Bob Garry
Tulane University School of Medicine virologists Robert Garry (left) and Dr. James Robinson are part of a team of collaborators who've been researching Lassa fever in West Africa for more than 14 years. (Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano)
Robert Garry: Unfortunately -- and I hate to harp on this -- but back in June — and you can look up what I was saying in June (their link) -- I was one of the few people saying this outbreak could take a spin for the worst and turn out of control. Unfortunately, the international response has been way too slow. And so those predictions unfortunately have come true.
They're miraculous clairvoyants the Zoonati - you have to give em that much.
All the Prox O-5 authors are intriguing crazy characters. Garry went under the radar somewhat in the beginning compared to Andersen, Holmes, Lipkin - who were the designated media team.team - so more out-there.
So thatThat leaves you with: Bob Garry, Andrew Rambaut.Rambaut
Research/writer-wise, they'rethe allProx-O-5 are gifts from God that never stop giving. Lipkin was the obvious one, CCP COI's up the kazoo, then Honorary Eddie Holmes, since he's an Aussie (the real Dark Continent) - then Andersen - Scripps's finest - also in bed with China, waging his (lost) battle against Drastic on Twitter ...
But when you finally arrive at Garry you get to a foundational US DoD dude. Who Andersen openly admires.admires They'reas a friendly genius along with Rambaut, on the Andersen Lab website. On the surface Andersen and Garry seem like an odd-couple, but they are great friends..
(When you finally, finally arrive at Rambo - he's a different kettle of fish altogether - younger - suave -Rambaut Andersen's& generationAndersen are not an odd couple - they're a perfect match - though Rambaut avoids the limelight - a population engineer whiz on the computer- Farrar's Oxford-Edinburgh clique's hotshot)hottest hotshot.
Whereas Lipkin, Andersen, Holmes cut-the-part as THE science experts on TV, Bob Garry looks like an arms dealer dressed up in a lab-coat. The popped button in the photo around his gut is a nice touch.
A book for each of the authors is in the works. As is finishing the porch. Meantime we're visiting an Ebola snippet of Bob's colorful scio-security life:life in Sierra Leone:
A month after the July 23 FB post by the Health & Sanitation Ministry orderingannouncing Tulane had been directed to stop Ebola testing, Garry and Andersen appear to havereportedly lost their NIH foundational funding.
Aug, 2014: According to Constantine Nana (p25), the government of the United States decided not to renew this funding (to the Consortium) in August 2014, during the Ebola crisis, without stating the motivation for the decision. (my bold)
Edit: At first i thought oh, another indication that something went wrong, NIH got nervous, pulled the plug. I did ask the author if he was sure about that claim, he said he was,was. butBut furtherthere's research now indicates that was not correct.this:
National Academy of Sciences: Stepping back to explain initial stages of the Ebola diagnostic development, Garry said funding from NIH for initial development was received in May 2014, and field testing was initiated in July and August of that year. Additional funding was received in December 2014 from the Gates Foundation and the Paul Allen Foundation to push the product through to approval for emergency use.
It may be Garry lost NIH funding for the original VHFC Lassa project, but money was still coming in from NIH for Ebola. Or did he get funding in May, lose it August? That would be something.
There does appear to have been a scramble for funds by Garry in Aug 2014:
Garry, Aug 29: I would be going back (to Kenema) except that there are things that are needed that I can't do over there like be in communication with people who are funding the work (Collins, Fauci) and trying to get more funding. .. I would love to be over there with my colleagues and staff (6 of whom died), but it's much more difficult to communicate with the NIH and many of the other entities that we need to deal with to keep the program going and to rebuild it. I'm the project leader and so I have to get the money, is the way that works.
Garry's efforts were fruitful - the Consortium has managed to continue as an organization until this day, describing itself as a partnership of academic and industry scientists. The partners listed on VHFC website are: Kenema Govt Hospital, Tulane, Scripps, La Jolla Institute, Harvard, University of Texas, Center for Viral Systems Biology, ACE GID, Zalgen Labs (Garry's company) and Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Immunotherapeutic Consortium. In a 2014 NAS article, two moremore small-to-medium-sized bio-tech companies, Autoimmune Technologies, and Corgenix Diagnostics, are also listed asas members.
Put them together you've got a decent funding base. Interestingly, Garry is a core member of several of these individual institutions/companies.
Autoimmune Technologies website: Autoimmune Technologies is a member of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium. .. Autoimmune Technologies is a New Orleans biomedical company which was founded in 1995 to license and develop diagnostic and therapeutic technologies from Tulane University's School of Medicine (Garry). (T)he Company's research to date has been supported by U.S. Government grants and contracts totaling approximately $24 million.
VHFIC (different from VHFC), lists its funders as Burroughs Wellcome (a US branch of Wellcome), CDC and NIH. The factThat Wellcome ispops-up in therethe as wellmix is no surprise -by itthis showsstage ain the journey. More evidence of the long-standing relationshipties between Farrar (Wellcome Director) and Garry/Andersenthe Prox-O-5 Inc. As the Italian backpacker said to me in 1984 in Amsterdam when i generously offered him a sizeable piece of left-over hash before i left Holland - uhm ... yeah ..... ok - put it on the pile on the top shelf of my locker
A page on the VHFIC website lists the groups collaborators - they include Garry and Andersen, but also the controversialPrince of GoF scientistscientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka.
Science: In 2011, Fouchier and Kawaoka alarmed the world by revealing they had separately modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so that it spread between ferrets.
Kawaoka is a specialist in souping up animal viruses to make them more deadlyworld-alarmingly -deadly. theThe fact that he's mixedin upthe withsame Garry,sentence Ebolaas Garry/Andersen, Ebola, US military, and the Kenema Government Hospital is a worry.
ACE GID: a Nigeria-based organization supported by the World Bank.
ACE GID (Academy Center of Excellence Genomics of Infectious Diseases) website: ACEGID’s international partners include Harvard University, Tulane University, the University of Cambridge, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.S. Department of Defence.
ACE GID LinkedIn: Established in 2013 and supported by the World Bank and the US National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) H3Africa consortium (Wellcome Trust/NIH), the ACEGID platform is building genomics pipelines.
That's interesting. H3Africa, a controversial Wellcome/NIH collaboration to collect genomic data from African populations, was criticized for its helicopter approach and the misuse of subjects' personal genomic data. ACE-GID was a genomics pipeline in that operation. You also have to ask why is the US Dept of Defense a listed partner of an organization that's ostensibly set-up to support West African genomics researchers?
So Garry/Andersen's Consortium is made up of several groups, which also happen to feature Garry/Andersen in their leadership structures. All
Each whichgroup aretapping fundedits byown funding pipeline from the US Government, including the Dept of Defense, NIH, NIAIDNIAID. - asAs well as Wellcome Trust.Trust and the Gates Foundation. Doesn't get any better funded than that.
TheIn 2017, he NIAID funding showerfountain continuedsurged in 2017:again:
Tulane News, 2017: The National Institutes of Health has awarded Tulane University more than $12 million to test a promising drug treatment against Lassa fever and develop a vaccine against the deadly disease endemic in parts of West Africa.
The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Fauci) awarded virologist Robert Garry two, five-year grants for the preclinical research — $5.72 million to evaluate a potent Lassa fever antibody drug cocktail and $6.32 million (money cocktail) to design a vaccine based on a recently discovered key antibody target (Tulane's link) on the surface of the virus.
Not bad going for a guy who was in the hottest of hot-seats back in 2014:
Dr. Cyril Broderick, 2014: 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. Not the epicentre - but near it.
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 - for Ebola - or Covid.
In fact the opposite happened - same way it did after Antrhax - same way it always does - a funding explosion.
NIH grants since Covid:
Robert Garry: $ 54.64 million):million
Andersen: $ 23,233,45023.23345 million
Scripps: over $ 6 Billion (Consortium partner, home of Andersen)
(credit Arun on Twitter)