Physician-scientist discusses China’s risky research, how samples from Canada may be used, and potential detrimental consequences
The SARS outbreak of the early 2000s that infected thousands worldwide and killed many was a learning moment for Beijing on how dangerous such viruses can be, says physician-scientist and author Dr. Steven Quay.
“They began to see these as potential bioweapons,” Dr. Quay, previously on the faculty of Stanford University’s School of Medicine and now CEO of Atossa Therapeutics, told The Epoch Times.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Quay fears the next pandemic could be magnitudes more deadly if risky research on the Nipah virus at laboratories like the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) continues unabated.
“If you can create a vaccine for your own population before you release it, … you can really have a differential effect. And they’re economic weapons, and they’re weapons of fear,” he said.
Dr. Quay says there’s evidence that China is engaged in highly risky lab engineering of the Nipah virus. Some of the evidence includes data from the WIV, while another aspect has to do with the shipment of deadly virus samples from Canada’s high-security lab in Winnipeg to China, he says.
Nipah, which can be transmitted from animals such as bats or pigs to humans, has a very high fatality rate, ranging between 40 percent to 75 percent. There have been a few known outbreaks of the virus, all of which occurred in Asia.
Dr. Quay says if human-to-human transmission of Nipah is made easier by researchers, the result will be disastrous.
“If they make it aerosolized, we are done as a civilization,” he says.
Sean Lin, Ph.D., former virology lab director at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland, says he is highly concerned by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) focus on Nipah.
“People who get Nipah can have neuropathic syndromes. They can have severe brain damage. But they don’t die immediately, not like Ebola. So the virus can have a better chance to further propagate from the infected host,” Mr. Lin, a contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
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