Chinese researchers have created a new strain of coronavirus that attacks the brain and causes rapid death. “This madness must be stopped,” Western scientists warn. According to the Daily Mail, researchers in Beijing cloned a Covid-like virus found in pangolins, called GX_P2V, and used it to infect mice.
The mice were genetically engineered to express a protein found in humans in order to assess how the virus would react in the human body. (Gene expression is the process by which inherited information from a gene, eg a DNA sequence, is transformed into a functional genetic product such as protein or RNA.)
All the rodents infected with the GX_P2V pathogen died within eight days, which the researchers described as “surprisingly fast”.
High levels of viral load were also recorded in the brains and eyes of the mice, suggesting that the virus multiplies and spreads throughout the body in a unique way.
European and American scientists warned that the discovery “highlights the risk of transmission of GX_P2V to humans”.
Professor Francois Ballou, an infectious disease expert at University College London, wrote to X: “This is a terrible study, completely devoid of scientific meaning. I don’t see what interesting can be learned from forcibly infecting a strange species of mice with a virus. Conversely, I can see how things like that can go wrong…”
“It is possible that some or all of the research similar to that in Wuhan from 2016-2019, which likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic, was conducted irresponsibly without the minimum biosafety measures and practices essential for research with pathogens with pandemic potential,” said Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
According to the study conducted by the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, the virus was discovered in 2017, before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. It has been identified in Malaysian pangolins, scaly mammals known to carry coronaviruses and suspected to be the intermediate host that transmits Covid from bats to humans.
The researchers cloned the virus and kept several copies in the laboratory in Beijing, where it continues to evolve. It is not clear when the newly released study was conducted. However, the researchers said the virus may have undergone a “virulence-enhancing mutation” during storage and become more deadly. Virulence determines how severe the disease is in the individual who is infected.
In the study, eight mice were infected with the virus, another eight with an inactive virus, and another eight were used as a control group.
All infected mice died of infection within seven or eight days after infection. Symptoms include complete whiteness of the eyes, rapid weight loss, and fatigue. The researchers found “significant amounts” of the virus in the rodents’ brains, lungs, noses, eyes and tracheas.
By day six, the viral load had “reduced significantly” in the lungs, but the animals’ brains had shrunk and virus levels were “extremely high”. The results show that the virus initially infects the respiratory system and then migrates to the brain – unlike Covid, which causes lower lung infections and pneumonia in severe cases. However, there are examples of Covid being found in the brain tissue of seriously ill patients.
“Severe brain infection in the later stages of infection may be the main cause of death in these mice,” the researchers said.
“This is the first report showing that a pangolin coronavirus related to SARS-CoV-2 can cause 100% mortality in the mice in question, suggesting a risk of transmission of GX_P2V to humans,” they conclude.
However, the original strain of Covid also killed 100% of mice in some studies, meaning the new results cannot be directly applied to humans.
Dr. Gennady Glinsky, professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford, says, “This madness must be stopped before it’s too late.”
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2024-01-17 20:20:00
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