The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs heard the testimony of Dr. Steven Quay, who claimed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is involved in the funding of gain-of-function research.
Quay, who has 50 years of experience in the medical industry, described the process of “[g]oing into caves where humans are seldom found, taking a bat fecal sample containing thousands of viruses, bringing those viruses back to a laboratory, and culturing the specimens, where a virus that might be controlled in a diverse natural environment but is now able to grow unrestricted in pure culture provides an immense increase in opportunity for potential pandemic risk, even without genetic engineering.”
These actions are the goal of the Global Virome Project, which is a “Gates Foundation funded, EcoHealth Alliance associated effort,” Quay said. “Their stated goal: collect the estimated 500,000 unknown viruses that are capable of infecting humans and bring them back to a laboratory near you.”
The scientist explained that he finds “no actual benefit of gain-of-function research,” but believes “efforts to ban it, given the vested interests of literally the entire virology community, and maybe others, is a hill too steep to climb.”
He later proposed keeping labs away from centers of public transportation.
“The Line 2 COVID Conduit, as I call it, includes the PLA Hospital, the WIV, the market, and the international airport,” Quay said. “You can literally walk down into the subway system from the WIV in China and next go outside again until you exit into the world in London, Paris, Milan, Dubai, or New York City, all before having any symptoms. Modelling by others suggested the pandemic could not have occurred without the spreading impact of Line 2.”
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Gary Peters (D-MI) said in an opening statement to the hearing that “understanding the possible origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is not only important for our public health, but also a matter of homeland security.”
“We must learn from the challenges faced during this pandemic to ensure we can better protect Americans from a future potential biological incident,” he said. “Our government needs the flexibility to determine the origins of naturally occurring outbreaks, as well as potential outbreaks that could arise from mistakes or malicious intent.”
