By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.<\/p>\n
Dear Readers, This article by Lew Rockwell reporting on Jeffrey Sachs\u2019 investigation for the medical journal, The Lancet, of the origin of the Covid virus is of the utmost importance. The virus is man made and is only the tip of the iceberg of the ongoing creation of dangerous pathogens in biotech laboratories. This work, a form of criminal insanity, is kept secret. Legislative bodies are unaware, and there is no accountability of what is being done or of how the pathogens will be used. The situation for all of us is dangerous beyond belief. The risks are great and totally needless. Unlike nuclear weapons, there is neither awareness nor control over the extremely dangerous biotech creation of dangerous pathogens. Corrupt scientists are playing God with our health and our lives.<\/p>\n
Covid has generated a great of controversy, but one thing can\u2019t be doubted. Covid, and the misguided attempts to combat it, have wreaked havoc since March 2022. How was the Covid virus created? An answer, devastating in its implications, has just come to light. (Thanks to the heroic Ron Unz for tipping us off on this). What you\u2019re about to read sounds like something you would expect from one of our authors at LRC, authors whom the Left is quick to dismiss as \u201cconspiracy theorists.\u201d But the person we\u2019re talking about has impeccable leftwing credentials. He\u2019s the economist Jeffrey Sachs, famous for his work on \u201csustainable development\u201d and \u201cthird-world poverty.\u201d You couldn\u2019t miss reading about him in the mainstream media\u2014at least until recently.<\/p>\n
In an interview published online in Current Affairs, on August 22, \u201cProf. Sachs explains how he, as the head of the COVID-19 commission for a leading medical journal, [The Lancet] came to the conclusion that powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place. He also explains why it is so important to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID: because, he says, there is extremely dangerous research taking place with little accountability, and the public has a right to know since we are the ones whose lives are being put at risk without our consent. \u201c<\/p>\n
The \u201cofficial\u201d view is that the Covid virus was an accident that came from contaminated animal parts in the Wuhan market in China. Sachs suggests that studies that purport to confirm this account have been faked. \u201cWell, the funny thing is those scientists who are saying that said the same thing on February 4, 2020, before they had done any research at all. And they published the same statement in March 2020, before they had any facts at all. So they\u2019re creating a narrative. And they\u2019re denying the alternative hypothesis without looking closely at it. That\u2019s the basic point. \u201c<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the \u201cofficial\u201d truth, in other words the government lies, about Covid. What does Sachs think was really going on? \u201cThe alternative hypothesis is quite straightforward. And that is that there was a lot of research underway in the United States and China on taking SARS-like viruses, manipulating them in the laboratory, and creating potentially far more dangerous viruses. And the particular virus that causes COVID-19, called SARS-Cov-2, is notable because it has a piece of its genetic makeup that makes the virus more dangerous. And that piece of the genome is called the \u2018furin cleavage site.\u2019 Now, what\u2019s interesting, and concerning if I may say so, is that the research that was underway very actively and being promoted, was to insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses to see what would happen. Oops!\u201d<\/p>\n
It gets worse. The \u201cscientists\u201d who published the \u201caccidental market mishap\u201d theory knew it was false, but they circulated this lie to cover up biotech research they didn\u2019t want disturbed. \u201cAt the beginning, which we could date from the first phone call of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a group of virologists on February 1, 2020, the virologists said \u2018Oh my god, that is strange, that could well be a laboratory creation. What is that furin cleavage site doing in there?\u2019 Because scientists knew that was part of an active ongoing research program. And yet, by February 3, the same group is saying \u2018No, no, it\u2019s natural, it\u2019s natural.\u2019 By February 4, they start to draft the papers that are telling the public, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s natural.\u2019 By March, they write a paper\u2014totally spurious, in my view\u2014called the proximal origins paper that is the most cited bio paper in 2020. It said: it is absolutely natural. [Note: the paper\u2019s conclusion is \u2018we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.\u2019] But they didn\u2019t have any of the data that you read about in the New York Times. They didn\u2019t have any of this. They just said the labs weren\u2019t working on this alternative. But you know what, they don\u2019t know what the labs were working on, because they never asked, and NIH hasn\u2019t told us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sachs is emphatic about this: \u201cSo my point is, there is a huge amount of reason to believe that that research was underway. Because there are published papers on this. There are interviews on this. There are research proposals. But NIH isn\u2019t talking. It\u2019s not asking. And these scientists have never asked either. From the very first day, they have kept hidden from view the alternative. And when they discuss the alternative, they don\u2019t discuss the research program. They discuss complete straw men about the lab, not the actual kind of research that was underway, which was to stick furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses in a way that could have created SARS-Cov-2.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m calling for is not the conclusion. I\u2019m calling for the investigation. Finally, after two and a half years of this, it\u2019s time to fess up that it might have come out of a lab and here\u2019s the data that we need to know to find out whether it did.\u201d<\/p>\n
When you read this, you of course want to know more details about motives for the plot Sachs has uncovered. Sachs has an answer: \u201cOne thing that is rather clear to me is that there is so much dangerous research underway right now under the umbrella of biodefense or other things that we don\u2019t know about, that is not being properly controlled. This is for sure. And that\u2019s happening around the world. And governments say \u2018don\u2019t poke your nose into that.\u2019 That\u2019s our business, not your business. But it\u2019s actually our business. It\u2019s our business to understand what is going on with this. This is not to be kept secret. We don\u2019t trust you.<\/p>\n
Let me put it this way: I don\u2019t trust them right now. I want to know. Because even what we know of the dangerous research is enough to raise a lot of questions of responsibility for the future. And to pose the question: \u2018Hey, what other viruses are you guys working on? What should we know?\u2019 Because no matter what the truth is on SARS-Cov-2, what is pretty clear is we\u2019ve got so much technological capacity to engineer dangerous pathogens right now. And a lot of that is being done. And it\u2019s classified. It\u2019s secret, and we don\u2019t know what it is. And I don\u2019t like that feeling at all. I don\u2019t recommend it for us and for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
LRC readers won\u2019t be surprised that the monster \u201cDr.\u201d Anthony Fauci is in this up to his neck. \u201cThe alternative that is the right one to look at is part of a very extensive research program that was underway from 2015 onward, funded by the NIH, by Tony Fauci, in particular NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], and it was to examine the spillover potential of SARS-like viruses. The champions of this research explained in detail their proposals. But after the event, we\u2019d never asked them, \u2018So what were you actually doing? What experiments did you do? What do you know?\u2019 We somehow never asked. It was better just to sweep it under the rug, which is what Fauci and the NIH have done up until this point. Maybe they could tell us, \u2018Oh, full exoneration,\u2019 but they haven\u2019t told us that at all. They haven\u2019t shown us anything.<\/p>\n
So there\u2019s nothing \u2018kooky\u2019 about it, because it\u2019s precisely what the scientists were doing. And then you can listen to the scientists on tape describing why they think the research program is so important, because they say these are dangerous viruses, and therefore we have to prepare broad spectrum vaccines and drugs. They explain it\u2019s not good enough to test one or two viruses. We have to test all of them. And then they came to realize, as I said earlier, that just having a SARS-like virus, if it doesn\u2019t have this piece of the gene, it\u2019s almost surely not going to be that effective. So they got around to the idea. \u2018Well, let\u2019s put these in,\u2019 if you can imagine that. To my mind, it\u2019s mind-boggling.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sachs compares the biotech danger to the threat of nuclear war. \u201cI can tell you one thing that I\u2019ve learned from talking to a lot of scientists in the last couple of years: the technological capacity to do dangerous things using this biotechnology is extraordinary right now. So I want to know what\u2019s being done. I want to know what other governments are doing, too, not just ours. I want some global control over this stuff.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve kind of understood the nuclear risk\u2014even that, of course, is in a lot of ways hidden from view. But this is a clear and present risk. And there\u2019s reason to believe we\u2019re actually in the midst of it, not just hypothetically. So come on: it\u2019s time to open the books everywhere. It\u2019s time to find out. Maybe it was the marketplace. Maybe it wasn\u2019t a lab. But we need to get real answers, now. Not the kind of misdirection that\u2019s been going in since February 2020. Enough nonsense! Enough New York Times stories saying, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s this, it\u2019s that,\u2019 without looking closely at the very plausible laboratory hypothesis.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more. As the great Murray Rothbard would have said, \u201cGet this!\u201d \u201cThe most interesting things that I got as chair of the Lancet commission came from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits and whistleblower leaks from inside the U.S. government. Isn\u2019t that terrible? NIH was actually asked at one point: give us your research program on SARS-like viruses. And you know what they did? They released the cover page and redacted 290 pages. They gave us a cover page and 290 blank pages! That\u2019s NIH, for heaven\u2019s sake. That\u2019s not some corporation. That is the U.S. government charged with keeping us healthy.<\/p>\n
What I found is that we have a lot of data which we\u2019re not finding right now. And I don\u2019t want to have to rely on FOIA and leaks, though those can be incredibly informative. I want clear, independent scientific investigation and transparency. One way to do this would be a bipartisan congressional oversight investigation that had subpoena power. Give us your lab records, your notebooks, your data files of virus strains, and so forth. There are many questions that we need independent scientists to define, to tell us exactly the kinds of information. But we know right now we\u2019re operating in an environment in which the government is working to hide the data that we need to make a real assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past few years, Sachs has also called for a ceasefire in the Ukraine and an end to US economic sanctions against Venezuela. Somehow, I suspect you won\u2019t be hearing much about Sachs anymore in the organs of the kept press.<\/p>\n