Chinese researchers have sparked controversy in the scientific community after publishing a study on a mutant coronavirus-related virus that reportedly caused a 100 percent death rate in infected humanized mice.
The origin of the Covid-19 virus is still unknown, but conspiracy theories surrounding an out-of-control Chinese lab experiment are once again gaining traction online thanks to a controversial study recently published by Chinese scientists in Beijing. They apparently experimented with a mutated strain of GX_P2V, a coronavirus “cousin” discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017, three years before the Covid-19 pandemic, using it to infect genetically modified mice engineered to reflect similar genetic makeup to people. The controversial study is the first of its kind to report a 100% mortality rate in mice infected by the GX_P2V, far surpassing the findings of previous research.
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The study authors noted that all the humanized mice infected with the GX_P2V died within eight days, a surprisingly rapid death rate. As the virus started weakening its host, the mice began losing weight, moving visibly slower, and displaying a hunched posture. GX_P2V infected the lungs, bones, eyes, tracheas, and brains of the mice and reportedly caused their eyes to become completely white a day before they died.
“This underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans and provides a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses,” the authors noted.
The terrifying findings outraged Western scientists and virologists, many of whom labeled it as ‘terrible’ and ‘useless’ as it provides no real insight into how the GX_P2V virus might affect humans.
Photo: CDC/Unsplash
“I can see nothing of vague interest that could be learned from force-infecting a weird breed of humanized mice with a random virus. Conversely, I could see how such stuff might go wrong,” Francois Balloux, an epidemiology expert at the University College London’s Genetics Institute, wrote on X.
“The preprint does not specify the biosafety level and biosafety precautions used for the research,” Balloux continued. “The absence of this information raises the concerning possibility that part or all of this research, like the research in Wuhan in 2016-2019 that likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic, recklessly was performed without the minimal biosafety containment and practices essential for research with potential pandemic pathogens.”
Richard H. Ebright, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Ruger’s University, concurred with Balloux, while Gennadi Glinsky, a retired professor of medicine at Stanford, wrote: “This madness must be stopped before too late.”
