If you are advocating for lockdowns, you are complicit in tearing families apart. You are complicit in inflicting untold suffering on millions of people around the world. You are complicit in casting the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies into even further grinding poverty. You are complicit in murder.
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WUHAN, May 5, 2020 -- The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was shut on January 1, 2020 by Chinese authorities. The common narrative told to us by the WHO, who got their information from Chinese authorities, is that the market was “ground zero”, or origin, of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The story has been told that the virus jumped from bats to humans, with the “patient zero” being identified as a shrimp vendor in that wet market. Chinese scholars saw otherwise. Here's a Q&A, with answers based on available, published papers: Q: What triggered Dr Wain-Hobson's warning? Dr Wain-Hobson gave a stark warning: “If transposable to humans, this would constitute a novel virus with a case fatality rate ~30 greater than that of Spanish flu.” "The controversial experiments confer aerosol transmission on avian influenza virus strains that can infect humans, but which are not naturally transmitted between humans. Some of the newer strains are clearly highly pathogenic for man.
"It will be shown here that the benefits of the work are erroneous and overstated while the risk of an accident is finite, if small. The consequence of any accident would be anywhere from a handful of infections to a catastrophic pandemic." Q: Who funded those GOF studies? US and European tax-payers, among others, as well as China, among others. Dr Wain-Hobson decried this fact: "Despite US and EU government funding, no risk-benefit analysis has been published, which again is surprising. This research can be duplicated readily in many labs and requires little high tech. It falls under the definition of DURC without the slightest shadow of a doubt and constitutes the most important challenge facing contemporary biology." Dr. Wain-Hobson decried the fact that "there has (only) been a single open international meeting in this period, which is surprising given that openness and discussion are essential to good science." Q: Did anyone listen to Dr Wain-Hobson's warning? Sort of. In 2014 the administration of US President Barack Obama called for a “pause” on funding (and relevant research with existing US Government funding) of GOF experiments involving influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses in particular. With this pause, the US Government also launched a “deliberative process” regarding risks and benefits of GOF research to inform future funding decisions. It tasked the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to make recommendations to the US Government on this matter. The ban was lifted on December 19 2017, according to Science. Q: What is the risk of directly infecting humans with a chimera virus? The same warning, authored by Felix Rey, Olivier Schwartz, Simon Wain-Hobson was also published by the journal Science in October 2013. They said the risks were "unknown". Q: Is SARS-CoV-2, which is causing such deadly run around the world, a chimera virus? It's hard to say. The jury is still out. It could very well be result of an accident of nature, human error, or an unintended result of a lab work that stretched for years. Q: Are chimeric viruses used as a bioweapon? Combining two pathogenic viruses increases the lethality of the new virus. which is why there have been cases where chimeric viruses have been considered a number of times for use as a bioweapon. For example, the Soviet Union's Chimera Project attempted to combine DNA from Venezuelan equine encephalitis, smallpox and Ebola virus in the late 1980s. A combination smallpox and monkeypox virus has also been studied. That's the downside. Q: What's the upside? On the upside, the 21st century is the so-called "Golden Age" of genetic engineering. It's a sort of a gold rush powered by cheaper, better sequencing technology. Many hope this would help alleviate various types of genetic disorders or cure genetically-triggered diseases. As the technology has improved exponentially, the cost to sequence a genome has fallen dramatically. For example, the first human genome (declared complete in April 2003) took $2.7 billion and almost 15 years to complete. Then cost of genome sequencing and analysis started falling drastically around 2008, from about $10 million. Based on data collected from genome-sequencing groups funded by the Maryland-based National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the cost to generate a high-quality 'draft' whole human genome sequence in mid-2015 was just above $4,000; by late in 2015, that figure had fallen below $1,500. In a 2019 report, NHGRI stated that the cost to generate a "whole-exome sequence was generally below $1,000". Q: Can chimeric viruses be used for medical treatment? Yes. Studies have shown that chimeric viruses can also be developed to have medical benefits. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved the use of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) to treat relapsed non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. By introducing a chimeric antigen receptor into T cells, the T cells become more efficient at identifying and attacking the tumor cells. Studies are also in progress to create a chimeric vaccine against four types of Dengue virus, however this has not been successful yet. Q: What is the similarity between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the HIV 'exoprotein'? Researchers have used public-domain genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was first published by Chinese researchers from the Shanghai lab on January 11. That lab, was shut down on January 12, 2020. The same genetic sequence, however, was used by researchers in different countries to develop a test kit to identify the virus using a highly-reliable reverse transcription PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Indian researchers have compared the S (spike) Protein sequence between SARS-CoV-2 (or 2019-nCoV, or Wuhan coronavirus), and SARS. What they found is startling: An uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag. Gag, or group specific antigen, is the major structural protein (of HIV-1 and all other retroviruses) and comprises about 50 per cent of the mass of a viral particle. The Indians discovered the 2019-nCoV (SARS-CoV-2) had 2 new sequences inserted — all of which can be found in HIV genetic sequences. This similarity was found through a simple search in GenBank (a genetic sequence database run by the US National Institutes of Health, NIH). The GenBank sequence database is an open-access, annotated collection of all publicly- available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. It is produced and maintained by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration.) The supposed HIV genetic insertions on SARS-CoV-2 gene are:
Q: The Wuhan coronavirus, does it have HIV genes that make it highly transmissible? In 2009, Dr. Frank Ruscetti, one of the founders of the field of human retrovirology, and Dr. Judy Anne Mikovits' labs isolated for the first time a new family of human retroviruses then identified as XMRV strongly associated with neuroimmune disease and cancer (a family of pathogenic human retroviruses is now called HGRV). For her part, Dr. Mikovits has co-authored more than 50 peer reviewed-publications and wrote the book Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Autism, and Other Diseases. Dr. Mikovits told The Epoch Times that an analysis and comparison of the virus of the SARS-Cov-2 (the virus that causes the COVID-19): “(it) apparently has genes that come from other human and other species including some envelope—the one from HIV." Q: What is the HIV’s gp41? Gp41 (transmembrane glycoprotein, composed on 345 amino acids) is known to virologists as a sub-unit of the envelope (or spike) protein complex of retroviruses, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Among HIV researchers, this spike made of protein is well-known as the “key” to infecting human cells, resulting in the functional failure of the immune system. Gp41, on the other hand, is a transmembrane protein that contains several sites within its ectodomain (parts of proteins that initiate contact with surfaces) that are required for infection of, and rapid replication within, host cells.
Among HIV researchers, these gp120 and pp41 has received much attention as a potential target for HIV-zapping vaccines. Q: Why is the HIV gp120 important for researchers? HIV is highly transmissible in humans. The functions of both Gp120 and Gp41 had been sliced and diced by virologists for years. For example, in a breakthrough study in 1990, Philip Berman and colleagues reported in Nature the development of a vaccine based on the HIV glycoprotein gp120, which binds CD4 and chemokine receptors on target cells, but protected lab chimpanzees from HIV-1 infection. The work eventually led to tests of recombinant-gp120-based vaccines in HIV-infected humans. If the observation by Dr Judy Mikovits is validated, it would mean something damning: the mechanism of infection, or “shedding”, of the deadly coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is quite deadly. It's now a well understood mechanism in cell biollogy: The key to its virulence is the S Protein (also known as "viral key”), which unlocks the ACE-2 receptor in human lung cells, that results in a deadly infection. But one research can disprove another, before another one disproves it. One claim can follow another. Q: What's the takeaway? The jury is still out on this story. If it's proven that SARS-CoV-2 is indeed a product of franken-virus that tinkered with life at the cellular level, a kind of science for its own sake, or a DURC gone horribly wrong, then the full course of the affliction it has brought upon humanity is indeed "unknown". Then it would prove that fears which prompted the warnings about its potential pandemic virulence were spot on. The current picture is pretty murky: Members of the elite scientific community around the world don't always see each other eye to eye. And we all know science can be a force for good or bad — the fire generated by nuclear energy can either power an entire country for years, or toast entire cities in a flash. In the global viral sweepstakes now emerging, there's a complex web of big egos, big pharma and big powers with conflicting ethos and motives at play. WUHAN, May 4, 2020 -- The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was shut on January 1, 2020 by Chinese authorities. The common narrative told to us by the WHO, who got their information from Chinese authorities, is that the market was “ground zero”, or origin, of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The story has been told that the virus jumped from bats to humans, with the “patient zero” being identified as a shrimp vendor in that wet market. Chinese scholars saw otherwise. Here's a Q&A, with answers based on available, published papers: Q: What is the mechanism of virulence of HIV? HIV gradually destroys the immune system by attacking and destroying a type of white blood cell, called a CD4 cell. CD4 cells play a major role in protecting the body from infection. HIV uses the machinery of the CD4 cells to multiply and spread throughout the body. Q: Did anyone warn the world about doing GOF research of flu viruses? Yes. Several warnings issued from as early as 2010. A basic definition by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) states: “Gain-of-function (GOF) research involves experimentation that aims or is expected to (and/or, perhaps, actually does) increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens (small organisms such as bacteria or viruses that can cause disease).” At least four public-domain research work, published between 2000 and 2014, had some virology experts already warning about the dangers of such GOF experiments using “unproven techniques”. Warnings were issued through peer-reviewed papers and published in several journals. In particular, one warning was about the so-called "GOF influenza virus research". French virologist Dr Simon Wain-Hobson French branded the term “gain-of-function” as “misleading”, with regard to this particular study. Q: What’s wrong with gain-of-function (GOF) research to achieve “aerosol transmission of avian flu”? It's "irrational", charged Prof. Wain-Hobson in an article published by the US National Academies Press. Wain-Hobson and other peers wrote several papers, issuing the same warning, including in the publication Science in 2013. “There is nothing good to be gained,” Dr Wain-Hobson wrote in 2014. “Inappropriately named gain-of-function (GOF) influenza research seeks to confer airborne transmission on avian influenza A viruses that otherwise cause only dead-end infections in humans. A recent study has succeeded in doing this with a highly pathogenic ostrich H7N1 virus in a ferret model without loss of virulence,” Wain-Hobson warned. Three distinguished virologists, however, contradicted Wain-Hobson, considering the benefits of flu GOF work to outweigh potential risks. Wain-Hobson disagreed: "The underlying science," he pointed out, "is not as strong as it appears.” There had been at least one scientific conference among hundreds of biotech, epidemiology and virology experts that saw fierce debates on the merits of developing chimeric or "franken-viruses". Q: Who is Dr Simon Wain-Hobson?Prof. Wain-Hobson is a molecular retrovirologist who works for the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Retrovirology is the study of retrovirus, any of a family (Retroviridae) of single-stranded RNA viruses that produce reverse transcriptase by means of which DNA is produced using their RNA as a template and incorporated into the genome of infected cells, that are often tumorigenic. That includes the lentiviruses (such as the HIVs) and the causative agent of Rous sarcoma. Coronavirus is another example of a retrovirus. He's a bit of a renegde. In the past, Dr. Wain-Hobson has argued that industrialised nations should help the Third World more in the fight against HIV/Aids by providing money for public health programs, education and blood screening. He warned doing otherwise would further impoverish the poor nations due to costly therapies. Considered an expert in the hypermutation of retroviruses, such as HIV-1, Dr Wain-Hobson explained he prefers combining drugs to kill the virus rather than cripple it, as some researchers advocate. ResearchGate, a European social networking site that allows scientists and researchers to share papers and find collaborators, attributes 240 research works to Wain-Hobson, with 14,244 citations. WUHAN, May 3, 2020 -- The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was shut on January 1, 2020 by Chinese authorities. The common narrative told to us by the WHO, who got their information from Chinese authorities, is that the market was “ground zero”, or origin, of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The story has been told that the virus jumped from bats to humans, with the “patient zero” being identified as a shrimp vendor in that wet market. Chinese scholars saw otherwise. Here's a Q&A, with answers based on available, published papers: Q: Was the S protein on the SARS-CoV-2 lab generated, and that it's a chimeric virus modified from the original SARS-CoV, with the addition of the desired S protein to make them more bind easily to human cells, thus amplifying their virulence and transmissibility? It's hard to say. There's no perfect knowledge on tnis virulent enemy. One study, (a pre-print, non-peer-reviewed and has been reportedly withdrawn) in January 2020 shows the supposed link, claiming SARS-CoV-2 exhibited an "uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag." This kicked up a trail of conspiracy theories. Another study, titled "HIV-1 did not contribute to the 2019-nCoV genome", published on February 14, 2020 in "Emerging Microbes and Infections", disputed it, saying there's no direct link. Both studies made use of comparative genetic sequences of the viruses they investigated. Gene editing, a super specialised field, is an exclusive domain of highly specialised few. It may be a perpetual challenge to figure out the real cause or cure for SARS-CoV-2. What's clear is that there's a group of US Federal government-funded researchers who made a lab-generated virus that examined the disease-causing potential of SHC-014-CoV, described as a "SARS-like virus". In the abstract, the researchers stated that they "generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone." Caption written by researchers on 'Nature': Coronavirus strains are maintained in quasi-species pools circulating in bat populations. (a,b) Traditional SARS-CoV emergence theories posit that host-range mutants (red circle) represent random and rare occurrences that permit infection of alternative hosts. The secondary-host paradigm (a) argues that a nonhuman host is infected by a bat progenitor virus and, through adaptation, facilitates transmission to humans; subsequent replication in humans leads to the epidemic viral strain. The direct paradigm (b) suggests that transmission occurs between bats and humans without the requirement of an intermediate host; selection then occurs in the human population with closely related viruses replicating in a secondary host, permitting continued viral persistence and adaptation in both. (c) The data from chimeric SARS-like viruses argue that the quasi-species pools maintain multiple viruses capable of infecting human cells without the need for mutations (red circles). Although adaptations in secondary or human hosts may be required for epidemic emergence, if SHC014 spike–containing viruses recombined with virulent CoV backbones (circles with green outlines), then epidemic disease may be the result in humans. Existing data support elements of all three paradigms. Q: Chimeric virus: Double meaning? It's a well-known term used in the virology community. A chimeric virus has a double meaning. One, it refers to dormat viruses revived by scientists after being unearthed in the frozen wasteland of Siberia. Two, it denotes research by virologists to allow viruses to "gain" -- or improve -- "function", by combining parts of other viruses or other organisms. There had been at least one scientific conference among hundreds of biotech, epidemiology and virology experts that saw fierce debates on the merits of developing chimeric or "franken-viruses". Q: What is the "mechanism of virulence" (MOV) of SARS-CoV(1)? The SARS virus and its structural proteins are well known to exclusive community of biotech, virology and genetic engineering experts around the world. These structural proteins of the SARS-CoV (1) have been targetted by researchers for new "treatment" options.
Q: What is the function of spike glycoprotein (or S gp) of the SARS-CoV(1)? Intra- and extracellular proteases often cleave the S protein into S1 and S2 domains (or a cell), with the cleavage process often increasing infectivity of the virus. Molecular modelling has been performed for the S1 and S2 units of the SARS-CoV spike protein. "The spike proteins of coronaviruses are reported to bind to receptors on their target cells and the domains responsible for receptor-binding are commonly situated in the N-terminal region of S1. The spikes consist of oligomeric structures, that are formed by heptad repeats of the S2 domain which also represent a fusion peptide sequence. This peptide is responsible for the coronavirus fusion activity." WUHAN, May 1, 2020 -- The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was shut on January 1, 2020 by Chinese authorities. The common narrative told to us by the WHO, who got their information from Chinese authorities, is that the market was “ground zero”, or origin, of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The story has been told that the virus jumped from bats to humans, with the “patient zero” being identified as a shrimp vendor in that wet market. Chinese scholars saw otherwise. Here's a Q&A, with answers based on available, published papers: Q: Did the SARS-CoV-2 virus jump from animals (believed to be bats, and other 'intermediate hosts') to humans in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market? No. Clinical data from China clearly dispute this claim. Chinese authorities and experts are at odds about the real origin of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. Q: What’s the evidence showing where it started? At least two clinical studies, published six days apart in January 2020 (January 24 and January 30, 2020) disprove this Huanan-Seafood-Wholesale-Market-was-the-origin-of-SARS-CoV-2 narrative. The studies were prepared by top-level Chinese clinical researchers. Q: Who are the researchers? They are mostly Chinese medical doctors and clinicians. The first group, published a study in The Lancet on January 24, 2020, studied 41 patients — and showed that only 27 of the 41 initial patients confirmed to have contracted the infection, then known as 2019-nCoV, were exposed to Huanan market. This study was funded by Ministry of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission. A second team, which published their work in The Lancet on January 30, 2020, studied 99 patients, all confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV, in Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital from January 1 to January 20, 2020. All cases were confirmed by real-time RT-PCR, the most reliable RNA/DNA-based test today. Of the 99 patients in the second study (with “2019-nCoV pneumonia”, later known as SARS-CoV-2), only 49 (49%) had a history of exposure to the Huanan seafood market. Interestingly, it did not identify the geographical origins of the 50 other cases. The second was authored by the following:
Q: What do the numbers mean? It means NO scientific evidence supports the claim that SARS-CoV-2 (virus that causes COVID-19) came from the Wuhan market. The market's shrimp vendor identified as "patient zero", is just a descriptive phrase that holds no scientific value. In the initial clinical research prepared by top Chinese experts (Prof. Choalin Huang, Dr Yeming Wang and Prof. Xingwang Li) in the The Lancet, only 27 patients (66 per cent) of initial 41 found cases were known to have had exposure to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale market. The rest, 33 per cent, were not. Q: Why is it wrong to say the novel coronavirus came from Wuhan market? It's misleading. The clinical data does not support such claim, 2 million people had been infected and nearly 130,000 dead, many of them buried in mass graves. If it's not mass murder, caused by this unseen enemy, then the phrase has no meaning. It has shut down the world, too, to say nothing about the reported long-term damage to the lungs of those who recovered. Indeed, the Chinese researchers themselves cited major "gaps" in their study, saying: "Major gaps in our knowledge of the origin, epidemiology, duration of human transmission, and clinical spectrum of disease need fulfilment by future studies." Q: How different is the novel coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) from SARS-CoV(1) and MERS, and how deadly is the new virus to humans? They're all deadly. The Chinese clinicians identified two highly pathogenic viruses, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, as they cause severe respiratory syndrome in humans. In contrast, they also mentioned four other human coronaviruses (HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-HKU1), which only induce mild upper respiratory disease. BANGKOK, May 17 -- A former deputy police spokeswoman could come under scrutiny by both the Royal Thai Police and the Medical Council of Thailand after suggesting on social media that Thai women can give birth in the United States using a legal loophole to obtain US nationality. Pol Lt-General Withoon Nitiwarangkul, director of Police General Hospital, where Pol Lt Colonel Dr Anchulee (Teerawongpaisan) Phetcharat – colloquially known as Dr Air – serves in the Department of of Psychiatry and Drug Dependence, said on Friday he had instructed public relations officials at the hospital to look into the matter. Their findings would determine whether Anchulee violating any rule, he said, and if so, would lead to an official probe. Withoon stressed that there was no fact-finding or disciplinary probe underway as yet. Medical Council secretary-general Dr Itthiporn Khanacharoen said his agency was checking whether Anchulee’s “personal post” online had breached medical professional ethics. Anchulee, who gave birth to a son earlier this month, drew criticism after posting a photo of herself pregnant on May 14 with a message inscribed on her belly in Thai. The caption invited interested mothers-to-be to give birth in the US to secure a better future and good opportunities for their child. It said they could get free counseling from a private-sector service. Anchulee deleted the post in the wake of numerous negative comments, including some questioning whether abuse of the claimed legal loophole was fair to American taxpayers. The US constitution deems anyone born in the country an American citizen. Thousands of foreigners go there every year to give birth and thus gain for their children US citizenship and the privileges it offers, including free primary and secondary education. US citizens can also apply for permission for their parents, spouses and children under 21 who live abroad to relocate to the US. The Centre for Migration Studies puts the figure at 36,000 foreign women giving birth in the US each year, with many coming from China, Taiwan, South Korea, Nigeria, Turkey, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. The administrator of the US-based Facebook page “CSI LA” criticised Anchulee’s post. “I don’t know if Dr Air knows she is breaking US law by posting such an invitation to pregnant women to give birth in the US,” it said. “US Immigration Police have been suppressing gangs for such ‘birth tourism’. Many Chinese agents were arrested and jailed. How can Dr Air [do this, since she serves] as a police officer and a doctor? Is it for financial gain, a commission fee from the private sector?” BANGKOK, March 13 -- Forest fires have sent air quality in nine provinces to a level considered harmful to people's health, as cities in the North like Chiang Mai registered air quality that was among the world's worst. The air quality index (AQI) in Chiang Mai as of 4pm Tuesday stood at 230, compared with 170 in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka and 164 in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to Air Visual, an app that monitors air quality. At midnight Tuesday, in slightly cooler night-time temperatures, Chiang Mai still was listed as the world's worst, with air quality in the high-danger zone for all residents but below 200 on the AQI scale. The AQI measures a broad spectrum of air pollutants including PM2.5, PM10 and carbon dioxide. Information from the Pollution Control Department (PCD) confirmed the haze in the North had reached worrying levels. PM2.5 refers to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, which is about 3% the diameter of a human hair. It can lodge in the lungs and enter blood vessels, leading to respiratory and cardiovascular disease. According to PCD-supplied information taken from 17 air-quality-monitoring stations in nine provinces as of 9am Tuesday, the level of PM2.5 ranged from 70-124 microgrammes per cubic metre (µg/m³), exceeding the safety standard of 50 µg/m³ or lower. Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district had the worst recorded level (163 µg/m³), followed by Phrae, Lampang, Nan and Chiang Mai. The pollution has become such a pressing concern that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is scheduled to visit Chiang Rai this Saturday, eight days before the national election. "Prime Minister Prayut will take a field trip to Chiang Rai with the purpose of following up on measures to deal with the haze in the North," Pralong Damrongthai, director-general of the PCD, told the media Tuesday. Dr Rangsrit Kanjanavanit, a Chiang Mai resident who serves as a lecturer and cardiologist at the Faculty of Medicine at Chiang Mai University, said the smoggy skies show how the government's campaign to eradicate forest fires and open burning has yet to prove a success. Dr Rangsrit, who also holds the post of vice president of the Seub Nakhasathien Foundation, said the government should come up with more sustainable and comprehensive measures, instead of just arresting farmers who start fires, or firing water to try and control dust levels. "It should find a way to dissuade farmers from burning [waste] by giving them incentives,"he said. Some of the haze has been attributed to neighbouring countries like Laos and Myanmar. As such, critics say Thailand should work more with other governments to tackle the widespread practice of open burning. Haze has been a seasonal problem in the North for over a decade. It usually appears from January to April but peaks in March as the extremely dry conditions increase the magnitude of forest fires. This is compounded by farmers burning waste to clear land for the next harvest season. BEIJING February 7 -- Chinese authorities have made conflicting statements about human blood plasma treatments found to be contaminated with HIV, with the country’s drug watchdog saying it had cleared the treatments just a day after its national health authority announced they were faulty. Inspectors from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) said on Wednesday that samples they had examined from a batch of 12,229 bottles of intravenous immunoglobulin were free of HIV and hepatitis B and C. The administration’s clearance of the batch, produced by state-owned Shanghai Xinxing Pharmaceutical Company, contradicted a notice from the National Health Commission on Tuesday announcing its contamination and warning hospitals to immediately suspend use of the treatments. The provincial health commission and disease control centre in eastern China’s Jiangxi province had detected traces of HIV in the batch, although the disease control centre told The Beijing News on Wednesday that it had not yet discovered any cases of patients having contracted HIV. The batch of 50ml bottles are due to expire in June 2021, a source from the state food and drug regulator told the China Business Journal. Immunoglobulins are antibodies produced by white blood cells that are used to treat immune deficiencies caused by illnesses such as leukaemia, hepatitis and rabies. The NMPA – which was at the centre of a major rabies vaccine scandal last July – immediately told regulators in Shanghai to conduct on-site inspections at the pharmaceutical company and sent officials to Jiangxi, it said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Shanghai regulator said in a separate statement that it had halted production at the company, recalled all affected treatments and sent samples for inspection. This latest blow to confidence in China’s health services comes less than a month after it was revealed that 145 children in the eastern Jiangsu province were treated with expired polio vaccines, sparking widespread protests from parents and the investigation of 17 local officials. Last July, 252,600 faulty rabies vaccines made by Changchun Changsheng Bio-technology, one of China’s biggest vaccine firms, were found to have been administered to thousands of toddlers. In the 1990s, thousands of cash-strapped villagers in China’s central Henan province contracted HIV after being persuaded to sell their blood illegally on the black market. Rapid spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis B was caused by reuse of needles, lack of screening for diseases, false health records, and mixing of blood before re-injecting the separated red blood cells back into the donors. A study of 280,000 villagers in Henan who had sold their blood found that more than 36,000, about one in eight, had HIV or Aids. The NMPA’s apparent clearance of the blood plasma treatments on Wednesday came four days after Wu Zhen, the former deputy head of the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) – which oversees the NMPA – was handed over to the judiciary system for investigation by the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog in relation to the rabies vaccine scandal. Wu, one of four CFDA officials being investigated, was in charge of China’s vaccine regulation at the time. State-run news agency Xinhua said the allegations against Wu included nepotism and taking bribes. Changchun Changsheng Bio-technology was handed a 9.1 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) fine in October after it was found to have fabricated records. The authorities had failed to act immediately after finding inconsistencies in the company’s records in late 2017. SHANGHAI, January 29 -- Workers are seen at a cement plant of the Shengwei Group in Tongchuan City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Tongchuan, once a manufacturing base for coal mining industry and cement production, used to suffer from environment pollutions. The local government has focused on sustainable development in the recent years and helped industries transform to grasp more opportunities. China has pledged to coordinate its efforts of environmental protection and economic development in 2019, an important year for winning the tough battle against pollution. At the annual Central Economic Work Conference earlier this month, authorities called for building on this year's achievement in pollution control, making more efforts and input in 2019. Since the turn of this year, China has made solid efforts to combat pollution and seen constant improvement of the environment. The Central Economic Work Conference made it clear that local governments must avoid past simple and unscrupulous practices in dealing with environmental problems. BEIJING, January 20 -- China has met its annual target for pollution control in 2018, with more blue skies, cleaner waters and greener mountains. "We have successfully delivered all the obligatory targets set for 2018 and stayed in line with the timetable outlined by the 13th Five-Year Plan," Chinese Ecology and Environment Minister Li Ganjie said during a work meeting that concluded Saturday. Air quality has continued to improve with 338 major cities reporting good air quality on 79.3 percent of days, up 1.3 percentage points from the previous year, official data showed. The density of PM2.5, a key indicator of air pollution, dropped by over 10 percent in 2018 from the previous year in three heavily-polluted areas, including the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In terms of soil pollution control, Li said the country had reduced solid waste imports by 46.5 percent year on year, finished overhauls of all subpar garbage power plants and launch sweeping crackdown on the illegal transportation and dumping of hazardous waste in 2018. Thorough action has been taken to clean up 1,009 "black and malodorous" water bodies in 36 major cities and 1,586 water sources, Li said, adding that "defense of lucid waters" would be a primary task for 2019. China has pledged to coordinate its efforts on environmental protection and economic development in 2019. At the annual Central Economic Work Conference held in December, authorities called for building on the achievements of 2018, making more effort in 2019. One of the key challenges, analysts said, is finding ways to engage in pollution treatment without harming productivity. Zhang Liqun, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, said the conference offered targeted prescriptions. The conference made it clear that local governments must avoid the simple and unscrupulous practices of the past when dealing with environmental problems. "This will give better support to balancing environmental protection with economic development and realizing mutually-enhancing interaction," Zhang said. In 2019, China will put the Yangtze River restoration project in full swing, clean up more "black and malodorous" water bodies, achieve environment improvement in the Bohai Sea through comprehensive measures, and launch a water quality campaign in rural areas, Li said. The country will also further reduce imports of solid waste and push for better air quality with better regional coordination and heavy-polluter revamps, according to the minister. |
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