Shock. Horror. The Chinese have been infiltrating and colonizing US scientific research programs!
Concern has continued to grow over China’s infiltration of American virus research labs after recent reports highlighted three Chinese military scientists trained by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who arrived at U.S. universities and research institutions in the late 90s only to later become involved in the COVID-19 saga.
They don’t say who is “concerned”, but this is the most trivial news. Throughout my career, I’ve worked with Chinese students, British students, Canadian scientists, German scientists, French scientists, Spanish scientists, Chilean scientists, Indian scientists… That’s the way it works. We don’t care about your borders. I’ve also had American colleagues who studied in the UK, the EU, Russia, where ever (I don’t know any who studied in China — the language barrier is a major obstacle, I think). Are we horrified if, for instance, someone studied infectious disease in Toronto and then takes a position at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center? Would that be an example of colonizing Canada to steal their precious medical expertise? It is, I guess, but there’s nothing nefarious about it. It’s routine.
On part of this, many believe China has colonized U.S. virus research programs. Important to mention is these programs are funded by the U.S. government or in other words — the U.S. taxpayer. There’s very little these U.S. virology programs do that China isn’t aware of and for many that’s a threat far too large to be ignored any longer.
Yes. We shouldn’t ignore it. We should encourage more of it. The free exchange of ideas assists the progress of science.
I have to note, though, that they use an evasive construct again: many believe
. Who? It’s a sign of bad journalism when the writer plays this game. Name your sources, guy. I’m sure “many” would agree that we’ve trained many Chinese scientists (and scientists of many nationalities), but few would call that “colonization” or think it was a problem. China has a cadre of US-trained virologists? Yes, please. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re experiencing a pandemic, more will occur in the future, and we need more virologists.
Of course, OAN has an agenda. Wouldn’t you know it, they’re trying to suggest that COVID-19 is the product of hostile Chinese military research.
One Chinese whistleblower claimed COVID-19 originated in laboratories overseen by China’s PLA by using bat coronaviruses ZC-45 and ZXC-21, which were then characterized and genetically engineered under the supervision of the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing and the Research Institute for Medicine of the PLA Nanjing Military Command.
As of now, the World Health Organization (WHO) has yet to confirm the origin of the virus. However, efforts to investigate have largely been obstructed.
Research into the origins of the virus has not been obstructed, unless by obstructed
they mean that it fails to support the usual conspiracy theories. SARS-CoV-2 is not remarkably artificial at all — it is closely related to bat viruses, there is no discernable obstacle to their natural origin, and no evidence that they were manipulated in a lab. Novel variants have been popping up all over the place — do they think Chinese scientists around the world are tweaking the virus? (I shouldn’t say that, they might think that.)
Also, the Chinese military must be remarkably incompetent to have released their deadly engineered virus in China and disrupted their own economy, first.










