You have commented 358 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Science & Technology
Playing With Fire: A Lab-Made Frankenstein COVID-19 Virus By Boston University
2022-10-31
[ZERO] The creation of a new recombinant COVID-19 virus at Boston University, viewed as a "Frankenstein virus" by many, has raised a public uproar. This is not merely a risky gain-of-function experiment on "enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs)", it is a creation of an enhanced pandemic pathogen. NO "potential" here.

What is the rationale for this statement? What is the chimeric virus that we talk about here?

A team of researchers at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories posted a paper on October 14, 2022, on BioRxiv, a preprint server for biology, revealing that they had created a lab-made COVID-19 chimeric virus with reverse genetics technology.

Specifically, they’ve swapped the S gene of the spike protein in the original SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain with the corresponding S gene from the Omicron variant. So, the lab-made Chimeric virus (Wuhan-Omi-S chimeric virus) has all the genes from the Wuhan strain, which is much more pathogenic than the Omicron strain, except the S gene, which is from the highly transmissible yet relatively mildly pathogenic Omicron strain.
Posted by:Besoeker

#6  Dr. Fauci should sue for Patent Infringement.
Posted by: Airandee   2022-10-31 20:03  

#5  THIS is our next "monkey pox", they always lets everyone know it exists before it mysteriously "escapes" from the lab, is it even real or just a media figment of the imagination, doesnt matter, all they have to do is let the news cycle pick it up and voila, we have the next greatest imperative to "VACCINATE EVERYONE "THIS TIME"
Posted by: 746   2022-10-31 13:15  

#4  Third tier university looking for Saudi funding
Posted by: Regular joe   2022-10-31 11:31  

#3  Great (sarc)! All we need is a bunch of left-wing nuts doing gain-of-function research with viruses in one of our academic institutions.
Posted by: JohnQC   2022-10-31 11:15  

#2  I thought AOC was the worst thing BU would ever unleash on our society. It looks like that was a challenge their biology department took up in spades.
Posted by: Super Hose   2022-10-31 11:00  

#1  The BU researchers adamantly claim this is not "gain-of-function" research. This story is so old it has already gone down the MSM memory hole.
Posted by: Gromble Dribble4342   2022-10-31 10:54  

00:00