Boston gain of function virus

hello welcome to today's talks that's about the 22nd of October now there's a rumor going around that scientists in Boston in the United States have made a new SARS coronavirus too and instead of killing essentially zero percent of the mice it infects it kills 80 of the mice it infects could this rumor possibly be true I'm afraid to tell you and it distresses me to tell you that it is completely true I find this unbelievable outrageous arrogance but we'll take a look at it and unpick it and we will be looking at the scientific paper of course now this is the paper here it's actually in the form of a pre-print at the moment but given that it's pre-printed uh it probably will be peer-reviewed shortly but of course this does mean that the research took place it's unlikely that they're lying about this research taking place so this is actually happening now this is the most incredible in my view gain of function research we've gone from killing none of the mice to killing 80 of the mice now okay it might not be as that bad if it escapes into people it might only kill uh 40 of the people that infects or four percent four percent of the people in fact we don't know but playing with this sort of virus to me is just unbelievable so let's let's have a look at it and um you make your own mind up don't let me Prejudice you too much now this is enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research so they're looking at these researchers the SARS coronavirus too so what they've essentially done here is we all know about the the SARS coronavirus 2 here and it's got these uh Spike proteins on it hasn't it like that I think we know this so well well now so what they've done actually here is they've taken one of the original Wuhan type viruses which is a different type of virus and essentially they've taken the spike proteins off that off the original Wuhan type virus and they put on some of the new uh Omicron type Spike proteins and they find out this combination is maybe 80 percent uh basically 80 more deadly to mice so what this means is not just the spike protein that make the virus deadly it's also the uh the genetics and the proteins in the rest of the virus that make it deadly is that combination so that's quite an interesting scientific finding not too surprising but basically what they've done is they've mixed up two viruses and come up with this new one that has a massively higher function it's gay enough this is surely gain of function research that we've been so worried about now what do other people think about it Professor uh Shapiro lead scientist Israeli government uh this should be totally forbidden it's playing with fire I agree 100 percent Dr Richard uh Ed bright um New Brunswick the research is a clear example of Gainer function research so good to see the doctor here agrees uh if we're able to avoid a next Lab generated pandemic this is pretty serious talk a lot another lab generated pandemic assuming we've had one to begin with really quite serious talk it's imperative that oversight of enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research would be strengthened now this is in the United States of America we're talking about here I am taken aback really quite taken aback that they've allowed this it's imperative that officials in the United States government agencies who repeatedly have placed the public at risk by repeatedly violating the existing policies be held accountable so pretty strong words there um what is going on with the regulation in the United States Professor David Livermore from University of East Anglia in England of course given the strong likelihood that the covet pandemic originated from an escaping a laboratory manipulated virus in Wuhan okay could well have done could What I've Done these experiments seem profoundly unwise English understatement but when an Englishman I don't know if his English is British anyway I think you use the word profoundly that really does mean profoundly this is a strong wording now this research seems to have been carried out in Boston's University national uh emerging infectious disease laboratory one of 13 level four labs in the US so think of one of these Labs with people in some people that saw space suits things with breathing pipes and all that all that kind of thing but it may not be 100 secure now this is the paper here roll of the spike pathogen and uh antigenic Behavior so basically antigen is the virus and this is this is on the in the ba1 that they're looked at here um okay it's a few months ago now it's moved on but it was just published last week Boston University School of Medicine and other places I'm not picking them out as the only one but the work does seem to have been done in this Boston University's national emerging diseases uh lab that seems to be where the work was carried out as far as I can gather now um predominant uh South Korean advice to Omicron variantly cytotransmitter but of course we know this even evade even in fully vaccinated individuals and causes attenuated disease so does it in other words the disease is not as bad so what they wanted to find out was okay the uh omicron's ba1 in this example caused less severe disease why is that because we know the spike proteins change so is it because of the change in the spike Protein that's less severe disease but when they combined it with the original Wuhan variant they found that it caused more severe disease so it's looking like it's not so much the spike Protein that's causing more severe disease it's the other part of the virus so the reason that um fatalities for example were more extreme in the early part of the pandemic there was a high number of people died was probably because of the core of the virus rather than necessarily because of these uh Spike proteins of the virus that's what they wanted to find out and they did find that out but at what risk is the question um compared with other major viral variants recognized to date fine the Omicron Spike protein usually has a large number of mutations is considered the major driver of these phenotypes the phenotype just means the way that the virus behaves in the real world it's the outward expression of the the genetic material of the virus so uh they said we generally generated a chimeric recombination saskaranovirus 2. and that's what they did they took the original Wuhan type virus the genetics from that that made the core of the virus they took the uh genetic material from the Omicron that generated the spike protein and the recombine these into a brand new virus now as far as I can understand this would never have occurred in nature so the generator is completely new virus right now let's look at what a chimera is so Chimera just means a mix doesn't it it's it's two animals mixed so like a a man with a lion's head or or a horse with wings with you know that would be a chimeric situation where you've got two organisms mixed up but in this case it's a um a chimera or chimeric virus one that contains genetic material derived from two or more distinct viruses in this case the original Wuhan virus and the SARS coronavirus so the original SARS coronavirus from Wuhan SARS cov2 from Wuhan and sasko V2 but the one that's a long time later now the the Omicron ba1 so they've combined these two um in a way that really wouldn't have occurred in nature as far as I can see at all now the U.S Center for veterinary uh biobiology from the United States Department of Agriculture gives this definition of a chimera a new hybrid microorganism created by joining nucleic acid in this case the RNA of course from these two viruses fragments from two or more different microorganisms in this case the original Wuhan virus in the ba1 Omicron virus artificially though in the lab in which at least two of the fragments contain essential genes necessary for replication r-e-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n this virus can replicate potentially indefinitely potentially if it escaped to form a new pandemic potentially killing eighty percent of mice that it infects and as we'll see these mice were humanized we'll look at that in a minute but this virus could kill potentially 40 50 60 70 percent of the people that infects and yet they seem to be doing research on this virus I I'm really concerned this is an existential threat that's right existential to me means to do with existence so if I caught this my I might probably if I caught this virus that they're working within this lab some might say playing within this lab um it's an existential threat to my existence I might no longer exist if I got that and that concerns me we could be looking at mortality rates which are well I don't even want to think about it um given that the original Wuhan virus and the the ba1 the the Omicron ba1 virus killed essentially no mice and this goes 80 of mice and of course we are vertebrates the same as mice it just doesn't bear thinking about how would they have the arrogance to do this right back to the paper we've generated chimeric recombination of SARS coronavirus too including the S Gene of the alma Spike Gene of the Omicron in the backbone of the ancestral SARS coronavirus to isolate so there you go uh Spike protein from the Spike proteins from the uh Omicron and the original body if you like from the original Wuhan virus this new re-jiggled recombination I compared this Vise with a natural circulating Omicron variant the Omicron bear the Omicron s bearing uh virus robustly escaped vaccine-induced humeral immunity so this new virus have generated showed great immune Escape people that were immune to previous saskarona virus 2 or the mice anyway didn't have any immunity to this so This escaped not only could it kill huge numbers of people potentially would also have no immunity to it or essentially no immunity to or very limited immunity to it because it shows robust escape a robust escape from vaccine-induced immunity so um it would be like a brand new almost like a brand new pandemic we would have no immunity mainly due to mutations of the receptor binding Motif what we call we tend to call this the RBD don't I the receptor binding domain which is the part on on the on the size coronavirus II the bit here that actually binds into in that actually binds into the ace receptor as we've looked at many times yet unlike naturally occurring on macron efficiently replicates in the cell lines and primary primarily like distal lung cells now what what this these cell lines here what you have to do of course viruses can't reproduce on their own they can only reproduce inside cells so what they've done is they've taken some cells and these cells are like the the distal lung cells so the proximal lung cells if you look at the lung so we've got the main the main trachea there in the bronchial passages or the trache here as you'd say in the states and here here's the lungs here so um this is of course what we are familiar with from Anatomy now the um the proximal tissues would be the ones up here near the mouth at their proximal tissues the distal tissues would be the ones down here in the lungs right down here and of course as you probably know what happens is the the Airways get smaller and smaller branching to smaller and smaller Airways until they get to the rvo line the air sacs where the gaseous exchange takes place the oxygen goes from there to there and the carbon dioxide goes from the blood into the um into the lungs so the distal cells are like the cells you would get here in the distal part of the airway these would all be distal Airway cells and of course these are the ones we're particularly worried about because if we get inflammation in here this can fill it with fluid then we get the acute respiratory distress syndrome that killed so many people at the start of the pandemic not what we want so they were trying these distal cells to see how it works in these distal cells and uh that's what they did now they were using KH a c two mice Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor two mice now what this is now I don't like this research either particularly but I don't pretend to be an expert in it but what they've done here is they've taken some genes from a human say me for example and they've taken the genes from me that code for my H2 receptors that make my H2 receptors and they put the genes from a human into a mouse so that it's still a mouse but it makes human molecular architecture type Ace 2 receptors so the H2 receptors in the transgenic humanized Mouse are basically chemically the same as mine so we they can model them and and these new virus that they uh this new virus that they made latched onto those in the mice and killed 80 of the mice therefore it's reasonable to assume that this new rise that the Creator would latch onto my distal ace2 receptors as well causing severe inflammation just as it did in the unfortunate 80 of the mice that it killed um so transgenic mice um they express the human Ace to Angiotensin II receptor that the virus binds onto including Airway epithelia where infection typically begins as we know that the lining tissues of the Airways because the susceptible to cause SARS cov2 virus they are used for as an experimental model basically so it's mice this is we're talking about mice with human ace2 receptors that's how the no uh that this would work in human cells because it's the same as it's the same as the uh the H2 receptors that expressed by the mice are the same as in me because it's made by the same human gene transgenic humanized mice so that's what that means that's what this line is Omicron cases were mild none and were mild non-fatal infections good in the mice the Omicron s carrying virus the new one that jiggled around with what you might call the Frankenstein virus inflict severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 now 80 percent that's one more than 79 percent this is massive just imagine if this virus escaped and it killed worst case scenario perhaps 80 of people suppose it only killed eight percent of people it would spread rapidly we don't have immunity to it they've already said it has huge immune escape the vaccine induced immunity would not work against this new virus that the natural induced immunity might work a bit better but I don't particularly want to find out um that this is just I find this terrifying to be quite honest um kills 80 of these humanized mice this indicates that while the the vaccine Escape uh of Omicron is defined by the mutation in the spike the major determinant of viral pathogenicity rights outside of the spike protein so the reason that Omicron is it's interesting to be fair the reason Omicron is killing less people is less pathogenic might not be related to changes in the spike protein that we've been monitoring and while I've been spending all our time looking at the spike protein we've taken our eye off the ball for the other components of the virus and it seems to be changes in the other components of the virus the envelope and the the nuclear capsid protein and the RNA and things like that it might be changes in those which makes the virus more or less pathogenic and because they've changed um the Omicron variant is less pathogenic so it's interesting but um the risk to find out that piece of knowledge is to me just too immense um let's give the final word to uh Mary Shelley who of course wrote Frankenstein um first published in 1818. this book of course is about the about the uh the risk of human arrogance that human beings in all their cleverness cleverness inverted Commerce can make a monster which they can no longer control it's a terrifying idea and it's the reason why Mary Shelly's Frankenstein has been a bestseller for well over 200 years now because it gets to the heart of something and let's just look at one of the quotes this is from the 1831 Edition frightful it must fight for must it be for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanisms of the creator of the world how dare we think we can copy the Creator we are mocking the situation it may well be that we've just had a pandemic because of this human arrogance and we'll probably never know for sure um and this research in Boston has got the risk of it um causing another one if it were to escape I strongly suspect the security in Boston is way way better than Security in um in Wuhan but personally I don't want to risk my life in the right look the like the lives of my family in the lives of you watching just so uh we can write a few academic papers I therefore call on the American government to close this research down immediately immediately hygienically destroy all these Frankenstein viruses and if the viruses don't exist then they won't Escape thank you for watching

Channel: Dr. John Campbell

Views: 1,935,170

Keywords: physiology, nursing, NCLEX, health, disease, biology, medicine, nurse education, medical education, pathophysiology, campbell, human biology, human body

Id: _WTZo9ieBKY

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022