Going through old COVID FOIAs, and I came across this from David Stilwell, then Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific. Six years later, it is still worth serious consideration.

It sounds harsh, but any scientist who still believes this in 2026 is meaningfully threatening biosecurity and public health. The public evidence for a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 is overwhelming. CIA, FBI, DOE, and German intelligence have access to additional data and concluded lab origin. There is nothing left standing of the Worobey/Pekar papers after responses from Stoyan and Chiu, Nod, Weissman, Bloom, and the data biases described by Gao/Redfield. Authors of the Worobey/Pekar papers were also caught committing uniquely dangerous acts of scientific fraud including ghostwriting conclusions they knew to be false, and attempting to delete early seqs from a server without leaving a record. Millions died from preventable biosafety errors. We simply cannot afford to continue treating people like Patrick as legitimate voices on biosecurity and biosafety. The harsh reality is that deadly accidents keep occurring because of the ignorance, arrogance, and dangerous biases of men like Patrick.

Update: Judge Trevor McFadden just denied the Defense Intelligence Agency’s motion for extension of time to complete processing of documents (about Covid origins). Hooray for small victories. #FOIA

Baric from 2013 on not liking the idea of MERS added to the SA list, because that would have a "chilling effect" on "productivity".

I am honored that my book on the origin of the COVID virus and a plan to prevent the next pandemic is #1 in the New Release category. Preorder on Amazon with release June 9. Profits go to charity.

The recent events involving smuggled, undeclared biological specimens from an outbreak area in Africa and the apparent assertion my one of those arrested, 'I do this all the time' reminds me of a 2024 Opinion piece I wrote with @stevenemassey and David Hermiz, a trained psychiatrist. Simple thesis: the dark triad personality traits are longitundially stable and testable. All scientists and staff working with Select Agents need to be screened for the dark triad. Apparent indifference to potential harm to one's fellow citizen's probably gets you in the dark triad trifecta. Here is our piece for your interest zenodo.org/records/14540353

"As life sciences researchers, builders of AI and biotechnology, and experts with a wide range of views on...AI policy, we call on legislators to make screening of orders for synthetic nucleic acids—and the equipment needed to make them—mandatory" screendna.org/

"Virology is too important to be imperiled by nonsense and cowardice. Which is why we’ll keep hollering." Simon Wain-Hobson is always a great read. biosafetynow.substack.com/p/…

"Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe, both researchers with the NIH at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory were charged today in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the US and giving false statements to federal law enforcement" justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/fed…

Arrested virologist Munster also was involved in the reckless research on SARS coronaviruses that caused COVID. (He was a partner in the 2018 DARPA DEFUSE proposal, the apparent blueprint for constructing SARS-CoV-2.) He shares culpability for killing 20 million.

The fact that someone's retirement security is going to be downstream of a Bermuda captive insurer holding $103B in assets nobody can independently price, leveraged 16x, funding GPU racks that are legally owned by an entity that exists solely to own GPU racks is ... Interesting.

One week into the "start" of the global pandemic Munster is sending smiley faces to Baric about favorite viruses. "Perfect!" 🙄

This 2009 paper inserted FCS at sites mentioned in DEFUSE (667, 797)? "introduced a furin cleavage site at ... S2′ as well as at the junction of S1 and S2 .. trypsin-independent fusion, increased by the presence of a second furin cleavage site at S1–S2." pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/article…

Science is manufacturing a panic story by interviewing the same ecosystem of people who benefit from the status quo and treating their fears as news. Some minor tweaks to the funding structure are proposed and suddenly we’re supposed to believe science is under existential threat. There is not a single mention of why anyone might support these changes, including the fact that large portions of the NIH budget were already subject to approval by presidential appointees. There is not a single mention of the woeful inefficiency of a grant funding process that can take years from idea to funding. There is not a single mention that publication fees are obscene, or why taxpayers should continue supporting the extraction of billions of dollars from to support executive compensation packages at orgs like Science that would make many biotech CEOs blush. The article simply assumes the current system is great despite mounting evidence and repeated admissions from Science itself of the contrary. Science journalists read the room on bluesky, linkedin and reddit, find something the academic establishment doesn’t makes a fuss over, and convert that anxiety into a news story. The possibility that the current system might actually need reform is never even mentioned.

MERS MA30 was made by Kun Li, originally from Wuhan University, State Key Lab of Virology in Stanley Perlman's lab.

"the lab-origin hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 is Occamesque and easily wins the argument in a trial by jury." - Pat Fidopiastis, Professor of Microbiology at California Polytechnic State University brownstone.org/articles/the-…

"I don't recall" ...

Collins publicly sang "funny" songs about SARS-CoV-2 while millions were dead/dying. And privately discussed the "most difficult and wrenching" situation in his 11 years with regards to EcoHealth Alliance in an email to Fauci.

This is how gain-of-function research works. It’s incredibly dangerous and shouldn’t be done.