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The USA TODAY Network’s “Biolabs in Your Backyard” investigation, published since 2015, has revealed hundreds of accidents at corporate, university, government and military labs nationwide. It also has exposed a system of fragmented federal oversight and pervasive secrecy that obscures failings by facilities and regulators.
In January 2015, in an effort to determine the extent of lab accidents at the agency’s facilities, USA TODAY filed a FOIA request seeking copies of all incident reports at CDC labs in Atlanta and Fort Collins during 2013 and 2014. The CDC granted the request “expedited” processing status because USA TODAY demonstrated a compelling public need for the information. But the agency has said it will likely be 2018 before the records are released.
The newly disclosed 2009 incident in the BSL-4 decontamination shower is among about 4,000 pages of records the agency released in late January in response to two FOIA requests USA TODAY filed in June 2012. Those requests sought records about airflow and security door incidents at CDC’s $214 million, 368,000-square-foot Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory in Atlanta, commonly referred to by the agency as Building 18.
Most of these released records — which focus on airflow engineering issues in labs — involve a 2012 incident that USA TODAY reported four years ago based on documents obtained from sources. The issue involved air from inside a potentially contaminated lab briefly blowing outward into a “clean” corridor where a group of visitors weren’t wearing any protective gear. Among other incidents revealed in the records:
In 2011, a worker feeding animals in an enhanced biosafety level 3 lab used for studies on dangerous strains of avian flu, was unable to shower out of the lab after a construction contractor mistakenly closed the wrong water valve in a service tunnel. Not knowing when the water would come back on, the worker removed her protective equipment, put on a clean protective suit and left the lab without taking a shower. “I escorted her through the service tunnel to building (redacted) where she signed into our (redacted) select agent laboratory. She disposed of the tyvek suit in a biohazard bag, placed her scrubs in the laundry bin, and took a personal shower.” The CDC told USA TODAY that because the potential for any exposure was considered low risk, a medical evaluation was not required.
In 2008 an unvaccinated repair worker was potentially exposed to an undisclosed pathogen when a door containing contaminated items unexpectedly opened in a malfunctioning device, called an autoclave, that is used to sterilize equipment and other items. The infectious materials inside the device included bedding from infected mice and used laundry. While a report of the incident said that any material that may have escaped through the clean-side door that opened “was likely to be drawn upward toward the exhaust,” the worker was told to shower and his clothes, shoes, wallet, watch and other personal items were disinfected. He was escorted to the clinic for evaluation. The report notes that the autoclave “was installed backwards during building construction” and that as a result, the manual override controls for doors are reversed “which ultimately resulted in the incident.”
Building 18, which opened in 2005 has had a series of significant issues over the years. While the building’s many other high-containment and lower security labs were in operation from the start, its suite of BSL-4 labs did not go “hot” and start working with pathogens until around early 2009. The lab complex made news in 2007 when backup generators didn’t work to keep airflow systems working during a power outage and in 2008 for high-containment lab door that was being sealed with duct tape. The duct tape was applied after a 2007 incident where the building’s ventilation system malfunctioned and pulled potentially contaminated air out of the lab and into a “clean” hallway. Nine CDC workers were tested for potential exposure to Q fever bacteria. None were infected.
Read all the records released by CDC in response to USA TODAY’s 2012 Freedom of Information Act requests here and here.
The full coverage of USA TODAY’s investigation used to be hosted on its own separate website, biolabs.usatoday.com , but they deleted it, unsurprisingly.
As we’ve shown in our video too, a wide range of mainstream media outlets have reflected the situation over the years, not just USA Today, being quite critical of it, but with almost no impact on the general population. Ah, well…
Why some labs work on making viruses deadlier — and why they should stop
The pandemic should make us question the value of gain-of-function research.
Editor’s note, June 7, 2021: Since this article was originally published in May 2020, scientific consensus has shifted. Now some experts say the “lab leak” theory warrants an investigation, along with the natural origin theory. The article has been updated to reflect this, but other information may be out of date. For our most up-to-date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, visit Vox’s coronavirus hub.
Earlier this week, Newsweek and the Washington Post reported that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab near the site of the first coronavirus cases in the world, had been studying bat coronaviruses.
The Newsweek report revealed an alarming tidbit: The Wuhan lab at the center of the controversy had for years been engaged in gain-of-function research. What exactly is it? It’s a line of research where scientists take viruses and study how they might be modified to become deadlier or more transmissible. Why would they do this? Scientists who engage in such research say it helps them figure out which viruses threaten people so they can design countermeasures.
To be clear, there is no evidence that the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was released on purpose, and many experts believe it is likely to have been the result of accidental transmission through human contact with wild animals, like almost all disease outbreaks in history have been.
But the emerging reports about the lab in Wuhan are making many people aware for the first time that gain-of-function research happens at all. I wouldn’t blame you if your response to this news is this: The government gives grants to researchers to make potentially pandemic viruses deadlier and to make them transmissible more easily between people? Why are we doing that?
The increased attention to gain-of-function research is a good thing. This kind of highly controversial research — banned under the Obama administration after safety incidents demonstrated that lab containment is rarely airtight — began again under the Trump administration, and many scientists and public health researchers think it’s a really bad idea. Our brush with the horrors of a pandemic might force us to reconsider the warnings those experts have been sounding for years.
The US stopped funding gain-of-function research. Then it started again.
In 2019, Science magazine broke the news that the US government resumed funding two controversial experiments to make the bird flu more transmissible.
The two experiments had been on hold since 2012 amid a fierce debate in the virology community about gain-of-function research. In 2014, the US government, under the Obama administration, declared a moratorium on such research.
It was in that context that scientists and biosecurity experts found themselves embroiled in a debate about gain-of-function research. The scientists who do this kind of research argue that we can better anticipate deadly diseases by making diseases deadlier in the lab. But many people at the time and since have become increasingly convinced that the potential research benefits — which look limited — just don’t outweigh the risks of kicking off the next deadly pandemic ourselves.
While internally divided, the US government came down on the side of caution at the time. It announced a moratorium on funding gain-of-function research — putting potentially dangerous experiments on hold so the world could discuss the risks this research entailed.
But in 2017, the government under the Trump administrationreleased new guidelines for gain-of-function research, signaling an end to the blanket moratorium. And the news from 2019 suggests that dangerous projects are proceeding.
Experts in biosecurity are concerned the field is heading toward a mistake that could kill innocent people. They argue that, to move ahead with research like this, there should be a transparent process with global stakeholders at the table. After all, if anything goes wrong, the mess we’ll face will certainly be a global one.
Should we really be doing this kind of research?
Advocates of this kind of gain-of-function research (not all gain-of-function research uses pathogens that can cause pandemics) point to a few things they hope it will enable us to do.
In general, they argue it will enhance surveillance and monitoring for new potential pandemics. As part of our efforts to thwart pandemics before they start — or before they get severe — we take samples of the viruses currently circulating. If we know what the deadliest and most dangerous strains out there are, the argument goes, then we’ll be able to monitor for them and prepare a response if it looks like such mutations are arising in the wild.
“As coordination of international surveillance activities and global sharing of viruses improve,” some advocates wrote in mBio, we’ll get better at learning which strains are out there. Then, gain-of-function research will tell us which ones are close to becoming deadly.
“GOF data have been used to launch outbreak investigations and allocate resources (e.g., H5N1 in Cambodia), to develop criteria for the Influenza Risk Assessment Tool, and to make difficult and sometimes costly pandemic planning policy decisions,” they argue.
“The United States government weighed the risks and benefits … and developed new oversight mechanisms. We know that it does carry risks. We also believe it is important work to protect human health,” Yoshihiro Kawaoka, an investigator whose gain-of-function research was approved, told Science magazine.
According to this logic, if we’d known for years that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus — the virus now keeping us all indoors — was a particularly dangerous one, maybe we could have had disease surveillance systems out to alert us if it made the jump to humans.
Others are skeptical. Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins, told me last year that he doesn’t think the benefits for vaccine development hold up in most cases. “I haven’t seen any of the vaccine companies say that they need to do this work in order to make vaccines,” he pointed out. “I have not seen evidence that the information people are pursuing could be put into widespread use in the field.”
Furthermore, there are unimaginably many possible variants on a virus, of which researchers can identify only a few. Even if we stumble across one way a virus could mutate to become deadly, we might miss thousands of others. “It’s an open question whether laboratory studies are going to come up with the same solution that nature would,” MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt told me last year. “How predictive are these studies really?” As of right now, that’s still an open question.
And even in the best case, the utility of this work would be sharply limited. “It’s important to keep in mind that many countries do not have mechanisms in place at all — much less a real-time way to identify and reduce or eliminate risks as experiments and new technologies are conceived,” Beth Cameron, the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s vice president for global biological policy and programs, told me.
With the stakes so high, many researchers are frustrated that the US government was not more transparent about which considerations prompted them to fund the research. Is it really necessary to study how to make H5N1, which causes a type of bird flu with an eye-popping mortality rate, more transmissible? Will precautions be in place to make it harder for the virus to escape the lab? What are the expected benefits from the research, and which hazards did the experts who approved the work consider?
“The people proposing the work are highly respected virologists,” Inglesby said. “But laboratory systems are not infallible, and even in the greatest laboratories of the world, there are mistakes.” What measures are in place to prevent that? Will potentially dangerous results be published to the whole world, where unscrupulous actors could follow the instructions?
These are exactly the questions the review process was supposed to answer, but didn’t.
Sometimes pathogens escape from the lab. Here’s how it happens.
The reason the subject of gain-of-function research can inspire such heated opposition is because the stakes can be so high. Pathogens have escaped labs before.
Take smallpox, once one of the deadliest diseases.
In 1977, the last case of smallpox was diagnosed in the wild. The victim was Ali Maow Maalin of Somalia. The World Health Organization tracked down every person he’d been in face-to-face contact with to vaccinate everyone at risk and find anyone who might have caught the virus already. Thankfully, they found no one had. Maalin recovered, and smallpox appeared to be over forever.
That moment came at the end of a decades-long campaign to eradicate smallpox — a deadly infectious disease that killed about 30 percent of those who contracted it — from the face of the Earth. Around 500 million people died of smallpox in the century before it was annihilated.
But in 1978, the disease cropped back up — in Birmingham, England. Janet Parker was a photographer at Birmingham Medical School. When she developed a horrifying rash, doctors initially brushed it off as chicken pox. After all, everyone knew smallpox had been chased out of the world — right?
Parker got worse and was admitted to the hospital, where testing determined she had smallpox after all. She died of it a few weeks later.
How did she get a disease that was supposed to have been eradicated?
It turned out that the building Parker worked in also contained a research laboratory, one of a handful where smallpox was studied by scientists who were trying to contribute to the eradication effort. Some papersreported the lab was badly mismanaged, with important precautions ignored because of haste. (The doctor who ran the lab died by suicide shortly after Parker was diagnosed.) Somehow, smallpox escaped the lab to infect an employee elsewhere in the building. Through sheer luck and a rapid response from health authorities, including a quarantine of more than 300 people, the deadly error didn’t turn into an outright pandemic.
In 2014, as the Food and Drug Administration did cleanup for a planned move to a new office, hundreds of unclaimed vials of virus samples were found in a cardboard box in the corner of a cold storage room. Six of them, it turned out, were vials of smallpox. No one had been keeping track of them; no one knew they were there. They may have been there since the 1960s.
Panicked scientists put the materials in a box, sealed it with clear packaging tape, and carried it to a supervisor’s office. (This is not approved handling of dangerous biological materials.) It was later found that the integrity of one vial was compromised — luckily, not one containing a deadly virus.
The 1979 and 2014 incidents grabbed attention because they involved smallpox, but incidents of unintended exposure to controlled biological agents are actually quite common. Hundreds of incidents occur every year, though not all involve potentially pandemic-causing pathogens.
In 2014, a researcher accidentally contaminated a vial of a fairly harmless bird flu with a far-deadlier strain. The deadlier bird flu was then shipped across the country to a lab that didn’t have authorization to handle such a dangerous virus, where it was used for research on chickens.
The mistake was discovered only when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted an extensive investigation in the aftermath of a different mistake — the potential exposure of 75 federal employees to live anthrax, after a lab that was supposed to inactivate the anthrax samples accidentally prepared activated ones.
The CDC’s Select Agents and Toxins program requires “theft, loss, release causing an occupational exposure, or release outside of primary biocontainment barriers” of agents on its watchlist be immediately reported. Between 2005 and 2012, the agency got 1,059 release reports — an average of one incident every few days. Here are a few examples:
In 2009, a new high-security bioresearch facility — rated to handle Ebola, smallpox, and other dangerous pathogens — had its decontamination showers fail. The pressurized chamber kept losing pressure and the door back into the lab kept bursting open while the scientists leaned against it to try to keep it closed. Building engineers were eventually called to handle the chemical showers manually.
In 2011, a worker at a lab that studied dangerous strains of bird flu found herself unable to shower after a construction contractor accidentally shut off the water. She removed her protective equipment and left without taking a decontaminating shower. (She was escorted to another building and showered there, but pathogens could have been released in the meantime.)
Now, the vast majority of these mistakes never infect anyone. And while 1,059 is an eye-popping number of accidents, it actually reflects a fairly low rate of accidents — working in a controlled biological agents lab is safe compared to many occupations, like trucking or fishing.
But a trucking or fishing accident will, at worst, kill a few dozen people, while a pandemic pathogen accident could potentially kill a few million. Considering the stakes and worst-case scenarios involved, it’s hard to look at those numbers and conclude that our precautions against disaster are sufficient.
Reviewing the incidents, it looks like there are many different points of failure — machinery that’s part of the containment process malfunctions;regulations aren’t sufficient or aren’t followed. Human error means live viruses are handled instead of dead ones.
Now imagine such an error involving viruses enhanced through gain-of-function research. “If an enhanced novel strain of flu escaped from a laboratory and then went on to cause a pandemic, then causing millions of deaths is a serious risk,” Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, told me last year.
The cost-benefit analysis for pathogens that might kill the people exposed or a handful of others is vastly different from the cost-benefit analysis for pathogens that could cause a pandemic — but our current procedures don’t really account for that. As a result, allowing gain-of-function research meansrunning unacceptable risks with millions of lives. It’s high time to rethink that.
nyt: Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns
Problems with disposal of dangerous materials led the government to suspend research at the military’s leading biodefense center.
Denise Braun prepared to demonstrate lab work during a media tour at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., in 2011.CreditCreditPatrick Semansky/Associated Press
Safety concerns at a prominent military germ lab have led the government to shut down research involving dangerous microbes like the Ebola virus.
“Research is currently on hold,” the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Fort Detrick, Md., said in a statement on Friday. The shutdown is likely to last months, Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman, said in an interview.
The statement said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to issue a “cease and desist order” last month to halt the research at Fort Detrick because the center did not have “sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater” from its highest-security labs.
But there has been no threat to public health, no injuries to employees and no leaks of dangerous material outside the laboratory, Ms. Vander Linden said.
In the statement, the C.D.C. cited “national security reasons” as the rationale for not releasing information about its decision.
The institute is a biodefense center that studies germs and toxins that could be used to threaten the military or public health, and also investigates disease outbreaks. It carries out research projects for government agencies, universities and drug companies, which pay for the work. It has about 900 employees.
The shutdown affects a significant portion of the research normally conducted there, Ms. Vander Linden said.
The suspended research involves certain toxins, along with germs called select agents, which the government has determined have “the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products.” There are 67 select agents and toxins; examples include the organisms that cause Ebola, smallpox, anthrax and plague, and the poison ricin.
In theory, terrorists could use select agents as weapons, so the government requires any organization that wants to handle them to pass a background check, register, follow safety and security procedures, and undergo inspections through a program run by the C.D.C. and the United States Department of Agriculture. As of 2017, 263 laboratories — government, academic, commercial or private — had registered with the program.
The institute at Fort Detrick was part of the select agent program until its registration was suspended last month, after the C.D.C. ordered it to stop conducting the research.
The problems date back to May 2018, when storms flooded and ruined a decades-old steam sterilization plant that the institute had been using to treat wastewater from its labs, Ms. Vander Linden said. The damage halted research for months, until the institute developed a new decontamination system using chemicals.
The new system required changes in certain procedures in the laboratories. During an inspection in June, the C.D.C. found that the new procedures were not being followed consistently. Inspectors also found mechanical problems with the chemical-based decontamination system, as well as leaks, Ms. Vander Linden said, though she added that the leaks were within the lab and not to the outside world.
“A combination of things” led to the cease and desist order, and the loss of registration, she said.
Dr. Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University, said in an email that problems with the institute’s new chemical-based decontamination process might mean it would have to go back to a heat-based system “which, if it requires constructing a new steam sterilization plant, could entail very long delays and very high costs.”
Although many projects are on hold, Ms. Vander Linden said scientists and other employees are continuing to work, just not on select agents. She said many were worried about not being able meet deadlines for their projects.
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UPDATE: LATER JOSH ROGIN APPEARANCE ON JOE ROGAN’S PODCAST
Washington Post’s Josh Rogin Calls Out Media for Ignoring Fauci’s Potential Connection to Wuhan Lab
Rudy Takala April 25, 2021
Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin lamented the media’s refusal to discuss aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s potential connection to a Wuhan lab, in an interview with Megyn Kelly.
“This body of research, this gain-of-function research, the whole world of virologists … it’s very insular,” Rogin said in an interview on Kelly’s podcast. “I often talk to scientists who say the same thing, who say, ‘Listen, we really want to speak out about this, but we can’t do it.’ Why can’t we do it? Well, We get all of our funding from NIH, or NIAID, which is run by Dr. Fauci. … And so we can’t say anything like ‘Oh, gain-of-function research might be dangerous, or it might have come from a lab, because we’re going to lose our careers, we’re going to lose our funding, we’re not going to be able to do our work.’
“Gain-of-function” research focuses on artificially enhancing the transmissibility of pathogens. In the five years prior to the coronavirus pandemic, that research was spearheaded in China by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci has led since 1984, oversees funding for most of the related research in America. The agency falls under the National Institutes of Health, which Rogin referenced.
“The head of the funding, the head of the entire field, really, is Anthony Fauci,” Rogin said. “He’s the godfather of gain-of-function research as we know it. That, what I said right there, is too hot for TV, because people don’t want to think about the fact that our hero of the pandemic … might also have been connected to this research, which might also have been connected to the outbreak.
“The problem is not that they were doing something wrong or illegal,” he noted. “The problem is that nobody knows what this legal stuff was that was going on. And now, all of a sudden, we have to take a look at it.”
Fauci has inspired critics in some quarters for his role in approving a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan lab in 2015 to engage in related research, which came just a year after the Obama administration issued a moratorium on conducting such research in the U.S.
Rogin claimed in a book published last month that sources informed him China engaged in that research more aggressively than was previously understood, arguing that it contributed to evidence the Covid-19 pandemic stemmed from the lab in Wuhan.
“The Wuhan Institute of Virology had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions,” Rogin noted in the book. “But [an] official told me the U.S. government had evidence that Chinese labs were performing gain-of-function research on a much larger scale than was publicly disclosed, meaning they were taking more risks in more labs than anyone outside China was aware of. This insight, in turn, fed into the lab-accident hypothesis in a new and troubling way.”
Rogin expanded on that statement in his interview with Kelly, saying, “Dr. Fauci, the hero of the pandemic, might also have had a role in the research that may have caused the pandemic.”
“People can’t get it through their heads, but that’s the reality,” he added, before lamenting that the topic was largely absent from public dialogue. “We don’t have a media environment where we can have that kind of discussion.”
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This is a corroboration of a few recent reports from various news outlets in India and external sources. We face another grave under-reported fact in a “top-shelf authoritative source” CV. Or CR. The ramifications are vast. We have much more of these to disclose in the near future.
<< India has asked the American frontline public health agency, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop funding virus research studies in the country. CDC was caught funding Karnataka’s Manipal Center for Virus Research (MCVR) for secretly carrying out research on the lethal Nipah virus – a pathogen considered potential bioweapon. The fact that an under-qualified private laboratory was secretly handling a dangerous virus under government’s nose at the behest of a foreign agency has raised major concerns within the health ministry apparatus.
The matter is more complicated with the fact that the CDC has a checkered history in India. The Indian defense establishment believes that the CDC was involved in the plague outbreak in the western Indian city of Surat in 1994, which they consider to be a case of bioterrorism. Earlier in February this year the Indian government launched an investigation into another secret research being conducted on bat hunters in the eastern Indian state of Nagaland, funded by the US Department of Defense in collaboration with Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
India Blacklists US CDC For Secretly Funding Bioweapons Research At Manipal Institute Of Virology | GreatGameIndia https://t.co/VpwWNp7Y19
A $3.6 million donation from Atlanta-based US health agency CDC to Indian research agencies for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has been put on hold by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The CDC has been placed on the watchlist since December 2019 for its involvement in funding virus research without government’s approval.
The Nipah research fiasco that came into light in October last year was the primary reason behind the MHA decision. As of now, any funding or donation from the U.S government body CDC would be first cleared by the MHA itself. They can no longer send funds directly to any government or private institution in India without MHA’s clearance.
No translation availables, sorry!
CDC secretly funds risky virus research in India
In October 2019, Hindustan Times reported that the Union health ministry wrote to both CDC and Manipal Center for Virus Research, ordering them to shut down the study related to Nipah virus that belongs to Risk Group 4 (RG4) classification. The RG4 viruses are considered highly dangerous and have no treatment or vaccine. They can only be tested in BSL4 lab which is the highest level of biological safety. The health ministry was upset that a study related to high risk pathogens like Nipah was being carried out at MCVR which is BSL2+ level facility.
A memorandum sent out by the health ministry said:
“It has been brought to our notice that CDC had trained MCVR for diagnosis of Nipah virus disease (NIV) in spite of the known fact that NIV is BSL 4 level pathogen whereas MCVR is a level BSL2+lab. Prior to this training to MCVR, CDC has not consulted national/govt agencies as per norm. Since Nipah is a high risk pathogen with potential for being used as agent of bio-terrorism the samples were to be handled more carefully and tested only in a BSL4.”
While CDC admitted that the training program didn’t have the necessary approval due to some confusion, it maintained that they did not commission the research directly. “The training was done through the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) and was aimed at strengthening laboratory systems in India which allowed for detection of Nipah virus.”
International collaborations of Manipal Center of Virus Research
CDC has partnered with MCVR to carry out illness surveillance across India under the project known as AFI surveillance which tracks mysterious diseases in the government hospitals. The Indian government has now asked both agencies to stop the surveillance project. It also warned CDC to ensure all funding is approved by the government.
In its defence, MCVR denied carrying out any risky virus isolation work at their lab. Dr. Arunkumar, Director of MCVR, said:
“We did not take approval from HMSC. Prior to testing, MCVR inactivated the virus. Inactivation of the virus was carried out in BSL3 facility at MCVR. Once inactivated, the virus cannot spread. Molecular testing was carried at MCVR in its BSL2 facility. No Nipah virus sample was transferred from MCVR to any other lab (except NIV Pune) within and outside the country.”
Investigation on secret research on Bat Hunters
This is not the first time a dangerous research took place in India without keeping the government in loop. Back in February this year, the officials confirmed to that foreign funded researchers were conducting study on bats and bat hunters (humans) in the northeastern state of Nagaland. Bats are known to often carry viruses such as ebola, SARS coronavirus, rabies,etc.
What’s more alarming was that two of the 12 researchers belonged to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Department of Emerging Infectious Diseases – the same institute from where COVID-19 outbreak is believed to have originated. The Nagaland study was funded by the United States Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction agency (DTRA).
The results of the study were published in October last year in the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal, originally established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
To conduct a high-risk study in India, they would have needed special permissions from the Indian authorities which was not sought by the parties involved in the study. The fact that scientists from foreign countries were allowed to handle live samples of bats and bat hunters without permission prompted Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to send a five-member committee to investigate the matter.
Funding of controversial Gain-of-Function research
Even before the coronavirus outbreak, a number of controversial studies were being carried out at China’s Wuhan lab under the patronage of United States’ National Institutes of Health (NIH). One of the studies is the gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses which involves mutating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans.
The gain-of-function research has been widely criticized by the scientists around the world due to the risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
However, last year the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research. A total of $7.5 million of American tax dollars have been spent since 2014 for conducting GoF studies.
Role of CDC in Surat plague
The plague outbreak in the western Indian city of Surat in 1994 has been mired in controversy just as COVID-19. Around 55 people died and close to a half of the city of 1.2 million people fled Surat for fear of the plague and of being quarantined.
The origin of the outbreak is still a mystery. Indian defense establishment believes the 1994 Surat Plague is a case of bioterrorism. Numerous media outlets at the time reported the involvement of American CDC. It was suspected that the germ with an extra protein ring was developed by a CDC lab in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Thus it comes as no surprise that Indian authorities are taking no chances this time around with CDC, especially since the world is already under the grip of a virus pandemic and the role of CDC is increasingly being seen as suspicious. >> GGI
Dear @GreatGameIndia It appears that one of your study concerning HIV insertions inside coronavirus made it to a Nobel prize winner, Luc Montagnier https://t.co/82BMeFiAhq
He discovered HIV was nominated for a Nobel prize in 2008/2009. He was inspired by an Indian group.
Additionally, The Week Magazine from India reported recently:
<< Did the novel coronavirus leak similarly through a worker in a biowar lab in Wuhan? The Washington Times, which is known for its CIA links, has raised the suspicion in an article quoting Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biowarfare.
Indian scientists would not rule out the possibility. The Wuhan lab, said Dr William Selvamurthy, a former chief controller of the Defence Research and Development Organisation who was in charge of the life science labs, could have been keeping the virus under BSL-4 (biosafety level-4)—the most secure condition for reseach. So, the possibility of someone having been infected from the lab and inadvertently spreading it could not be ruled out, said Selvamurthy.
The Wuhan Institute is officially acknowledged to be China’s most advanced virus research lab complex. China, a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) since 1985, had, in 1993, declared the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products as one of eight biowarfare research facilities covered by the BWC. Yet, last year’s US state department report on arms control compliance had accused China of working on military pathogens for offensive purposes. It said the US had concerns with respect to “Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat”.
China has maintained that the virus has originated from wild animals sold at a market in Wuhan. The lab under suspicion is just about 30km from the market. The virus has been identified as a virulent strain, much like any classical germ warfare strain—they were designed to be virulent initially, but quickly controllable. The idea, as a military scientist explained, was for the germ to be released in hostile territory to disable the enemy, but the territory would have to be quickly sanitised for your own forces to capture it.
During the 1994 plague outbreak in Surat and Beed, it was found that the germs had an extra protein ring which could only have been inserted artificially. Indian scientists had raised concerns about a US biowar experiment having gone awry. THE WEEK had carried reports giving details of germ war research being carried on in labs under the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta and about a newly developed germ detector being tested. The US embassy had denied the allegations. There were also reports that the Surat germ could have been developed in a lab in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
There have been rumours and reports in Chinese cybermedia in the last few days suggesting that the Wuhan outbreak could have been a US biowar attack. This, US officials consider, was an attempt to preempt charges that the new virus had escaped from the Wuhan lab, which had been in the crosshairs of the west especially after a team of Chinese virologists working in a lab in Winnipeg, Canada, unauthorisedly sent samples of some of the deadliest viruses on earth to China.” >> – The Week Mag
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The cover illustration IS the content I wanted to draw attention on. Because very few people understand how this social parasite named CDC operates. I don’t fully understand it either, but I know this much: it sucks from many hosts at once, it destroys some and feeds back some others. I’ll be back with more amazing and wordy exposes and analysis shortly. Taken from:
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It’s simple: From the very beginning of the Covidiocracy, there were two definite choices: the official narrative or any of the others. One way or another, the balance inclined for the official one, which has already led to more death, pain and destruction than any virus since the previous major pandemic (cull?) 100 years ago. Any of the alternative narratives warned this is more than a risk, it’s pretty much a certain effect of the official narrative. We were right. We were ignored by the decision makers and their lemmings. That resulted in incommensurable death, pain, and loss. The case for Nuremberg 2 has never been stronger, this is just one file.
Only that many bodies you can sweep under a fake pandemic rug.
I MYSELF WAS CLOSE TO BE ONE OF THEM. THING IS I, LIKE MANY MANY OTHERS, STILL FIND IT MORE APPEALING THAN LIFE AMONG COVIDIOTS, WE’RE JUST STILL HOPING TO FIND A WAY TO GET THEM OFF OUR BACKS. YOU CAN COUNT THIS AS A VICTIM TESTIMONY FROM SOMEONE WHO LOST EVERYTHING HE LOVED AND DREAMED OF TO THE GREAT RESET AND ALL THE COVIDIOCRACY. NOT TO A VIRUS – Silviu ‘Silview’ Costinescu
Before Covid, an American youth died by suicide every six hours. Suicide is a major public health threat and a leading cause of death for those aged under 25 — one far bigger than Covid. And it is something that we have only made worse as we, led by politicians and ‘the science,’ deprived our youngest members of society — who constitute one-third of the US population — of educational, emotional and social development without their permission or consent for over a year.
And why? For what?
A post I made during my one month hunger-strike last summer
We were scared. We were scared for our lives and those of people we love. And, like your average German-on-the-street in the 1930s and 40s, we believed that doing what we were told and supporting the national cause would save us and our families.
The reality is we sacrificed others without a second thought. We have sacrificed our youths’ lives and future livelihoods in a desperate attempt to save a slim minority of the elderly population who have surpassed the average US life expectancy of 78.8 years and those who were already on their way out.
Source: Data from “NC-EST2019-SYASEXN: Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Single Year of Age and Sex for the United States: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2019.” 2020 Census.
The median age — not the average, but the middle — of Covid-deaths is 80. Covid poses minimal risk to healthy individuals under 65, and is even less of a threat to youths (those aged under 25). In fact, preliminary data suggest Covid accounted for barely 1.2% of all deaths in the under-25 age group. Graphically, that’s the solid red line along the bottom of the graph below — the one you would probably miss if I didn’t draw attention to it. The distance between that and the solid pink line across the top that caught your eye? That represents the other 98.8% of deaths that had nothing to do with Covid.
Source: Data from “Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age, and Week.” CDC 2020. As data is provisional it may not include complete data for the final 8 weeks (the time period with large decline on the graph) and is subject to change.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that, compared to 2018 and 2019 deaths per 100k, 2020 saw one extra death among those under age five, an additional 1.5 deaths among those aged 5 to 14, and a whopping 23 additional deaths among those aged 15 to 24. Overall, deaths per 100k in this age group jumped from 106.4 per 100k in 2019 to 131.7 per 100k during 2020. That’s an increase of 23% — and Covid only accounts for 1.2% of total deaths in ages 0–24 years.
All-Cause Deaths per 100,000 of US population under 25 years
Ages
2018
2019
2020
1 – 4 Years
24
23.3
24.3
5 – 14 Years
13.3
13.4
14.9
15 -24 Years
70.2
69.7
92.5
Total < 25
107.5
106.4
131.7
Source: 2018/2019 data from “Mortality in the United States, 2019,” Figure 3: Death rates for ages 1 year and over: United States, 2018 and 2019; and 2020 data drawn from “Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age, and Week.” 2020 data is an estimate based on the CDC’s provisional death count – which may not include complete data for the previous 8 weeks and is subject to change.
The biggest increase in youth deaths occurred in the 15-24 age bracket — the age group most susceptible to committing suicide, and which constitutes 91% of youth suicides. Indeed, as early as July 2020 — just four months into the pandemic — CDC Director Robert Redfield remarked that
there has been another cost that we’ve seen, particularly in high schools. We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID. We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose.
Official Narrative: Covid made him crazy, that’s why he killed himself, not becuase we’re criminally stupid and greedy. If you’re part of this, you’re a war criminal
Although complete national suicide data for 2020 likely won’t be publicly available until 2022, Redfield’s claim is supported by the increase in calls and emails witnessed by mental illness hotlines.
Between March and August the National Alliance on Mental Illness HelpLine reported a 65% increase in calls and emails. The Trevor Project — which targets suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth — saw double its usual call volume. The jump in helpline calls hadn’t let up by the end of 2020: in November Crisis Text Line received 180,000 calls — its highest volume ever, and an increase of 30,000 from the previous month. Over 90% of those were from people under 35.
No lives matter to the Great Resetters and their covidiot pets
Such “deaths of despair” tend to be higher among youths, particularly for those about to graduate or enter the workforce. With economic shrinkage due to lockdowns and forced closures of universities, youths face both less economic opportunity and limited social support — which plays an important role in reporting and preventing self-harm — through social networks. “We know that participation in sports and a connection to school can have a profound protective effect,” says Pittsburgh psychiatry professor David Brent. But “the stressor that COVID represents,” says University of Oregon clinical psychology professor Nick Allen,
takes away [the] good things [in life]. You can’t go to sporting events, you can’t see your friends, you can’t go to parties. […] we’re taking away high points in people’s lives that give them reward and meaning. […] over time, the anhedonia, the loss of pleasure, is going to drive you down a lot more.
And, “while adults have had multiple years to practice stress management and build skills around that,” says YouthLine program director, Emily Moser, “young people haven’t had that.” Many of YouthLine’s callers grieved not being able to do things they normally could — from after-school activities, to spending time with friends and missing milestones such as graduations. Many of these mental health problems and suicidal behaviour created by lockdowns, “are likely to be present for longer and peak later than the actual pandemic,” according to University of Bristol suicidology expert David J. Gunnell.
Generally suicides decrease in the immediate aftermath of short-term local or national emergencies (such as hurricanes) because, as the University of Kentucky’s director of the Suicide Prevention and Exposure Laboratory, Julie Cerel, explained, “[p]eople have [a] pull-together mentality.” However, this effect appears to disintegrate over longer periods of crisis, such as in the aftermath of financial crises. Between 2008 and 2012, in the wake of the financial crisis, suicide was the second (ages 15-19) and third leading cause of youth deaths (ages 10-14 and 20-24).
In August 2020, FAIR Health found a 334% spike in intentional self-harm claims among 13–18 year olds in the Northeast compared to the same month in 2019. Nationally self-harm medical claim lines nearly doubled for this group in both March and April, while claim lines for overdoses as a percentage of all medical claim lines increased 95% and 119% percent respectively.
We published this in September 2020
Indeed, during the first eight months of 2020, suicides in Los Alamos (NM) tripled while Fresno (CA) numbers jumped 70% in June 2020 compared to the same month the previous year. Even the CDC acknowledges a 31% increase in the proportion of mental health-related ER visits for 12 to 17 year olds between March and October last year compared to the previous year.
Suicide is already the 10th leading cause of death in the US, with one death for every 24 attempts. Yet we continue to sacrifice the well-being of 103.3 million youths — equivalent to roughly 31.5% of the US population — out of fear for a fraction of the 4% that live past the average life expectancy of 78.8 years.
Why are we even attempting to subject the entirety of the US population to isolation and ineffectual mask-wearing, instead of supporting voluntary focused protection for those who actually need it? And why do we continue to deny all groups the opportunity to enjoy and celebrate life when, after one year, deaths from and with Covid — number 520,000 — and are barely equivalent to 0.16% of the population?
Society needs to remember that the stolen Covid generation will one day run the country. Teachers resisting returning to class should recognize that this generation currently locked-in to bedroom Zoom classes will one day care for us in our old age. And politicians should remember that this generation whose rights have so blatantly been violated will soon be able to vote.
***
If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
“As above, so below”. The clip above is the same as the one below. IF WE KNEW, THEY KNEW, AND THEY SHOWED IT. THE DEATHS WERE ALLOWED, WHICH IS SAME THING AS COMMITING THEM.
Nazism, COVID-19 and the destruction of modern medicine: An interview with Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav, Part One
We tried to turn this into a T-shirt, but Zazzle won’t allow it. Surprise. Not.
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Americans are being told that a manufacturing problem in a U.K. pharmaceutical plant has led to the U.S. shortage of flu vaccines. Americans aren’t being told (and we aren’t either) that the real manufacturer at fault is a U.S. government agency, the Centers for Disease Control, along with the World Health Organization and other vaccinate-anything-that-moves ideologues that have fabricated a phony crisis over the flu vaccine.
October 24, 2004
“Epidemics of influenza typically occur during the winter months and are responsible for an average of approximately 20,000 deaths,” the CDC stated in 2002. That number mutated to “36,000 flu-related deaths” in November, 2003, and by December a gathering of public health officials warned that the toll could reach 70,000 this year.
In concert with the ramp-up in death statistics, the government-steered vaccination industry has run an elaborate bureaucracy designed to hype vaccine use, as seen in a slide show presentation last April by Glen Nowak, the CDC’s spokesman for the National Immunization Program, to the American Medical Association. Here is the “Recipe that fosters influenza vaccine interest and demand,” in the truncated language that appears on his slides: “Medical experts and public health authorities [should] publicly (e.g. via media) state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) – and urge influenza vaccination.” This “recipe,” the slide show indicated, would result in “A. Significant media interest and attention [and] B. Framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behaviour (e.g. as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or past years,’ ‘deadly’).” Other aspects of the CDC’s “Seven-Step Recipe for Generating Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination” includes “Continued reports (e.g., from health officials and media) that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people – helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.” and “Visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).”
This motivational slide show was designed to push the bounds of the vaccinated. Where once only at-risk populations were targeted – chiefly the elderly – the vac-crats now aspire to vaccinate the healthy. In the 2002-2003 flu season, the last for which the CDC has reliable numbers, almost 21 million healthy Americans between the ages of two and 64 were vaccinated. The unabashed goal of the vaccination ideologues is universal vaccination, starting with the universal vaccination of children. Because vaccinations in the United States, as in Canada, are generally a pre-condition of admittance into the school system, children make easy prey for the vaccine totalitarians. The U.S. government, in fact, spends more than US$1-billion a year – 55% of the entire childhood vaccine market – to purchase childhood vaccines for poor and uninsured children.
But doesn’t all this vaccinating save countless lives at virtually no risk? In truth, no one knows, because the studies haven’t been done, even in the case of highly sensitive childhood vaccinations. During the last flu season, for example, the CDC received reports of 152 flu deaths among children. Is this high or is this low?
“The answer to this question is not known,” the CDC stated. “Because the number of influenza deaths in children has not been tracked before, it’s not possible to compare the number of deaths in children this year with previous years.”
As for evidence of the efficacy of flu vaccinations in the general population, again, the CDC is operating in the dark. When asked last year if annual follow-ups were performed to determine if the vaccine was effective, the CDC’s Nancy Cox, chief of its influenza branch, admitted, “There is no systematic follow-up to see, to document whether the general population who receives a flu vaccine is infected by a flu virus, because it’s an impossible task. I mean, we have 80 million doses or 70 million doses given and it would be impossible to follow up.” To add to the futility of even trying, Dr. Cox explained that most cases of flu-like illnesses – about 80% – in fact are caused by “many other pathogens.”
The bottom line on the medical benefit of flu shots for healthy people? No one knows. The benefit is entirely a matter of faith among the true believers in the vaccination bureaucracy. The bottom line on the medical harm caused by flu vaccines? Again, no one knows. Various studies do raise concerns, however. One year ago, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences found weak evidence that the flu vaccine triggers neurological disorders, and the IOM’s immunization safety review committee also found that other studies, based on poor data and poor methodologies, do not give vaccines a clean bill of health. Said the committee’s chairman: “The possibility that neurological disorders might be related to vaccines must be given serious consideration.”
New flu vaccines, such as those made from live viruses, pose new types of risks since the vaccines themselves could become unintended disseminators of the flu. Because some 80% of recipients of this type of vaccine shed it to the environment, doctors are advised to avoid prescribing it to those in close contact with at-risk populations, such as those who have compromised immune systems.
The biggest risk of all from flu vaccines, however, may come from weakening the human body’s natural defences. If children are inoculated against the flu as babies, they will never develop the strong, natural immunities they will need to fend off new strains, making them dependent on the vaccine industry’s ability to stay ahead of ever-mutating viruses. Last year’s experience with the dreaded A/Fujian flu provides a chilling scenario. When a vaccine for this flu proved difficult to mass-produce in time for the annual flu season, the World Health Organization, under pressure to do something, gave labs around the world the go-ahead to produce an alternate vaccine, for a different strain of flu, likely to be of little value. As expected, the vaccine proved to have almost no value, although the countless people around the world who lined up for it didn’t know that at the time. Fortunately, people had natural defenses, which are far more potent and longer-lived than vaccines, to protect them. In future, a population vaccinated from the cradle that had never fought off the flu on its own could be highly vulnerable.
Without the international medical bureaucracy that now controls the vaccine industry and annually whips up public fears, sometimes to the point of public panic, the demand for vaccines would fall to a fraction of current levels. Without other government intervention – everything from industry subsidies to an unhealthy bias in what research government will and will not fund – vaccine safety would be improved, the science would not be dominated by ideologues tilting toward universal vaccination and the demand for flu vaccines would fall further still, to more closely correspond to the real, not hyped, public needs. There would be no crisis.
Lawrence Solomon is research director at Consumer Policy Institute. To contact, e-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.
FAST FORWARD TO 2020
I rest my case
BONUS:
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Never believe what we say, always research what we say. As for CDC, if you research what they say you end up finding out they have 85% failure rates.
This is the recent CDC report, in PDF format, sourced from the CDC website. And below is my sufficient commentary in visual form. There’s nothing else to say, the official narrative is dead and buried, at this point we’re just burning calories if we keep flogging it.
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“Every study published in the last five years, you look at vaccine refusers, I’m not talking about people we can talk them into coming to terms, but refusers. (54:28 mark) Let’s just get rid of all the whites in the United States, because Houston is the most diverse city in the entire United States.” This is an actual quote from someone, and not just anyone!
THE ORIGINAL VIDEO HAS BEEN UNLISTED, NOT DELETED, comments and likes turned off.
In case they delete it, I got you covered. It’s actually safer to share THIS upload:
On May 9, 2016, in Atlanta, Georgia, the National Meningitis Association (www.nmaus.org) hosted a panel discussion, “Achieving Childhood Vaccine Success in the U.S.,” before its “Give Kids a Shot” Gala. The panel addressed a range of issues including parents who opt out of childhood vaccine requirements, physicians who stray from the recommended vaccine schedule, and the role of the media in creating or removing barriers to vaccination.
The panelists were (from left to right):
Paul Lee, M.D., Director of the International Adoption Program and Pediatric Travel Center at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, New York (moderator).
Carol J. Baker, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.
Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, PhD., Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley’s Hastings College of Law. Reiss favors legal liabilities for parents who opt for non-vaccination, and is noted for her support of California Senate Bill 277, which reduced exemptions to vaccination requirements for enrollment in California schools and daycare centers.
Arthur Caplan, PhD., Professor of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.
William Schaffner, M.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Alison Singer, President of Autism Science Foundation.
Paul Offit, M.D., Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
NOTICE a pattern in the list above?
At the 53:58 mark, Dr. Baker says:
“The fight, the battle is being fought — one family, one physician, one health center. That’s why we’re doing as well as we are. We’re talking about the minority [of vaccine refusers], and strategies against the minority. So I have the solution: Every study published in the last five years, you look at vaccine refusers, I’m not talking about people we can talk them into coming to terms, but refusers. (54:28 mark) Let’s just get rid of all the whites in the United States, because Houston is the most diverse city in the entire United States. There are seven Asian languages spoken in that city. I’ve been in the [racial] minority for more than 20 years in the city of Houston. The majority of them are what we all ‘Hispanics’ — it’s not a race or an ethnicity, it’s a political designation. A lot of them are from Central or South America, Mexico. Guess who wants to get vaccinated the most in Houston? Immigrants! It is the ‘well educated’ — in terms of pieces of paper and the paper on the wall — [who are the vaccine refusers], people that have been here for a long time, and it’s very unfortunate and. But I think we need not lose the big picture. The big picture is there are physicians out there — family practitioners, pediatricians, internists — talking one on one with either the older child — I don’t know when a child stops being a child. For me, I was 30, I wrote my mother and said ‘Hey, I’m a grown-up’. They’d already given me an M.D. degree by then, so it’s a good thing I was grown up. I think that we need to do things as an articulate media-trained group to encourage that conversation, and encourage our health care system to value what vaccines do. Give people enough time to talk to individual families. Most hesitant people, it’s absolutely right, someone said it earlier, some families are having ‘pre-natal visits’. That’s the time to talk about vaccines. This war is fought one on one, with individual families. We need to support those policies that give health care providers, nurses, I mean nurses are really really important, they’re the ones who are probably giving the shots, and if they’re not on board with accepting vaccines, then do you think they’re gonna be supportive of you recommending a vaccine? You have to have your whole [health care] practice situation on board.”
Three years after this, she got decorated by the Sabin Vaccine Institute with funding from Bill Gates.
The 2019 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal ceremony was made possible in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Pfizer.
Dr. Baker is professor of pediatrics and of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. Previously, she was head of the section of infectious diseases in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine for 25 years. Dr. Baker is immediate past chair of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. She is a past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and was a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases from 1997-2012. Dr. Baker is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a past-president of NFID and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and a former chair of the ACIP. Among numerous honors, she received the John P. Utz Leadership Award from NFID; the Mentor Award, Society Citation for outstanding achievements in the field of infectious disease, and the Alexander Fleming Award for Lifetime Achievement from IDSA; and the Albert Sabin Gold Medal Award from the Sabin Vaccine Institute.
“Baker’s discoveries about the relationship between infant GBS and maternal immunity, paired with her international advocacy work, have also led to the development of a much-needed vaccine, with candidates currently in clinical trials. She continues to work toward her ultimate goal of preventing this newborn disease through immunizing the mother during pregnancy.
A highly accomplished infectious diseases clinician, teacher and vaccinologist, Baker is known as “the Godmother of group B Streptococcus prevention.” Recognized for her work at a time when many physicians were against vaccinating expectant mothers, Baker’s advocacy for maternal immunization shaped a new medical culture in the United States, enabling doctors to save the lives of countless newborns.
Baker continues to advocate for the health of mothers and babies, such as shepherding the recommendation for routine pertussis booster vaccines for pregnant women while chairing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from 2009 to 2012.
“Dr. Baker’s pioneering work in group B Strep resulted in a more than 80 percent reduction of neonatal disease in the United States and her research is paving the way for the development of a long-overdue vaccine for this disease,” said Amy Finan, Sabin’s chief executive officer. “Each year, we select someone whose career exemplifies Dr. Sabin’s legacy – to ensure the benefits of vaccines reach every child. Today, we are glad to recognize not only a gifted researcher, but a champion who has made it her mission to ensure every baby gets a healthy start. Her life is a testament to the fact that real changes in immunization practices occur when research is paired with dedicated advocacy.”
Baker has authored or co-authored more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. Notable among these is her work on the book, Vaccine-Preventable Disease: The Forgotten Story, where, alongside other respected vaccine experts, she highlighted the stories of innocent children who have suffered needlessly from vaccine-preventable diseases.
“I am honored to be awarded the distinguished Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal alongside fellow recipients whose work has saved so many lives,” Baker said. “I never planned to be a researcher. I became a doctor to help one patient at a time, but what I found was a calling to use the knowledge gained through research to advocate for life-saving interventions for mothers and babies. I sincerely thank the Sabin Vaccine Institute for the incredible honor of this award.”
The award was presented to Baker by Roger I. Glass, MD, PhD, director of the Fogarty International Center, 2015 recipient of the Sabin Award and husband of Dean Barbara J. Stoll, MD.
Awarded annually since 1994, the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal recognizes champions who have made extraordinary contributions in the field of vaccinology or a complementary field. The award commemorates the legacy of Dr. Albert B. Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine that made monumental contributions to the near eradication of polio worldwide, then worked tirelessly to ensure the vaccine reached children around the world. Past Gold Medal recipients include Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Anne Gershon and the late Dr. Maurice Hilleman, among many other distinguished vaccine experts.
An infectious diseases clinician, teacher and vaccinologist, Dr. Carol Baker’s discoveries about GBS immunity and pathogenesis helped shape the 1996 CDC consensus guidelines for routine GBS screening among pregnant women. Formerly the president of Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, she chaired multiple working groups within CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices over the course of many years.
Active on numerous editorial boards, Dr. Baker has worked on five editions of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Red Book (2000-2015), which provides reliable and clinically useful information on more than 200 childhood infectious diseases. She has received many honors and awards, including the Maurice Hilleman Award from the CDC; the Mentor, Society Citation and Alexander Fleming Lifetime Achievement awards from the IDSA; the Distinguished Physician Award from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society; and the Schneerson-Robbins Award in Vaccinology.
Baker earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Southern California and received her medical, residency and fellowship training at Baylor College of Medicine and Harvard University.
The Sabin Vaccine Institute is a leading advocate for expanding vaccine access and uptake globally, advancing vaccine research and development, and amplifying vaccine knowledge and innovation. Unlocking the potential of vaccines through partnership, Sabin has built a robust ecosystem of funders, innovators, implementers, practitioners, policy makers and public stakeholders to advance its vision of a future free from preventable diseases. As a non-profit with more than two decades of experience, Sabin is committed to finding solutions that last and extending the full benefits of vaccines to all people, regardless of who they are or where they live.
The 2019 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal ceremony was made possible in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Pfizer.” – Sabin Vaccine Institute
Baker elected to national academy
“A highly accomplished infectious diseases clinician, educator, and vaccinologist, Carol Baker, MD, adjunct professor in the Department of Pediatrics in McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine (NAM).
Baker was one of 100 professionals elected to the academy for outstanding professional achievement this week.
“This remarkable and well-deserved honor recognizes Dr. Baker’s lifelong contributions to mothers and babies,” said Barbara J. Stoll, MD, dean of McGovern Medical School and H. Wayne Hightower Distinguished Professor.
Baker was recognized for her expertise in group B streptococcal (GBS) epidemiology, pathogenesis, and prevention, and discovering the critical capsular component for conjugate vaccine development.
Baker has spent her career advocating on behalf of the health of mothers and babies. “I wanted to be a doctor since the age of 6, and I was determined to do something that helped children’s lives,” she said, adding that she was inspired to become a doctor by her mother – her parents met in college and were both pre-med.
She said she was “absolutely surprised and thrilled” at the incredible honor of being elected to NAM. “I hadn’t been that surprised since I was the only woman admitted to my class in medical school,” she added.
Baker earned her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in 1968, completed her internship at University of Southern California Medical Center, Los Angeles; and completed her residency and fellowship at Baylor as well as a research fellowship at Harvard. Her advocacy for maternal immunization shaped a new medical culture in the United States, enabling doctors to save the lives of countless newborns.
“Election to the Academy affirms that this was worthwhile,” she said. “But this honor reflects the whole team – those who work in the lab, the clinical research – I didn’t do this alone.”
Baker adds this distinction to many other awards, including the 2019 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal, the Maurice Hilleman Award from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention; the Mentor, Society Citation, and Alexander Fleming Lifetime Achievement awards from the Infectious Diseases Society of America; the Distinguished Physician Award from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society; and the Schneerson-Robbins Award in Vaccinology.
Established originally as the Institute of Medicine in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, the NAM addresses critical issues in health, science, medicine, and related policy and inspires positive actions across sectors. Membership in NAM is based upon distinguished professional achievement in a field related to medicine and health, as well as demonstrated and continued involvement with the issues of health care, prevention of disease, education, or research.” – Office of Communications UTH, October 23, 2019
Bonus: Now let’s find out who should be the main targets for the new vaccines
What happened to George Floyd was brutal and horrible and should never happen to anyone, anywhere. This is a moment of reckoning in the United States. We all need to really pause during this time and learn as best we can from it. Even before we saw this senseless death, COVID had already started to show us gaps and structural problems in our country. We are seeing black men die at a disproportionate rate. We know the way out of COVID-19 will be a vaccine, and it needs to go out equitably.
Social commentator and a chieftain of the Nigerian Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Femi Fani-Kayode
BLM, as much as everyone else, needs to pay attention if they’re “for reals”. Everyone and all races would be behind them if they took on our common biggest enemies right now
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