“This review has been written by Kelsey Lane Warmbrod, MS, MPH; Rachel M. West, PhD; Nancy D. Connell, PhD; and Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD; all from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.”

A close look at each of the points made by this review astonishes the reader with its disregard for the facts that it cites itself. A response to the entire review would consume too much time and effort to do for no commission. One would also be infuriated without sufficient context for this “review”. I will emphasize one particularly striking case in point so as to keep the reply concise. To reply in full would fill an entire book, which might be useful to elucidate the scientific method and ethical argument. However, I cannot rely on any financial support for such an endeavor.

As contextual background, I would offer a few links that describe scientific programs kept secret by various governments.

–Atomic Weapons program, “The Manhatten Project”, and the role of Harvard and MIT.

–A few other universities involved in early research for the Mahatten Project. This site argues that, “In fact, Vice-President Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project until he became President Truman.”

-Various German scientists who created “scientific racism” or “eugenics”: Dr. Hans Friedrich Karl Günther, who taught at the German Universities of Jena, Berlin, and Freiburg.

From Wikipedia: “In 1935 he became a professor at the University of Berlin, teaching race science, human biology and rural ethnography. From 1940 to 1945 he was professor at Albert Ludwigs University.

He received several honors during the Third Reich, notably in 1935 he was declared “pride of the NSDAP” for his scientific work. In the same year he received the Rudolph Virchow plaque, and in 1940 the Goethe Medal for arts and science from Hitler.”

Dr. Josef Mengele, from Wikipedia: “A grant was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation), at the request of von Verschuer, who received regular reports and shipments of specimens from Mengele. The grant was used to build a pathology laboratory attached to Crematorium II at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.^[39] Dr. Miklós Nyiszli, a Hungarian Jewish pathologist who arrived in Auschwitz on 29 May 1944, performed dissections and prepared specimens for shipment in this laboratory.^[40] The twin research was in part intended to prove the supremacy of heredity over environment and thus strengthen the Nazi premise of the genetic superiority of the Aryan race.^[41] Nyiszli and others reported that the twin studies may also have been motivated by an intention to increase the reproduction rate of the German race by improving the chances of racially desirable people having twins.^[42]“

Dr. Trofim Lysenko– “Enter the villain, Trofim Lysenko, ironically a protégé of Vavilov’s. The notorious Vavilov-Lysenko antagonism became one of the saddest textbook examples of a futile effort to resolve scientific debate using a political approach.” https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genetics-shows-the-folly-of-political-meddling-in-science-72580

Dr. Nikolai Vavilov, director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, discovered the Center of Origins theory, accepted world-wide. However, as a result of his dispute with his former protege, Dr. Lysenko, Dr. Vavilov starved to death in a Soviet gulag in 1943. Dr. Lysenko dictated Soviet Biology and Genetics under Stalin by rejecting the work of Abbot Gregor Mendel of Austrian-occupied Czechia in his generally accepted pea plant experiments in genetics.

This context should suffice to prove that these scientists in fact act as political careerists far from the mold of real scientists like Abbot Mendel. Their descriptions more closely reflect that of Dr. Mengele, the sadistic Nazi doctor who conducted inhumane experiments in Auschwitz with grants from the German government.

Only such sadism could influence the writing of these Johns Hopkins scientists. Finally, on to the point in their “review” that I used as a case-study to highlight their entire method:

From Page 3, part 3 of the Review: “Furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. Lines 10-16: The authors assert that a furin cleavage site in its Spike protein is absent in coronaviruses found in nature, which is not the case. SARS-CoV-1 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) have furin cleavage sites in their Spike protein. This is fairly common in other coronaviruses¹⁶; MERS has a furin cleavage site¹⁷ within Spike.”

I followed the links for footnotes 16 and 17 to see what kind of scientific backing they had for their arguments. Both sources contradict the very argument they made in point 3.

In the article referenced in footnote 16, we see the following written in the abstract:

“Mutation of the S2′ site of QX genotype (QX-type) infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) spike protein (S) in a recombinant virus background results in higher pathogenicity, pronounced neural symptoms and neurotropism when compared with conditions in wild-type IBV (WT-IBV) infected chickens. In this study, we present evidence suggesting that recombinant IBV with a mutant S2′ site (furin-S2′ site) leads to higher mortality.”

The term “recombinant” refers to viruses that have artificial origins in genetic engineering. The “mutant S2′ site” they refer to as the “(furin-S2′ site)” only occurs in genetically engineered specimens of the virus. Other “cleavage” occurs in naturally occurring corona-viruses, but only in the artificial types do they have furin cleavage sites, which accounts for their ability to enter human cells rather than other animal cells.

In the article referenced in footnote 17, we see the following written in the “Representative Results” section:

“In the first part of this study, we used peptides that represent the S2′ cleavage site of three distinct MERS-CoV S proteins: from the prototypical EMC/2012 human strain (Genbank AFS88936.1) and from two selected camel-derived MERS-CoVs, NRCE-HKU205 (Genbank AHL18090.1) and Mor215 (Genbank AVN89324.1) strains, isolated in Egypt and Morocco, respectively (Table 1)^16,18…

Note that the EMC/2012 is the human strain and that the HKU205 and Mor215 strains came from camels.

“…Furin was able to cleave the EMC/2012 peptide efficiently with a Vmax of 6.3 ± 1.2 RFU/min, while we detected almost no cleavage when using the S2′ peptide of the HKU205 strain (Vmax 0.5 ± 0.1 RFU/min)…

This proves that viruses found in the wild had no Furin cleavage sites. Those found in humans did have cleavage sites. This confirms Dr. Li-Meng Yan’s and Hong Kong University’s assertions while directly contradicting the Johns Hopkins team. Why would they cite these articles? They must assume that no one cares about the deaths of a million people and counting.

The article from footnote 17 goes on to further prove the point. More examples for the wild, which differed from the first specimens tested, proved again that specimens gathered from animals did not contain the mutation.

“…Recently, MERS-CoV isolates from Western Africa were reported that are phylogenetically distinct from MERS-CoV found in the Arabian Peninsula¹⁶. One of the recently described isolates is the Mor213 strain, which carries a leucine instead of an arginine in the P4 position of the S2′ site (Table 1), and which could potentially impact its recognition by furin and alter the cleavage efficiency. Our peptide assay showed that there is only minimal cleavage of the Mor213 S2′ site as compared to the EMC/2012 site (Figure 1b).”

In another part of her report, Dr. Yan shows that this mutation could only occur through genetic engineering. In yet another part of her report, she shows the likely way in which it happened. She also proves that such methods already exist and that laboratories have practiced and reported on those methods. The laboratories can cut off certain parts of viruses and replace them with genetic codes that they know produce certain characteristics in the viruses.

[This paragraph added later] The case cited above does not stand out particularly, as just about every point in the Johns Hopkins report infuriates with its unyielding opposition to intercourse with scientific observation and known facts. The destructiveness of war and dictatorship show themselves through their report, which appears to lay to waste a city full of laboratory evidence to the contrary. Yet this proves all the more the necessity to combat this false science with a new revolutionary state that will compel scientists to follow ethical guidelines in their research rather than military-political decrees.

The Johns Hopkins team, Vox, and Business Insider have all produced reports that obscure the real science that even they themselves cite as sources. We would not like to see Dr. Yan die of hunger in a Chinese labor camp. We want freedom of investigation and responsible citation practiced by all major universities. We do not want sadistic scientists, like Neuroscientist Dr. Beth Ann McLaughlin and Dr. Mengele, or hyper-political scientists, like #MeTooSTEM volunteer and likely future doctor Jaedyn Ruli and Dr. Lysenko, to destroy ethical progress in virology, genetics, neuroscience or any other field.