Merry white coat supremacy Christmas, everybody.
“Anyone on your team conducting gain of function studies, recombination studies or any other studies that may have resulted in the creation of the nCoV?” That was James LeDuc, director of the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL) in a February 9, 2020 email to Juan Zhiming at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. LeDuc, who earned a PhD in epidemiology from UCLA, had trained staff at the WIV, yet the GNL boss had little clue what was going on there.
“Where is coronavirus research conducted?” LeDuc wanted to know. “What level of biocontainment? How many different laboratories actually handle live virus? Where are coronavirus stocks stored?” In addition, “When was the nCoV first handled in your laboratory? What was the source of that virus?” and “what are the coronaviruses in your possession that are most closely related to nCoV based on genetic sequences and are able to replicate in culture?”
