Robert Garry
Aug, 2014: According to Constantine Nana (p25), the government of the United States decided not to renew this funding in
August 2014, during the Ebola crisis, without stating the motivation for the decision.
No evidence is evidence. If you’re so keen to study Ebola to fight the bioterrorists, why cut off funding to the main organization researching it in the middle of an outbreak? Wouldn't that be deserting Sierra Leone, the country that was good enough to host your bio-weapons defense lab, in its moment of need? (note: it appears Garry was having trouble with raising funding - but continued on from other sources?)
Finally, in 2015, the Tekmira/Wellcome/US Dept Defense drug trial was cancelled when it came to a statistical endpoint. Had a great ride on the stockmarket before that though if you were a shrewd investor. Tekmira dropped all interest in researching Ebola from 2015 on.
You could call this a strange set of coincidences, but Dr. Cyril Broderick, Liberian scientist didn't:
DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira .. to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. The DoD is listed as a collaborator in a ‘First in Human Ebola clinical trial’ (NCT02041715), which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March.
I'm not sure that's true. I know it was a rumour going around. The Jan 2014 event was a Phase 1 trial. It had already been pre-clinically trialed on macaques in a biosafety-level-4 biocontainment at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease. Lancet published a paper on it:
Lancet/Tekmira, Post exposure protection of nonhuman primates against a lethal Ebola virus challenge with RNA interference:
The monkeys were then placed in primate jackets, returned to their cages, and tethered. After 7 days, the animals were inoculated intramuscularly with a target dose .. of ZEBOV (Kikwit strain)
I wonder if people haven't got this trial confused with what happened in Sierra Leone.
I'm not easily shocked but i would be if they were injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Surely Tekmira was only testing tolerability. Details of the trial are scant though. It is also odd why Tekmira would go to Sierra Leone to test an Ebola drug - if it's only about tolerability. Sierra Leone had never had an Ebola outbreak.
Dr. Cyril Broderick: Disturbingly .. the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Bob & Kristian's outfit. Near the epicentre. Kenema is 100km roughly from the Guinea border.
The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic.
African countries and people should .. seek damages from these countries, some corporations, and the United Nations. Evidence seems abundant against Tulane University, and suits should start there.
Prof Broderick was half-right. We got the worldwide pandemic - but no law suits - that hasn’t happened - not yet - not so much as a proper investigation.
In fact the opposite happened - same way it did after Antrhax - a funding explosion.
NIH grants since Covid:
Robert Garry: $ 54.64 million):
Andersen: $ 23,233,450
Scripps: over $ 6 Billion (Consortium partner, home of Andersen)
(credit Arun on Twitter)