Mosquitos as bioweapon delivery platforms: The imminent danger posed by China’s fused military-civilian research program
Guest post by Lawrence Sellin
China has a history of recklessness in its use of genetic engineering and the handling of dangerous microorganisms.
In a Planet of the Apes, life imitating art scenario, in 2019, Chinese scientists inserted human brain development genes into monkeys.
Leaks out of Chinese laboratories occurred in two separate incidents in April 2004, involving researchers infected with the deadly coronavirus SARS-CoV-1, responsible for the 2002-2004 first “COVID” pandemic, which also began in China.
Then, of course, China created the COVID-19 virus, which leaked from a laboratory, or, possibly, was deliberately released, causing a global pandemic and millions of deaths.
But those examples represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Everyone needs to understand that, in China, there is no difference between military and civilian research, the fusion of which was mandated in 2016 by the Chinese Communist Party as part of its Thirteenth Five-Year Plan.
When everything has dual-use potential, no research can be automatically considered benign.
A Chinese scientific team, led by Professor Aihua Zheng, created a new hybrid virus by combining the recently-discovered Flavivirus called Chaoyang virus, which allegedly only replicates in insects, with the human-infecting Zika virus, also a member of the Flavivirus family.
Flaviviruses are RNA viruses like COVID-19, but are far more dangerous, attacking the central nervous system. They include yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, dengue fever and Zika virus, which is known for infecting pregnant women and causing severe brain damage to their babies.
