{"id":15360,"date":"2026-09-02T06:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T06:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=15360"},"modified":"2026-09-02T06:09:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T06:09:00","slug":"the-pandemic-risk-of-what-ive-never-seen-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=15360","title":{"rendered":"The Pandemic Risk of \u201cWhat I\u2019ve Never Seen Before\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

By MIKE MAGEE<\/p>\n

The world of medical science largely closed ranks last month in defense<\/a> of Tony Fauci. Dr. Fauci had been hauled before the Senate Homeland Security Committee to face hostile entrapment by long time critique Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Taking no chances, his lawyers had the former head of NIH\u2019s Infectious Disease division plead the 5th <\/a>to avoid entrapment, fines, and even imprisonment.<\/p>\n

It has been five years since Dr. Fauci appeared on MSNow<\/a> (formerly MSNBC) and encourage viewers to \u201ckeep an open mind\u201d when it came to \u201cgain-of-function\u201d research and the origins of the Covid pandemic. Since then, a 2025 WHO report<\/a> stated \u201cAs things stand, all hypotheses must remain on the table.\u201d That includes the possibility that the viral tragedy resulted from the inadvertent release of a genetically engineered virus from the Wuhan, China, laboratory of Shi Zhengli, a virologist trained at the University of North Carolina.<\/p>\n

The risky experiments, termed\u00a0\u201cgain-of-function\u201d<\/a>\u00a0studies, were justified as super-secure, safe, predictive, and preventive. Shi returned to her labs in 2018 and 2019 with grant funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the Department of Defense via an intermediary, the New York based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance,<\/a>whose funding was retracted in 2024.<\/p>\n

Their coordinator-in-chief was one\u00a0Peter Daszak<\/a>. Daszak is known for adopting militarized terms in the battle against global infectious diseases. In 2020 he wrote in the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>, \u201cPandemics are like terrorist attacks: We know roughly where they originate and what\u2019s responsible for them, but we don\u2019t know exactly when the next one will happen. They need to be handled the same way \u2014 by identifying all possible sources and dismantling those before the next pandemic strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daszak\u2019s argument that risks involved in Shi Zhengli\u2019s Wuhan bat virus research were justified as defensive and preventive was convincing enough to the NIH and the Department of Defense that his EcoHealth Alliance <\/em>was funded\u00a0from 2013 to 2020\u00a0<\/a>(contracts, grants, subgrants) to the tune of well over $100 million \u2013 $39 million from Pentagon \/DOD funds, $65 million from USAID\/State Dept., and\u00a0 $20 million from HHS\/NIH\/CDC.<\/p>\n

Daszak\u2019s position within the scientific community was controversial. In fact, in 2014, a group of concerned scientists called the\u00a0Cambridge Working Group<\/a>\u00a0issued this statement: \u201cAccident risks with newly created \u2018potential pandemic pathogens\u2019 raise grave new concerns. Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses substantially increased risks. An accidental infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this, it seems, would be \u201cold news\u201d except for last week\u2019s dramatic announcement <\/a>that \u201cFor the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been 23 years since scientists first constructed a synthetic viral genome.<\/a> But Evo,<\/a> a creative science AI newcomer, produced by OpenAI has apparently broken new ground \u2013 on its own. Well not completely. Its\u2019 masters <\/a>primed the pump by feeding the AI engine with nine trillion nucleotides (the human genome has 3 billion) obtained from millions of diverse species.<\/p>\n

The scientific engineers <\/a>focused down on a well-known virus that is generally active primarily in attacks on the bacteria, E-coli. It\u2019s called Phi X-174<\/a>. It has been utilized for some time in genetic engineering exercises. But in this case<\/a>, it (along with some 15,000 close chemical relatives), was feed into Evo with the instruction to create new novel viruses of its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

And create it did, spitting out some 700,000 variations, most non-viable. From these, the human masters chose 285 DNA combos which they injected onto bacterial petri dishes. In 16 cases, they were able to visualize a \u201chit.\u201d That is, the injected viral newcomers demonstrated activity against the bacteria.<\/p>\n

Not all scientists cheered the findings. The potential usefulness in medicine and biotechnology, including the treatment of genetic disorders and cancer, are real. But the downside could be potentially catastrophic. For example, Johns Hopkins scientist, Dr. Moritz Hanke said, \u201cThere\u2019s just a huge disconnect. You could say, \u2018Hey, genomic language model, make me an influenza genome that is modified to be more transmissible or to be more lethal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Connecting the dots, lessons learned from the Covid pandemic, and Dr. Fauci\u2019s availing himself of 5th Amendment protections, somewhat overshadowed the announcement of new HHS federal rules<\/a> governing and restricting Gain-of-Function research. But HHS in response <\/a>to Evo\u2019s AI creations stated that computer-based research \u201cis not prohibited by this policy unless it involves an entity of concern.\u201d But as the Covid pandemic well illustrated, that knowledge may arrive too late.<\/p>\n

We have indeed entered a brave new world. Dr. Hanke summed up the risk succinctly with this question, \u201cWhat is the risk of what I\u2019ve never seen before?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of <\/em>CODE BLUE: Inside America\u2019s Medical Industrial Complex<\/a><\/em>. (Grove\/2020)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MIKE MAGEE The world of medical science largely closed ranks last month in defense of Tony Fauci. Dr. Fauci had been hauled before the Senate Homeland Security Committee to face hostile entrapment by long time critique Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Taking no chances, his lawyers had the former head of NIH\u2019s Infectious Disease…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}