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.
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