Dr. Fauci’s Lab To Create a Severe Strain of Monkeypox
(ConservativeSense.com) – Monkeypox, a rare virus, typically causes flu-like symptoms and painful lesions and occurs endemically in parts of Africa. Yet, this year the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Global Public Health Emergency on July 23 when the disease cropped up in more than 70 countries worldwide, many where they’d never seen the disease before. Now, some scientists are sounding alarms because they allege the NIAID labs in Bethesda, Maryland, are planning to create a new, more severe strain of monkeypox.
Currently, there are two main variants, or clades, of monkeypox infecting humans. Clade II has spread widely but carries a low mortality rate of between 1 and 3% despite the painful lesions and scars it inflicts. Alternatively, Clade I is 10 times more deadly but less likely to spread and cause infections. The Daily Mail claims Dr. Bernard Moss, the virologist in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID who developed one vaccine against monkeypox, plans to genetically modify Clade II by adding material from the more virulent variant. The experiment reportedly received greenlight funding in 2018.
Fauci’s NIAID lab in Maryland moves to create severe monkeypox strainhttps://t.co/SoD0GNuzFa
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 25, 2022
Two naturally occurring factors could affect research progress. First, in addition to the global outbreak of Clade II, Central Africa is experiencing an outbreak of Clade I, and some experts fear it, too, could extend outside the continent. Second, US researchers have found evidence that the virus is mutating naturally at a high rate, making the development of new vaccines more important. Elliot Lefkowitz, a computational virologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told Nature mutations are proportional to infections.
But critics like Dr. Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, strongly believe the NIAID research poses dangers. The virus is distantly related to smallpox, and the current vaccine, Jynneos, fights both monkeypox and smallpox. Ebright argues that should the modified pathogen escape containment, “The risk-benefit ratio is essentially infinite, comprising potentially existential risks.”
What do you think? Do the potential risks of creating a new strain of monkeypox outweigh any possible benefits?
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