.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attorney Dan Raichel told The Guardian, “Some of the levels recorded are just off the charts. If I were living in that area with those levels of neonics going into the water and the environment I would be concerned for my own health.”11
In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has set an upper “safety” limit of 70 parts per billion (ppb) for neonicotinoids in food and water, while levels deemed “safe” for aquatic life are capped at 11 ppb for clothianidin and 17.5 ppb for thiamethoxam. Yet, The Guardian reported:12

“On the AltEn property, state environmental officials recorded levels of clothianidin at a staggering 427,000ppb in testing of one of the large hills of AltEn waste. Thiamethoxam was detected at 85,100ppb, according to testing ordered by the Nebraska department of agriculture.

In an AltEn wastewater lagoon, clothianidin was recorded at 31,000ppb and thiamethoxam at 24,000ppb. A third dangerous neonic called imidacloprid was also found in the lagoon, at 312ppb. The EPA aquatic life benchmark for imidacloprid is 0.385ppb. AltEn’s lagoon system holds approximately 175m gallons.

High levels of 10 other pesticides were also found in the plant lagoon. At least four pesticides in the corn used by AltEn, including clothianidin and thiamethoxam, are known to be ‘detrimental to humans, birds, mammals, bees, freshwater fish’ and other living creatures, state regulators noted in an October letter to AltEn.”

Sick Dogs, Dead Bees and Birds Reported

The area’s residents are already experiencing ill effects they attribute to the pesticide-laden waste. Pet dogs have become sick after ingesting waste dumped on farm fields, and dying birds have also been reported.
Nebraska’s department of agriculture eventually told AltEn to stop spreading the waste on fields, so the company piled up more of the waste on site as well as began incinerating it or storing it offsite in “biochar” bags.13
State regulators aren’t monitoring for contamination near AltEn’s Mead plant, but researcher Judy Wu-Smart, with the University of Nebraska’s department of entomology, believes area insects are being decimated. The university has a research farm about 1 mile from the city, where every beehive has died, and the bee deaths are associated with AltEn’s usage of pesticide-treated seeds.
She also has evidence of birds and butterflies that appear to be neurologically damaged, and found residues of neonicotinoids in plants, which she traced to waterways connecting the land to AltEn. In an interview with The Guardian, she called the findings a red flag, noting, “The bees are just a bio-indicator of something seriously going wrong.”14
AltEn Given Two Months to Clean Up Waste

Children and adults living in Mead have also reported illnesses that occurred after the ethanol plant arrived, while the stench from the waste has caused people to move and businesses to close. Schoolchildren often cannot go outside because of the smell alone, and there’s a high likelihood that local air and water are now contaminated.
The Guardian’s exposé was published January 10, 2021. At the time, the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) said they had no opinion on the area’s bee deaths and did not have jurisdiction in the matter, but were reviewing AltEn’s operations and activities.
NDEE waste permits specialist Blayne Glissman also told The Guardian that AltEn officials were “hard-working people trying to make a living.”15
On January 12, 2021, News Channel Nebraska reported that NDEE cited AltEn for noncompliance of pollution rules due to waste at the plant contaminating air and water, and gave the company until March 2021 to clean up the pollution. AltEn said they’re “on schedule” and working with NDEE to do so.16 In a statement, Malia Libby, a conservation associate with Environmental America, condemned AltEn, stating they should have known better:17

“Residents of Mead, Neb., are experiencing a significant threat to their personal health and to the safety of pets, bees and wildlife in the surrounding area. And the sad reality is that this threat is both unnecessary and avoidable.

Coating corn seeds with bee-killing neonics has become common practice for seed companies, often leaving farmers with little choice but to spread these chemicals in their fields, whether the pesticides are needed or not.

And when the seeds go unused by farmers, we end up with disasters like this. AltEn should have known better. This small town in Nebraska is the latest example for why America needs to rethink how food is grown in this country.”

US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic Than It Was 25 Years Ago

From 1992 to 2014, researchers found that synthetic insecticide use shifted from mostly organophosphorus pesticides to a mix of neonicotinoids and pyrethroids. This shift, they believe, is the reason why agricultural lands are now 48 times more toxic than they were a quarter-century ago, as in 2014, neonicotinoids represented up to 99% of the land’s total toxic load.18
“Our screening analysis demonstrates an increase in pesticide toxicity loading over the past 26 years, which potentially threatens the health of honey bees and other pollinators and may contribute to declines in beneficial insect populations as well as insectivorous birds and other insect consumers,” they noted19 — concerns that have been echoed by similar studies.
One of the observed effects of neonicotinoids in bees is a weakening of the bees’ immune systems.20 Forager bees may bring pesticide-laden pollen back to the hive, where it’s consumed by all of the bees.
About six months later, their immune systems fail, and they end up contracting secondary infections from parasites, mites, viruses, fungi and bacteria. The chemicals have also been shown to trigger immunosuppression in the queen bee, possibly leading to an impaired ability to resist diseases.21
“Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants,” a study published in Nature revealed in 2015.22 Other species are also at risk. For instance, researchers found annual catches of smelt from Lake Shinji in Japan fell by 90% in the 10 years after the application of neonicotinoids to adjacent rice paddies.23,24
An exposé by The Intercept,25 which obtained lobbying documents and emails, revealed an extensive playbook used by the pesticide industry to downplay the pesticides’ harms by influencing beekeepers, regulators and academia. Meanwhile, bees and other pollinators are still in decline and the pesticide industry has gotten richer:

“The global neonic market generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018, roughly doubling over the previous decade, according to new figures provided to The Intercept from Agranova, a research firm that tracks the industry.”

Ethanol, Neonicotinoids Pose an Ecosystem-Wide Threat

Plants take up only about 5% of the neonicotinoids’ active ingredient, which leaves the rest to be widely dispersed into the environment.26 Worldwide, more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction in the next few decades.27 Researchers cited “compelling evidence” that agricultural intensification is the main driver of population declines in birds, small mammals and insects.
In order of importance, habitat loss due to land converted to intensive agriculture, as well as urbanization, are major problems, but the next most significant contributor is pollution, primarily that from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.28 Ethanol is advertised as an environmentally friendly solution, but it’s actually part of the problem because it’s driving valuable grassland to be converted into chemical-heavy corn crops.
Between 2008 and 2013, wild bees declined 23% in the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, Great Plains and the Mississippi valley, where grain production, primarily corn for biofuel, nearly doubled during the same period.29 Further, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), more than 8 million acres of grassland and wetlands have been converted to corn from 2008 to 2011.30
Overall, since the U.S. government began requiring ethanol in fuel in 2007, corn (and soy) crops have taken over more than 1.2 million acres of grassland.31 Converting more diverse grasslands into corn crops for biofuels is the opposite of what’s needed to save the environment — and creating ethanol out of excess neonicotinoid-treated seeds represents one of the worst outcomes of all.
Adding insult to injury, an investigation by the U.S. EPA even found that treating soybean seeds with neonicotinoids provides no significant financial or agricultural benefits for farmers.32 Regenerative farming, on the other hand, improves biodiversity of the soil, does not harm the environment and increases farmers’ net profits, a win-win situation for all. As Environment America’s Libby said:33

“We need to assist farmers in transitioning to healthier, sustainable agriculture practices, which can dramatically reduce the need for pesticides and remove residual chemicals from the environment.

The USDA has programs to help farmers embrace crop diversity, prairie strips, cover crops and more, but this horrible scenario in Mead reminds us that we must move faster. This can be done if Congress decides to deeply invest in sustainable farming.”

Many consumers have long known their favorite lotions and sunscreens contained parabens, or synthetic chemicals used as preservatives. But with more and more products being touted as “paraben-free,” many are now wondering, “What, exactly, are parabens, and are they dangerous?”
Parabens, which inhibit the growth of bacteria, yeast, and molds, have been used in personal-care products like shampoos, conditioners, deodorants, and sunscreens for years, allowing these products to survive for months, or years, during shipping and on store shelves.
Studies have now shown that parabens mimic the activity of the hormone estrogen, which is associated with certain forms of breast cancer.
Organic Consumers Association September 4, 2007
 

Mice lacking the insulin receptor substrate are more resistant to aging than normal mice, according to University College London researchers.

The finding further confirms the link between insulin signaling pathways and aging, and may have implications on aging in humans.

In the study, mice were engineered to lack either insulin receptor substrate IRS-1 or IRS-2, both proteins that are activated by the hormone insulin, which regulates glucose and fat metabolism. Compared with normal mice, the mice lacking IRS-1 had:

A 20 percent increase in their average lifespan (30 percent for female mice)

Better health as they aged

In contrast, mice lacking IRS-2 had shorter lives than normal mice, and developed signs of obesity and type 2 diabetes. 

Sources:

The FASEB Journal October 10, 2007

UPI.com October 23, 2007

An estrogen-like compound widely used in plastic products is thought to be causing serious reproductive disorders, according to a statement by several dozen scientists, including four from federal health agencies.The compound, bisphenol A (BPA), is one of the most-produced chemicals in the world, and almost everyone has traces of it — or more — in their bodies.After reviewing about 700 studies, the scientists concluded that people are exposed to levels of BPA in excess of those that have harmed lab animals. Among the most vulnerable are infants and fetuses, who are still developing.BPA is used to make hard plastic that’s used in numerous products including:Polycarbonate plastic baby bottles Large water-cooler containers and sports bottles Microwave-oven dishes Canned-food liners Some dental sealants for childrenThe statement appeared alongside five accompanying scientific reviews and a new study by the National Institutes of Health that found newborn animals exposed to BPA suffered from uterine damage. The damage could indicate that the chemical causes reproductive disorders in women ranging from fibroids to endometriosis to cancer.While studies have yet to be conducted to directly examine BPA’s influence on humans, past animal studies have found low doses of the chemical to be associated with early-stage prostate and *** cancers and decreased sperm count.No governmental agency worldwide has restricted the use of BPA, but a U.S. expert panel is meeting to discuss whether the chemical should be declared a human reproductive toxin, which could lead to regulatory action.The chemical industry maintains that BPA is safe, and has called the scientists’ statement “alarmist and biased.”Reproductive Toxicology July 2007Seattle Times August 3, 2007

Girls in the United States are reaching puberty at very early ages, increasing their risk of breast cancer, social problems, and emotional problems.

While the biological signs of female puberty — menstruation, breast development, and growth of pubic and underarm hair — typically occurred around 13 years of age or older just decades ago, today girls as young as 8 are increasingly showing these signs.

African-American girls are particularly vulnerable to early puberty.

Aside from the social and emotional implications, early puberty exposes girls to more estrogen, which increases their risk of breast cancer because the disease thrives on estrogen.

According to biologist Sandra Steingraber, the author of the report titled “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know,” “The data indicates that if you get your first period before age 12, your risk of breast cancer is 50 percent higher than if you get it at age 16.”

“For every year we could delay a girl‘s first menstrual period,” she says, “we could prevent thousands of breast cancers.”

Theories behind what is causing the early-puberty trend abound, but the actual causes are not known. Potential causes noted in the paper include:

Rising childhood obesity rates and inactivity
Formula-feeding of infants
Excessive TV viewing and media use
Family stress
Exposure to environmental chemicals

Early puberty is likely an “ecological disorder,” according to Steingraber, that’s being caused by a number of environmental factors.

The Breast Cancer Fund, “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know”
 
Chicago Tribune September 16, 2007

As plastic ages or is exposed to heat or stress, it can release trace amounts of some of its ingredients. Of particular concern are bisphenol-a (BPA), used to strengthen some plastics, and phthalates, used to soften others.These chemicals are used in hundreds of household items; BPA is in everything from baby bottles to can linings, while phthalates are found in children‘s toys as well as vinyl shower curtains. They enter your body through the food, water and bits of dust you consume, or are simply absorbed through your skin.BPA and phthalates are endocrine disrupters, which mimic hormones. Estrogen and other hormones in relatively tiny amounts can cause vast changes, so researchers worry that BPA and phthalates could do the same, especially in young children.To cut down on your exposure, avoid plastic bottles and toys labeled with the numbers 3 or 7, which often contain BPA or phthalates, and canned foods, especially those with acidic contents like tomatoes. You should also avoid heating plastic in microwaves.

By Dr. Mercola

Up until the 1990s, no research had ever been conducted to determine the impact of fluoride on the pineal gland — a small gland located between the two hemispheres of the brain that regulates the production of the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate the onset of puberty and helps protect the body from cell damage caused by free radicals.
It is now known — thanks to the meticulous research of Dr. Jennifer Luke from the University of Surrey in England — that the pineal gland is the primary target of fluoride accumulation within your body.
After finding that the pineal gland is a major target for fluoride accumulation in humans, Dr. Luke conducted animal experiments to determine if the accumulated fluoride could impact the functioning of the gland — particularly the gland’s regulation of melatonin.
Luke found that animals treated with fluoride had lower levels of circulating melatonin, as reflected by reduced levels of melatonin metabolites in the animals’ urine. This reduced level of circulating melatonin was accompanied — as might be expected — by an earlier onset of puberty in the fluoride-treated female animals.
U.S. girls are reaching puberty at younger ages than ever before. In the 1990s, breast development — the first sign of puberty in girls — at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist.
However, by 1999, following a 1997 study that found almost half of African Americans and 15 percent of whites had begun breast development by age 8, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society suggested changing what is viewed as “normal.”
Instead of acknowledging that girls reaching puberty at increasingly younger ages is a sign that something is wrong, some “experts” would rather just change the definition of what’s considered normal!
In reality, something is wrong, very wrong, when 5-, 6- and 8-year-old girls are starting puberty. Some studies have even found girls as young as 2 who are starting sexual development.
Not only do these children have to deal with an unfairly increased risk of breast cancer down the road, but they lose precious years of their childhood because their bodies have matured faster than their minds.

What is Causing Early Puberty?

There are likely numerous factors contributing to this phenomenon, but one is certainly environmental chemicals. Along with endocrine-disrupting chemicals (BPA, phthalates, PFOA (Teflon)) and PCBs, fluoride has also been suggested.
Fluoride has been added to the U.S. water supply for so long — and has been thoroughly hoisted upon people around the world for its supposed benefit to teeth — that hardly anyone thinks twice about it.
Well, this was not always the case. In 1944, LP Anthony, DDS editor of the Journal of the American Dental Association, said: “Fluoride is a highly toxic substance … ”
Before that, in 1936, an article in the Journal of the American Dental Association stated that fluoride at the 1 ppm (part per million) concentration is as toxic as arsenic and lead.
The Journal of the American Medical Association also stated in their September 18, 1943 issue that fluorides are general protoplasmic poisons that change the permeability of the cell membrane by certain enzymes.
And, an editorial published in the Journal of the American Dental Association, October 1, 1944, stated:
“Drinking water containing as little as 1.2 ppm fluoride will cause developmental disturbances. We cannot run the risk of producing such serious systemic disturbances. The potentialities for harm outweigh those for good.”
Others, too, have tried to spread the word about the dangers of fluoride, including Christopher Bryson, the author of The Fluoride Deception, who has recently called the widespread promotion of fluoride “scientific fraud on a grand and global scale.”
Yet, this element, or as some may call it, this caustic industrial chemical, is deliberately added to about two-thirds of U.S. public water supplies. For people living in these areas, fluoride is a part of every glass of water, every bath and shower, and every meal cooked using that water.
In the UK, meanwhile, 42 schools have decided it is a good idea to add fluoride to children’s milk in schools. And some of you may also think that the fluoride treatments offered by your dentist are a good idea.
Well, it’s time to shed this myth once and for all.

Fluoride is the Active Toxin in Rat Poisons and Cockroach Powder

Common sense would dictate, then, that this can’t be a good thing to put in your body, and your instincts would be correct.
Once inside your body, fluoride destroys your enzymes by changing their shape. You may remember that your body depends on thousands of enzymes to perform various cell reactions, and without these enzymes, we would all die. They are able to perform their reactions because they have a specific shape that allows them to work with other elements in your body, like a lock and key.
Once fluoride destroys their shape, however, your body does not recognize the enzymes, and in fact will view them as foreign invaders and attempt to attack them.
When your enzymes are damaged, it can lead to collagen breakdown, eczema, tissue damage, skin wrinkling, genetic damage, and immune suppression. It can also cause problems with your:

Immune system
Digestive system
Respiratory system
Blood circulation

Kidney function
Liver function
Brain function
Thyroid function

Studies from China have even confirmed that elevated fluoride exposure leads to reduced I.Q. in children. This is understandable when you consider that even at levels as low as 1 ppm, studies have demonstrated direct toxic effects on brain tissue, including:

Reduction in lipid content
Impaired anti-oxidant defense systems
Damage to your hippocampus
Damage to your purkinje cells
Increased uptake of aluminum
Formation of beta-amyloid plaques (the classic brain abnormality in Alzheimer”s disease)
Accumulation of fluoride in your pineal gland

This last effect is completely in correlation with the research of Dr. Jennifer Luke, which suggests that fluoride impacts your pineal gland’s regulation of melatonin, and this may contribute to the early onset of puberty.

All of These Risks, and it Doesn’t Even Help Your Teeth!

Clearly risks as serious as those above would not justify preventing a few cavities, yet, fluoride does not even do that.
Figures from the World Health Organization show the same declines in tooth decay that have been experienced in fluoridated countries since the 1960s have occurred equally in non-fluoridated countries.
In another study from 2004, pro-fluoridation dental researchers from the University of Aderlaide in South Australia were unable to demonstrate any difference in the permanent teeth between children who had lived all their lives drinking fluoridated water and those who had drunk rain or bottled water.
What does fluoride do to your teeth, then?
Well, it’s known that it interferes with the development of tooth enamel, a condition called “dental fluorosis.” Those in favor of fluoride like to say that fluorosis is a purely “cosmetic condition,” but rarely do symptoms appear for no reason.
In this case, the white spots that form on your teeth after consuming too much fluoride are likely a warning sign that other tissues are being impacted. Studies have shown, for instance, that children with severe dental fluorosis are more likely to have bone fractures.
The Environmental Working Group even reported a finding from a Harvard PhD thesis that showed boys exposed to fluoridated water when they were between the ages of 6 and 8 had a seven-fold increased risk of developing osteosarcoma, a form of frequently fatal bone cancer.
If you’re wondering how to keep your teeth healthy, remember that fluoride was never the answer in the first place. Instead, look to your diet for naturally healthy teeth. In fact, most people whose diet includes very little sugar and few processed foods have very low rates of tooth decay.
As for how to get toxic fluoride out of your drinking water, regular carbon-based filtration will NOT work. About the only way to remove this toxic chemical from your water is to use a reverse osmosis filter.

Other Hidden Sources of Fluoride

If you have any non-stick pans, the moment you start to heat them they will start to volatilize fluoride as that is the polymer that makes them “non-sticky.” The higher the heat, the more fluoride you will have in your home. So do yourself a favor and get rid of all of your non-stick pots and pans.

Pregnant women with higher blood levels of PBDEs, a common class of flame retardants, had altered thyroid hormone levels — a fact that could have implications for fetal health.
PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are organobromine compounds which are found in household items such as carpets, electronics and plastics. PBDEs can leach out into the environment and accumulate in human fat cells.
Eurekalert reports:

“Studies suggest that PBDEs can be found in the blood of up to 97 percent of U.S. residents, and at levels 20 times higher than those of people in Europe. Because of California’s flammability laws, residents in this state have some of the highest exposures to PBDEs in the world.”

In an in-depth article1 published in New York magazine January 4, 2021, Nicholson Baker reviews the history of viral gain-of-function research, and why the idea that SARS-CoV-2 might be an escaped lab creation isn’t so far-fetched after all.
He points out that while there’s “no direct evidence for an experimental mishap” (the key word here being “direct”), there’s no direct evidence that the virus arose zoonotically either.
In other words, while some scientists have pushed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 arose and evolved naturally, skipping from one animal species to another before ultimately developing the capability of infecting humans, there’s no solid scientific evidence to back this theory, and there should be, were it actually true.
Unique Features Raise Questions About SARS-CoV-2’s Origin

As noted in an August 20, 2020, article2 by Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., a former researcher with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, SARS-CoV-2 has several unique features that make it exceptionally well-adapted for human infection.
This is quite odd, considering it “came out of nowhere” and hasn’t been found in any other living creature. If the virus arose naturally, we should be able to trace its evolution back to its source. Unique features of SARS-CoV-2 include:3

A very high infection rate, thanks to it being more selective for the human ACE2 receptor than SARS-Cov-1 (the virus responsible for the 2003 SARS pandemic)4
A unique furin cleavage site not found in any closely related bat coronaviruses, which allows the virus to fuse to human cells, thereby enhancing its pathogenicity and transmissibility5,6,7,8
Certain spike protein structures that are similar to those found in the MERS-CoV virus, which allow the virus to attach using not only the ACE2 receptor but also the DPP4 receptor, like MERS-CoV. This dual receptor strategy might be responsible for its ability to infect a wide range of human tissues9

In the preprint paper “Wuhan nCoV-2019 SARS Coronaviruses Genomics Fractal Metastructures Evolution and Origins,”10 Jean-Claude Perez, Ph.D., a retired interdisciplinary researcher with the IBM European Research Center on Artificial Intelligence, claims to provide “formal proof that 2019-nCoV coronavirus is partially a synthetic genome.”
According to Perez, the presence of HIV1 retrovirus fragments is evidence of SARS-CoV-2’s artificial nature. I’ve also written many other articles detailing evidence suggesting SARS-CoV-2 might be a laboratory creation.
Gain-of-Function Research Is a Pandemic Waiting to Happen

One of the reasons scientists would want to promote the zoonotic theory is because their livelihoods and careers are at stake. If it turns out that SARS-CoV-2 is an escaped lab creation, the logical conclusion would be that we need to severely restrict or stop gain-of-function research on pathogens altogether.

“It has been a full year … and, surprisingly, no public investigation has taken place,” Baker writes.11 “I think it’s worth offering some historical context for our yearlong medical nightmare.

We need to hear from the people who for years have contended that certain types of virus experimentation might lead to a disastrous pandemic like this one.

And we need to stop hunting for new exotic diseases in the wild, shipping them back to laboratories, and hot-wiring their genomes to prove how dangerous to human life they might become.”

As the name implies, gain-of-function research is aimed at creating more virulent strains of pathogens by giving them new functionalities. The justification for this hazardous work is that viruses mutate naturally, and we need to be prepared for the kinds of mutations that might arise.
The problem with this is that we’ve not been prepared for any of the lethal pandemics that have arisen, despite investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this kind of research. Apparently, it hasn’t given us the head start it’s supposed to give us, so why continue?
Even more disturbingly, there’s evidence that this research has caused a number of lethal outbreaks through the years. Many believe it’s only a matter of time before scientists cook up something truly horrific — something that would never have arisen in nature — that might threaten humanity’s survival were it to get out. As noted in Baker’s article:12

“The intentional creation of new microbes that combine virulence with heightened transmissibility ‘poses extraordinary risks to the public,’ wrote infectious-disease experts Marc Lipsitch and Thomas Inglesby in 2014. ‘A rigorous and transparent risk-assessment process for this work has not yet been established.’ That’s still true today.

In 2012, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,13 Lynn Klotz warned that there was an 80 percent chance, given how many laboratories were then handling virulent viro-varietals, that a leak of a potential pandemic pathogen would occur sometime in the next 12 years.”

Operation Baseless

In his article,14 Baker highlights a 1950s Pentagon program called Project Baseless, the goal of which was to achieve “an Air Force-wide combat capability in biological and chemical warfare at the earliest possible date.”
According to Baker, who has published an entire book on this topic, the U.S. government has spent “a vast treasure” on the “amplification and aerial delivery of diseases” over the past 70 years.
Serial Passaging Mimics Natural Evolution

One technique that allows scientists to make a pathogen more virulent is called “serial passaging.” By passing the virus through a series of cells from different animals, the virus progressively adapts to the new host cell, just as it would in nature (although there’s no guarantee that such transmission and adaptation would actually occur in nature). As described by Baker:15

“Take, for instance, this paper from 1995: ‘High Recombination and Mutation Rates in Mouse Hepatitis Viruses Suggest That Coronaviruses May Be Potentially Important Emerging Viruses’ … written by Dr. Ralph Baric and his bench scientist, Boyd Yount, at the University of North Carolina.

Baric … described in this early paper how his lab was able to train a coronavirus, MHV, which causes hepatitis in mice, to jump species, so that it could reliably infect BHK (baby-hamster kidney) cell cultures.

They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells.

At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn’t do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum.

But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. A scourge of mice was transformed into a scourge of hamsters …
A few years later, in a further round of ‘interspecies transfer’ experimentation, Baric’s scientists introduced their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle cells.

Then, in 2002, they announced something even more impressive: They’d found a way to create a full-length infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their ‘infectious construct’ replicated itself just like the real thing, they wrote.16
Not only that, but they’d figured out how to perform their assembly seamlessly, without any signs of human handiwork. Nobody would know if the virus had been fabricated in a laboratory or grown in nature. Baric called this the ‘no-see’m method,’ and he asserted that it had ‘broad and largely unappreciated molecular biology applications.'”

In 2006, Baric and Yount were granted a patent for this “no-see’m method” of cloning the deadly human SARS virus, which had been responsible for the SARS outbreak four years earlier. Interestingly, Baric started collaborating with another coronavirus expert in 2015 — a female scientist named Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.17
In his book “China COVID-19: The Chimera That Changed the World,”18 professor Giuseppe Tritto — president of the World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technology, founded under UNESCO, and an internationally recognized expert in bio and nanotechnology — accuses Shi of producing a SARS-like virus with increased pathogenicity by inserting a segment of the HIV virus into a horseshoe bat coronavirus.19
Thousands of Safety Breaches Have Occurred

As noted by Baker,20 “By 1960, hundreds of American scientists and technicians had been hospitalized, victims of the diseases they were trying to weaponize.” Since then, many more safety breaches have occurred.
Between 2008 and 2012 alone, more than 1,100 lab incidents involving highly infectious germs were reported to federal regulators,21 but the details are shrouded in secrecy.
According to a 2014 article in USA Today,22 “More than half these incidents were serious enough that lab workers received medical evaluations or treatment.” In his article, Baker lists several lethal incidents, including the following:23

In 1951, a Camp Detrick, Maryland, microbiologist developed a fever and died after trying to perfect the “foaming process of high-volume production” of anthrax

In 1964, veterinary worker Albert Nickel died after being bitten by a lab animal infected with the Machupo virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever
A 1977 global pandemic of influenza was traced back to a sample collected in 1950, which had been “preserved in a laboratory freezer” since then
In 1978, a medical photographer died after contracting a hybrid strain of smallpox at a lab in Birmingham, England
In 2007, live specimens of foot-and-mouth disease ended up leaking out of a faulty drainpipe at the Institute for Animal Health in Surrey, England

Only a Matter of Time Before Something Truly Nasty Gets Out
Other incidents are even more serious. For example, in 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense discovered that a germ-warfare testing center in Utah had sent out nearly 200 shipments of live anthrax to labs around the world, including the U.S., Australia, Germany, Japan and South Korea. Remarkably, this had been going on for the past 12 years!
High-containment laboratories have a whispered history of near misses … Things can go wrong in a hundred different ways. ~ Nicholson Baker
As recently as 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shut down labs at Fort Detrick after “breaches of containment” were discovered.

“High-containment laboratories have a whispered history of near misses,” Baker writes.24 “Scientists are people, and people have clumsy moments and poke themselves and get bitten by the enraged animals they are trying to nasally inoculate.

Machines can create invisible aerosols, and cell solutions can become contaminated. Waste systems don’t always work properly. Things can go wrong in a hundred different ways …
I asked Jonathan A. King, a molecular biologist and biosafety advocate from MIT, whether he’d thought lab accident when he first heard about the epidemic. ‘Absolutely, absolutely,’ King answered. Other scientists he knew were concerned as well.

But scientists, he said, in general were cautious about speaking out. There were ‘very intense, very subtle pressures’ on them not to push on issues of laboratory biohazards.

Collecting lots of bat viruses, and passaging those viruses repeatedly through cell cultures, and making bat-human viral hybrids, King believes, ‘generates new threats and desperately needs to be reined in.'”

Baker quotes concerns from several other scientists as well, including Philip Murphy, chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology at the NIH; Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of endocrinology at Flinders University College of Medicine in Adelaide, Australia; and Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University.
Ebright, in particular, said he’d “been concerned for some years” about the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s efforts to create hybrid SARS-related bat coronaviruses “with enhanced human infectivity.” Ebright told Baker that “In this context, the news of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan *screamed* lab release.”
US Government Suspects Lab Leak

A number of government officials have also given credence to the lab-origin theory, including U.S. deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, who in January 2021 stated that the lab-escape theory is the most credible, based on a growing body of evidence.
According to a January 2, 2021, report by the Daily Mail,25 “during a Zoom conference with [British] MPs on China.” The article further states that:

“Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory Party leader who attended the meeting, said Mr. Pottinger’s comments represented a ‘stiffening’ of the U.S. position on the theory that the virus came from a leak at the laboratory, amid reports that the Americans are talking to a whistleblower from the Wuhan institute.
‘I was told the U.S. have an ex-scientist from the laboratory in America at the moment,’ he said. ‘That was what I heard a few weeks ago. I was led to believe this is how they have been able to stiffen up their position on how this outbreak originated.’ He added that Beijing’s refusal to allow journalists to visit the laboratory only served to increase suspicion that it was ‘ground zero’ for the pandemic.”

Independent Investigation Required
As noted by journalist Ian Birrell in another January 3, 2021 article26 in the Daily Mail, “The world must investigate all the mounting evidence COVID leaked from a Wuhan lab.”
At present, there are two such investigations underway — one by the World Health Organization27 and another by The Lancet’s COVID-19 commission28 — but both are grossly tainted by conflicts of interest. EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak is part of both of these investigations, despite being at the epicenter of the whole affair.
As noted in a December 16, 2020, Independent Science News article written by journalist Sam Husseini:29

When SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in Wuhan, China, the EcoHealth Alliance was providing funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to collect and study novel bat coronaviruses.
Daszak has been the primary expert chosen by the mainstream media to explain the origin of the pandemic.
Daszak has openly and repeatedly dismissed the possibility of the pandemic being the result of a lab leak.30

What’s more, in November 2020, U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), an investigative public health nonprofit group, reported31,32 that emails obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests prove Daszak played a central role in the plot to obscure the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 by issuing a scientific statement in The Lancet condemning such inquiries as “conspiracy theory.”
Five other members of The Lancet Commission also signed the February 18, 2020, Lancet statement,33 which puts their credibility in question as well.
Daszak has every reason to make sure SARS-CoV-2 origin ends up being declared natural. It would be naïve to believe that safeguarding the continuation of dangerous gain-of-function research wouldn’t be a powerful motivator to preserve the zoonotic origin narrative.
Inconsistencies in the Data Raise Concerns

Professor Roger Pielke Jr., who studies and writes “about the messy and complicated places where science meets politics,”34 has also highlighted the need for independent investigations by the scientific community. In a November 19, 2020, blog post, Pielke wrote:35

“We should not let the hot politics of COVID-19 distract from the need for a cool assessment of where it came from, and corresponding lessons for the future.
A first priority for the research community, and in particular leading academic journals, is to ensure that relevant data is made available for independent analysis and that the narratives told and claims made by researchers are consistent across the scientific literature.

In the case of COVID-19, there is ample reason to suggest that some narratives and claims have been misleading or incomplete, and that data have been selectively shared, or not at all, or even gone missing.”

He goes on to review examples of inconsistencies discovered in both the timeline and characterization of data presented by Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists, who were among the first to publish data on the virus back in February 2020. One of those papers, published in the journal Nature, suggested SARS-CoV-2 was related to previously unsequenced bat coronaviruses.
However, shortly after, Indian researchers hypothesized that the bat virus described in that Nature paper had actually been collected in 2013, after several miners fell ill from a disease suspiciously similar to COVID-19.

“Earlier this week Nature published a clarifying addendum36 to the original WIV article. That addendum admitted that, yes indeed, the bat coronavirus was collected in 2013 from a cave after a group of miners had fallen ill due to a SARS-like disease.

Further, that 2013 bat coronavirus had been discussed in a 2016 paper37 (which, oddly, was uncited in their Nature paper). The name of the virus sample had been changed since 2016, and interestingly, was one of nine similar coronaviruses that had been collected at the time, but never disclosed, apparently until the Nature Addendum …
All of this is unusual and is troubling. The failure to disclose what are obviously key details is sloppy, under the most charitable interpretation, and less generously, lends itself to interpretations of being misleading or evasive …
The issues associated with the WIV Nature paper provide just a few from a larger set of examples of research integrity issues38 that appear to surround the WIV COVID-19 research. For instance, some researchers have alleged that relevant virus databases once online at WIV are no longer available39,40 …

While understanding the origins of COVID-19 is important to public health and international diplomacy, setting the research record straight is a matter of scientific integrity.”

Complicating matters, though, is the fact that China’s political system is an authoritarian one. There have been plenty of rumors of Chinese scientists being threatened by the government for speaking out about matters that might damage the nation or cause it to lose face, so while China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has pledged China will help the WHO’s investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV-2 with an “open, transparent and responsible spirit,”41 there’s reason to doubt the genuineness of that statement.
Be that as it may, we must not give up the quest to determine its origin, because, as mentioned, if it turns out that the virus was created, and did escape — whether intentionally or not — we need to ensure that such an event never happens again. And that may mean shutting down and banning gain-of-function research altogether. 

At a virtual press conference held by the World Health Organization December 28, 2020, WHO officials warned there is no guarantee that COVID-19 vaccines will prevent people from being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and transmitting it to other people.1
In a New Year’s Day interview with Newsweek, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), reinforced the WHO’s admission that health officials do not know if COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection or if people can spread the virus to others after getting vaccinated.2
According to U.S. and WHO health officials, vaccinated persons still need to mask and social distance because they could be able to spread the new coronavirus to others without knowing it.3,4
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in December 2020 for Pfizer/BioNTech5 and Moderna6 to release their experimental mRNA vaccines for use in the U.S., the companies only provided evidence from clinical trials to demonstrate that, compared to unvaccinated trial participants, their vaccines prevented more mild to severe COVID-19 disease symptoms in vaccinated participants.
The companies did not investigate whether the vaccines prevent people from becoming asymptomatically infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or transmitting it to other people.7,8
COVID-19 Vaccines Designed to Prevent Severe Disease
According to WHO officials, while it appears the vaccines can prevent clinically symptomatic COVID-19 clinical disease, there is no clear evidence COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing asymptomatic infection and transmission. During the press conference, WHO chief scientist and pediatrician Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said:9

“We continue to wait for more results from the vaccine trials to really understand whether the vaccines, apart from preventing symptomatic disease and severe disease and deaths, whether they’re also going to reduce infection or prevent people from getting infected with the virus, then from passing it on or transmitting it to other people.

I don’t believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on.”

Swaminathan said the COVID-19 vaccine was designed to first prevent symptomatic disease, severe disease and deaths. Dr. Mark Ryan, MPH, who is executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, agreed with Swaminathan and added:10

“So the first primary objective is to decrease the impact the disease is having on people’s lives and, therefore, that will be a major step forward in bringing the world back to some kind of normal.

The second phase is then looking at how will this vaccine affect transmission. We just don’t know enough yet about length of protection and other things to be absolutely able to predict that, but we should be able to get good control of the virus.”

SARS-CoV-2 Eradication Via Mass Vaccination Is a ‘Moonshot’
Ryan also pointed out that the decision by WHO to try to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 virus “requires a much higher degree of efficiency and effectiveness in the vaccination program and the other control measures” and that it is likely the new coronavirus will “become another endemic virus, a virus that will remain somewhat of a threat but a very low level threat in the context of an effective vaccination program.”
Ryan cautioned that, like with measles and polio, there is no guarantee of eliminating the SARS-CoV-2 virus through mass vaccination programs. He said:11

“The existence of a vaccine even at high efficacy is no guarantee of eliminating or eradicating an infectious disease. That’s a very high bar for us to be able to get over. First, we have to focus on saving lives, getting good control of this epidemic, and then we will deal with the moonshot of potentially being able to eliminate or eradicate this virus.”

Azar Says Get Vaccinated but Still Mask Up
In a December 22, 2020, interview, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News that the current “consensus” among health officials is that people who get two doses of COVID-19 vaccine should still mask up and practice social distancing. He said:12

“We’re still studying some fundamental scientific questions though, such as, once you’ve been vaccinated, do you still need to wear a mask to protect others, could you still be carrying the virus even though you’re protected from it …

If you’re getting vaccinated right now, still social distance, still wear a mask, but all these [recommendations] have to be data and science-driven, so we’re working to generate the data there so that as we go forward, we’ll be able to advise people on a foundation of data.”

COVID-19 Vaccine Passports and Mandates May Be Coming
In an interview on CNN in early April 2020 when most states were in some form of a coronavirus lockdown, Fauci told Alyson Camerota, “It’s very likely that there are a large number of people out there that have been infected, have been asymptomatic, and did not know they were infected.”13
Eight months later, on New Year’s Day 2021, Fauci told Newsweek that in his role as the new administration’s chief medical adviser, there is a possibility the federal government will eventually introduce “COVID-19 vaccine passports” and that some city, county or state governments and businesses will make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory, including in schools.14
“Everything will be on the table,” Fauci declared. A week earlier, Fauci told The New York Times that between 70% and 90% of the U.S. population would need to get COVID-19 vaccinations in order for the country to reach vaccine-acquired herd immunity. He explained why he has continued to shift the “herd immunity” goal post over the past year:15

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85 … We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

Even as Fauci discussed vaccine passports and mandates in Newsweek, he admitted that proving that COVID-19 vaccines do more than prevent clinical disease but also block infection and transmission has been elusive. He emphasized that persons who get vaccinated still must wear masks:16

“We do not know if the vaccines that prevent clinical disease also prevent infection. They very well might, but we have not proven that yet … That’s the reason I keep saying that even though you get vaccinated, we should not eliminate, at all, public health measures like wearing masks because we don’t know yet what the effect [of the vaccine] is on transmissibility.”

Fauci added, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
Immunity Passports: Suggested Soon After the Pandemic Began
Government health officials in Israel are getting ready to issue a COVID-19 “green passport” to citizens who have received two COVID-19 shots, which will exempt them from travel restrictions and testing for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus or being required to quarantine after exposure to an infected person.17
Technology companies have been working on creating a digital certificate, which contains personal medical information giving evidence that an individual has been vaccinated and can be used as a screening tool by employers, businesses and owners or operators of services and public venues, such as airlines, theme parks, concert halls, hotels and other places where people gather in groups with other people.18,19,20,21
Immediately after the coronavirus pandemic was declared by the WHO last winter, Silicon Valley businessman Bill Gates began talking about the need for issuing digital certificates proving immunity to the virus and, once a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, proof of vaccination.
In a comment posted on Reddit in March 2020, Gates said, “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”22
That same month in a TED Talk, Gates explained how lockdowns and resulting “economic pain” will prevent people from getting naturally acquired immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and that immunity “certificates” will eventually be required. Gates said:23

“Now we don’t want to have a lot of recovered people, you know. To be clear, we’re trying through the shutdown in the United States, to not get to one percent of the population infected. We’re well below that today, but with exponentiation you could get past that three million. I believe we will be able to avoid that with having this economic pain.

Eventually, what we’ll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person, because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around.”

In an April 9, 2020, interview on National Public Radio, Gates returned to the message that some “social distancing” measures have to stay in place “until we get a vaccine that almost everybody’s had.” He said:24

“What I’m saying, what Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying, what some other experts are saying, there’s a great deal of consistency. We’re not sure yet which activities should be resumed, because until we get a vaccine that almost everybody’s had, the risk of a rebound will be there.”

As of January 3, 2021, the CDC had recorded over 20 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 350,000 related deaths.25
Lasting Immunity After Mild, Asymptomatic COVID-19 Infection
A study was published December 24, 2020, in Science Immunology by scientists from Queen Mary, University of London, in which they analyzed antibody and T cell responses in 136 London health care workers and reported that there was evidence of protective immunity up to four months after mild or asymptomatic COVID-19.26
A press release issued by the university stated that mild or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections represent the largest infected group and noted that researchers found T cell responses tended to be higher in those with the classic, defining symptoms of COVID-19, while asymptomatic infection resulted in a weaker T cell immunity than symptomatic infection, but equivalent neutralizing antibody responses.27 One of the researchers commented:28

“Our study of SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthcare workers from London hospitals reveals that four months after infection, around 90 percent of individuals have antibodies to block the virus. Even more encouragingly, in 66 percent of healthcare workers we see levels of these protective antibodies are high and that this robust antibody response is complemented by T cells which we see reacting to various parts of the virus.

This is good news. It means that if you have been infected there is a good chance that you will have developed antibodies and T cells that may provide some protection if you encounter the virus again.”