There’s an interesting report in the US Right to Know site talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.  This is a non partisan site and the reporter has done good work in the past, anyway I’m going to highlight some points that I thought were important.

• Specifically, the scientists sought to insert furin cleavage sites at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein; to assemble synthetic viruses in six segments; to identify coronaviruses up to 25 percent different from SARS; and to select for receptor binding domains adept at infecting human receptors.

  The genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, matches the viruses described in the research proposal:

  • SARS-CoV-2 has a furin cleavage site positioned in the spike protein at the S1/S2 junction. The furin cleavage site supercharged the virus into the worst pandemic pathogen in a century. Virologists have yet to identify one in any other related coronavirus.
• This language in the newly revealed documents echoes a 2022 analysis that uncovered a pattern of two restriction enzymes, BsmBI and BasI, that segmented the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome into six even pieces. The scientists estimated the likelihood of observing this pattern of evenly spaced segments in nature to be highly improbable.
• This American virologist, University of North Carolina Prof. Ralph Baric, was set to engineer twenty or more “chimeric” SARS-related viral spike proteins per year of the proposal, and two to five full-length engineered SARS-related viruses. Documents previously reported by U.S. Right to Know show that some of the experimentation could secretly occur in Wuhan at a lower biosafety level than specified in the grant, apparently to save costs.

Source: US Right to Know

I’m not a scientist nor is my opinion on the origins of COVID-19 important, what I do think is that this raises the question should this type of research be allowed?  I understand the logic that nature can throw us curveballs and release something very deadly but has there been a case where an engineered monster saved us from something?  Especially with the risk being so high of it escaping?  I’d vote no and the scary part is, I know that this type of research is still continuing so who knows what else may pop up in the future.