DEFUSE proposal

Extracted Attributes

DRASTIC

DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) is a loose collection of internet activists assembled to investigate the origins of COVID-19, in particular the lab leak theory. Composed of about 30 core members, and primarily organized through the social media website Twitter, DRASTIC was formed in February 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. DRASTIC members called for a "full and unrestricted investigation" into the origins of COVID-19, conducted independently of the World Health Organization; most scientists thought that COVID-19 likely had a natural origin, and some considered that a potential lab leak was worth investigating. Many of DRASTIC's members use pseudonyms, while identified members have backgrounds including mycology, neuroscience, and data science.

Web Search Results

• New Documents Bolster Lab-Leak Hypothesis | City Journal

  The DEFUSE project, first leaked in 2021, was submitted in 2018 but turned down by DARPA. That doesn’t mean that the experiments it describes were not performed. It’s common practice to strengthen a grant application by doing much of the proposed work beforehand. Or the researchers may have found funds elsewhere. The DEFUSE proposal was authored by Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance in New York, with partners including Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. The grant proposed to “introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites” into SARS-related viruses, a procedure that could have led to the creation of SARS2, with its distinctive furin cleavage site, depending on the starting virus used for the manipulation. [...] Sign up for our free newsletter today. The documents unearthed by U.S. Right to Know, and analyzed by its reporter Emily Kopp, include drafts and planning materials for the already-known DEFUSE proposal, an application to DARPA, a Pentagon research agency, for a $14 million grant to enhance SARS-like bat viruses. The new recipe is in striking accord with a theoretical paper published in 2022 that predicted the SARS2 virus had been generated in exactly this way. Three researchers—Valentin Bruttel, Alex Washburne, and Antonius VanDongen—noted that the virus could be cut into six sections if treated with a pair of agents known as restriction enzymes and so had probably been synthesized and assembled in this way. [...] SARS2 possesses a furin cleavage site, found in none of the other 871 known members of its viral family, so it cannot have gained such a site through the ordinary evolutionary swaps of genetic material within a family. The DEFUSE proposal called for inserting one. As is now known, the DEFUSE procedure was to assemble the viral genome from six DNA sections, which would account for the even spacing of the restriction enzyme recognition sites in SARS2. Despite intensive search, no precursors for SARS2 have been found in the natural world. Given the 2018 date of the DEFUSE proposal, the researchers in Wuhan could have synthesized the virus by 2019, accounting perfectly for the otherwise unexplained timing of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as its place of origin. It all fits.

• Rejection of DEFUSE Project Proposal

  Rejection Letter - Findings p. 1/2 REJECTION OF DEFUSE PROJECT PROPOSAL Proposal Title: DEFUSE - Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses (2018) Proposal Identifier: HR001118S0017-PREEMPT-FP-019 Amounts Requested by EcoHealth Alliance: Phase I $8,411,546 Phase II $5,797,699 Total: $14,209,245 RESULT The DEFUSE proposed project by EHA was rejected by DARPA, although “if funding became available”, certain components of particular interest could have gone ahead, subject to a clear contractual Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) risk mitigation plan that ‘includes a responsible communications plan’. REASONS FOR REJECTION The Biological Technologies Office of DARPA reviewed the EcoHealth Alliance DEFUSE proposal and the Evaluation Reports and decided it was “selectable”. In doing so, two [...] control bat cave sites in Yunnan, China (PARC, EHA, WIV). 9. The proposal does not address concerns about these vaccines not being able to protect against the wide variety of coronaviruses in bat caves which are constantly evolving, due to insufficient epitope coverage. --- DRASTIC independently assesses that the tone of the proposal (see for instance the ‘our cave complex’) and the deep suggested involvement of some of the WIV parties (Shi Zheng Li employed half-time for 3 years - paid via the grant - and invited to DARPA headquarters at Arlington), may not have helped either - especially in the absence of any DURC risk mitigation program. It is clear that the proposed DEFUSE project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk by failing to consider the following issues: [...] Technologies Office did not recommend it be funded at that time because significant weaknesses were identified: Rejection Letter - Findings p. 2/2 1. The proposal is considered to potentially involve GoF/DURC research because they propose to synthesize spike glycoproteins which bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSr-CoV backbones to assess whether they can cause SARS-like disease. 2. However the proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research. 3. Nor does the proposal mention or assess Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) issues, and thus fails to present a DURC risk mitigation plan. 4. The proposal hardly addresses or discusses ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI). 5. The proposal fails to discuss problems with the proposed

• Dr. Paul Sends Letters to Fifteen Federal Agencies After Discovering Their Knowledge of Risky DEFUSE Project - Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

  WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent letters to several agencies requesting additional information on their knowledge and involvement regarding the DEFUSE project, a 2018 grant proposal led by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The DEFUSE project was submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the PREventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) program and proposed to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would have been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus. Recently, Dr. Paul obtained documents indicating at least fifteen agencies participated in a DARPA hosted “PREEMPT Proposers [...] agencies participated in a DARPA hosted “PREEMPT Proposers Day” where potential applicants presented proposals to agency representatives. During this event Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance pitched the DEFUSE project which sought federal funds to “manipulate known viruses with spike proteins of novel viral strains.” The letter also outlines that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Rocky Laboratory was listed as a partner in the DEFUSE proposal alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. [...] Despite at least fifteen federal agencies having knowledge of the DEFUSE project in 2018, its existence was not revealed to the public until 2021 and the involvement of NIH Rocky Mountain Lab in the initial proposal has never been previously disclosed. Dr. Paul expressed that the failure of these agencies to disclose their awareness of the risky research proposed in the DEFUSE project raises serious concerns. As a result, Dr. Paul requested the fifteen federal agencies to provide all documents, records, and communications related to the PREEMPT Proposers Day and DEFUSE project. You can read each letter Dr. Paul sent below and his newest op-ed for Fox News HERE.

• Controversial coronavirus research may have continued after NIH pulled funding

  The grant was suspended about nine months after it was renewed. A subaward to the WIV was terminated in August 2022 after the WIV did not provide lab notebooks and data files of the research they conducted. DEFUSE The contrast between Daszak’s email and public statements about unfunded work raises questions about his statements on a second controversial EcoHealth grant proposal that had the potential to lead to the existence of SARS-CoV-2. This second proposal, called DEFUSE, was never funded. It was submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and proposed adding something called a cleavage site to the spike proteins of SARS-related coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 has a furin cleavage site in its spike protein, but no other viruses closely related to it have this site. [...] “In the molecular life sciences, it is the norm to begin, and often make substantial progress on, new lines of research before seeking and obtaining funding for the research,” said Ebright. “It would be unusual for a research group with multiple current lines of funding not to have started a new line of research before obtaining funding for it, and it would be almost unheard of for a group with multiple current lines of support not to proceed with a new line of research simply because an application for an additional line of funding application was not approved.” The DEFUSE proposal does state that EcoHealth Alliance had their own “core EHA funds” that could be used to supplement grants, though they only seemed to be used to support Daszak’s salary in that proposal. [...] The WIV was a partner on the proposal. Though DEFUSE was rejected, similarities between the proposed research and SARS-CoV-2 generated speculation on whether any of the planned work had been carried out. When asked, Daszak responded, “…we would not be doing that research before we submit the proposal. That’s not how it works.” According to Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, investigators do often perform research before submitting their grant proposals.

• Project DEFUSE Related Documents | Zenodo

  Zenodo home # Project DEFUSE Related Documents ### Authors/Creators ORCID icon ## Description This publication contains documents related to Project DEFUSE, a grant proposal which many people believe was the beginning of the research that lead to the creation of SARS-CoV-2 from a bat virus collected in Southern China or Laos that underwent gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These are not original to the author but where available the original source is acknowledged. The purpose of publishing them here is to be sure they are preserved for history and remain searchable via the DOI system. ## Files ### DARPA Letter of Rejection of the DEFUSE Proposal.pdf ### Files (97.8 MB) [...] | Name | Size | Download all | --- | DARPA Letter of Rejection of the DEFUSE Proposal.pdf md5:771bcc4e502191610862a620ca698c5c | 385.1 kB | Preview Download | | Daszak acknowledges authorization for gain-of-function research during the moratorium.pdf md5:76212b4dc9015ebdd9be62e743bedc30 | 166.7 kB | Preview Download | | DEFUSE letter.pdf md5:2a6783d435f9bf261c5816ced8820ed4 | 664.4 kB | Preview Download | | DRASTIC Research Analysis of the DEFUSE Grant.pdf md5:af5df97d8c0ae3c2dca066294dfb1481 | 2.0 MB | Preview Download | | Project DEFUSE Grant draft version with marginal comments.pdf md5:d794f3117e0dbe6444746dc4d4c51606 | 75.3 MB | Preview Download | | Project DEFUSE Grant Proposal.pdf md5:e8e82d4a9cd1e11013412b91905a8b07 | 19.0 MB | Preview Download | [...] | WIV Budget for DEFUSE Project with No See 'Em Technique reagents.pdf md5:4701c8732b6a28418fa97c5460644125 | 287.5 kB | Preview Download |