Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
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An American scientist recently testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that his research provides evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted synthetic biology research of the deadly Nipah virus.
“The Nipah virus is a smaller virus than SARS2 [virus causing COVID-19] and is much less transmissible. But it is one of the deadliest viruses, with a greater-than-60 percent lethality. This is 60-times deadlier than SARS2,” Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist, told a Senate subcommittee at a hearing on Aug. 3.
Quay, who was previously on the faculty of Stanford University’s School of Medicine for about a decade, further said the work on Nipah at the Wuhan lab was not conducted at biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facilities, which have the highest level of biosafety, but rather at BSL-2 or -3 facilities with lower safety protocols.
“This is the most dangerous research I have ever encountered,” he said.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Quay said international agreements forbid synthetic biology on certain lethal viruses such as Nipah and Ebloa. Synthetic biology involves creating or redesigning biological entities and systems. An example of synthetic biology is gain-of-function (GoF) research, which involves increasing the lethal level or the transmissibility of pathogens.
Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg shipped samples of Nipah and Ebola viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in March 2019 after receiving a request from the Chinese lab. The shipment was arranged by Chinese-born scientist Xiangguo Qiu who worked at the NML at the time, with permission from her superiors. Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were the subjects of an RCMP raid at the lab in July 2019 and were later fired for undisclosed reasons.
Quay said his research was based on examining the information from early COVID-19 patients that China had uploaded to international databases and finding “20 unexpected contaminants” not expected to be found in human specimens, including the Nipah virus and other materials such as honeysuckle genes. He said these materials likely were contained in the specimens due to cross-contamination from other research at the WIV.
Quay said that except for the Nipah virus, the other 19 items that he and his collaborators found that “shouldn’t be in a human” were published in scientific papers by the WIV, with the institute explaining, for example, the work they were doing with honeysuckle genes or horse viruses.
“So 19 of our findings were validated that we were accurately testing what had been going on in the laboratory the previous two years. But one thing they didn’t publish on was this Nipah virus work. There’s no publication on that,” he said.
Quay said the strain of the Nipah virus they found wasn’t the same as the strain that Canada sent to the WIV.
Joe Wang, Ph.D, who formerly spearheaded a vaccine development program for SARS in Canada with one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, says it is concerning for Canada to send virus samples to a lab engaging in such research.
“At the very least, the WIV could be using the samples Canada sent for comparative purposes with the synthetic biology research on the other Nipah strain,” said Wang, who is now president of NTD Television Canada, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times in Canada.
Bernard Massie, Ph.D., a virology researcher who has retired from the National Research Council of Canada as an acting director general, says he would “think twice” before sending deadly virus samples to the WIV. He adds that with today’s technology, it’s also practical for labs to construct their own virus sequences but that takes more effort.
“It’s certainly much faster to get a viral isolate than to build it every time. It’s more convenient,” he said in an interview.
The Epoch Times contacted the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which is in charge of the NML, but didn’t hear back by publication time.
Internal NML documents released by Parliament show that when an NML manager asked why the lab was being asked by the WIV for virus samples, a staff member said historically it’s been easier to get material from the NML compared to U.S. labs, and that nearby labs don’t have the ability to ship such samples.
During a parliamentary committee meeting in March 2021, MPs challenged the NML’s senior management on why the lab allowed the shipment of Nipah and Ebola viruses to the WIV.
NML’s acting scientific director general, Guillaume Poliquin, told MPs that the lab only sent the samples to the WIV after receiving assurance that no GoF research would take place.
Conservative MP John Williamson said in response that the word of a state-run Chinese lab can’t be trusted, as the Chinese regime “has a history of theft and lies.”
NML
Before she was ousted from the NML, Qiu travelled several times to the WIV, helping train personnel at the lab on level 4 biosafety.
Qiu also collaborated and published papers with Chinese military researchers, including People’s Liberation Army Maj. Gen. Chen Wei.
Qiu and her husband Cheng, along with a group of Chinese students, were escorted from the NML in July 2019 amid a police investigation. The two were formally fired form the lab in January 2021.
The federal government has refused to provide details of why Qiu and Cheng were fired, citing privacy and national security concerns. This has been challenged by opposition parties, with MPs in the House of Commons issuing an order in the previous Parliament requiring the government to disclose the information.
The government took the Speaker of the House to court seeking to withhold the documents, and then later dropped the court case once an election was called on Aug. 15 and Parliament was dissolved.
Cathy He contributed to this report.
