RFK Jr. and the bioweapons arms race
A new book by the independent presidential candidate does not persuade
In The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race,1 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. maintains that scientists who are doing “gain of function” research with coronaviruses are really doing bioweapons research, in that they are developing the knowledge that would make possible the development of biological weapons. However, the book presents no evidence that any state anywhere in the world is actually developing biological arms. It presents evidence that some states, particularly the United States and China, are supporting research that they see as valuable for predicting and controlling future pandemics, for vaccine development, and for enabling counter-bioterrorist measures; and the book includes evidence that the USA and China are indirectly cooperating in the development of such knowledge. But it does not present evidence that the knowledge and techniques acquired through such research is actually being applied by any state to the development of biological arms.
Accordingly, although the book title refers to “the terrifying bioweapons arms race,” it does not show that a bioweapons arms race actually exists. The book employs post-modern strategies that are common in today’s ideological divisions in the United States. First, it creates a suspicion by pointing out the potential to develop biological arms through “gain-of-function” research, and by noting that some states (including the USA but not including China) have used biological weapons in the past. And then it conflates the difference between what exists and what potentially exists, repeatedly referring to “gain of function” research as “bioweapons research.”
It is of course the case that biological weapons factories may exist somewhere in the world today, but the book provides no evidence that they do. Such evidence has to be considered as the necessary empirical foundation for Kennedy’s claim that there is today a biological arms race. The book appeals to suspicious instincts and fear, rather than to empirical evidence and reason.
Kennedy’s book is in part a reaction to the essentially undemocratic character of the American political process, in which government departments and private funding organizations undertake actions in the absence of informed public discussion of the issues at stake, with the principal actors in the limited public debate supported by corporate interests. These dynamics feed Kennedy’s own suspicious instincts.
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The key actors
In the biological arms race as described in RFK Jr.’s book, there is a host of suspicious characters, including, on the one hand, U.S. medical research funding organizations; and on the other hand, research scientists who have successfully tapped into available funding, attaining significant experimental discoveries, thereby advancing their scientific careers. The book reports on the activities of four primary actors. I provide here an overview of Kennedy’s gang of four:
Anthony Fauci, MD, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is one of the twenty-seven institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which are responsible for biomedical and public health related research. Fauci supported gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Virology Laboratory in Wuhan, China and elsewhere.
Ralph Baric, Ph.D., a prolific gain-of-function researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who has been well-funded by Fauci’s NIAID. Baric partnered with Shi Zhangli of the Wuhan lab in China to achieve important breakthroughs in gain-of-function research with respect to coronaviruses. Baric had developed advanced laboratory techniques; and Shi provided catalogued and stored coronaviruses extracted from bats in Wuhan, thus providing a library of genetic information. It was a fruitful transnational partnership with respect to scientific questions of importance to humanity.
Peter Daszak, Ph.D., president of EcoHealth Alliance and frequent coauthor with China’s Shi Zhengli, researcher at the Wuhan lab. As its president, Daszak turned EcoHealth Alliance into a coordinated hub for international gain-of-function viral research.
Shi Zhengli, Ph.D. (“Bat Woman”), the principal gain-of-function researcher at Wuhan Institute of Virology. She received funds for her research from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), NIH, NIAID, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Shi was the first researcher to link the 2003 SARS virus to Chinese bat coronaviruses. Upon discovering the connection of Chinese bats to SARS, Shi and Wuhan lab teams extracted coronavirus samples from bats living in colonies in caves, cataloguing and storing the viruses for research purposes.
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Gain-of-function research
Standing as a backdrop to the entire affair is the Biological Weapons Convention of 1975, in which the United States played a leading role, in part because President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger considered biological weapons unusable because of possible blowback effects, and in part because the USA already had a strong advantage with the existing weapons of mass destruction, namely, nuclear arms. Reflecting worldwide repulsion of past uses of biological arms by a few states (including the United States), the Biological Weapons Convention prohibits research on offensive bioweapons. It permits the intentional development of pathogenic microorganisms, if it is intended for peaceful or defensive purposes (like vaccines), and if the microorganisms are developed in small quantities (such as the amount needed for laboratory experiments). However, no plan for inspection and enforcement of the Convention was developed, and efforts in this direction initiated by other nations were repeatedly blocked by U.S. diplomats, Kennedy maintains.
In the discussion of the possible clandestine development of biological arms by U.S. agencies and their well-funded scientists, debate concerning “gain-of-function” research is central. “Gain-of-function” research seeks to increase the transmissibility and/or the severity of pathogenic microorganisms. Gain-of-function experiments intend to deliberately develop highly virulent, easily transmissible coronavirus pathogens, with the goal of improving pandemic preparedness and for developing vaccines. As Kennedy expresses at one point, “their intent was to gather viral genes and manipulate them in new synthetic combinations in order to enhance their function.”
Kennedy reviews the evolution of gain-of-function research with respect to coronaviruses. The fruitful collaboration between Baric and Shi Zhengli began shortly after the SARS outbreak of 2003. Baric created a synthetic coronavirus through bat coronavirus combinations that was able to infect human tissue. Kennedy writes, “Baric’s ‘reverse genetics’ technique allows him to create DNA clones of artificially infectious viral strains on paper and then to generate, in a lab, huge numbers of identical particles that would far exceed the purity of any natural infection.” Baric also was able to develop a SARS-like coronavirus that was lethal to mice.
In 2005, NIH funded a paper by Daszak and Shi Zhengli that described the efforts of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to collect novel coronavirus strains from Chinese bats. From the more than one thousand samples collected, they were able to isolate one full genome that closely resembled the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, thus strongly suggesting a connection between the SARS outbreak and coronaviruses in bats. In 2008, Shi and several other researchers at WIV published the results of experiments that sought to identify the characteristics of bat coronavirus strains that could possibly spillover to humans. Seeking to develop this knowledge further, U.S. government agencies funded nine grants through EcoHealth Alliance for studies at the Wuhan lab between 2014 and 2020, resulting in Daszak coauthoring nine of Shi’s key coronavirus papers.
Kennedy reports that biomedical research scientist James Lyons-Weiler was alarmed by Baric’s research, which he considered reckless and dangerous. Kennedy writes, “Weiler concluded that Baric and his colleagues did not fully appreciate the risks of bringing viruses in from the wild and propagating them to study their biological properties without first understanding their potential lethality.”
Gain-of-function research, some scientists maintain, has attained no concrete results with respect to preventing or responding to a pandemic. Its benefits are overstated by its proponents, who see in this type of study possibilities for career advancement. Gain-of-function studies have a short timeline of six months, and the results are highly publishable. In gain-of-function research, researchers can move quickly to results, to publication, and to the next grant.
Kennedy stresses the various risks inherent in gain-of-function studies. The viruses can escape from labs accidentally, for example. And the highly charged viruses can easily be cultivated at industrial scale. In addition, gain-of-function research can provide blueprints for the development of “poor man’s bombs with the killing potential of a nuclear detonation” by other states and non-state malefactors.
It is not unreasonable to say that the gain-of-function research is reckless. By deliberately increasing the potency of the virus, even under controlled laboratory conditions, scientists are introducing the risk of escape and an accidental pandemic; or theft by malefactors intent on bioterrorism. But on the other hand, there are possible gains from gain-in-function research, possibly vitally important gains. Some scientists spoke optimistically of the possibility of putting pandemics to an end.
Kennedy, however, does not wrestle with the moral dilemma inherent in this situation. He speaks of gain-of-function viral research as though it is in essence bioweapons research, undertaken with the pretext of vaccine development. This overly simplified observation of a complex and varying empirical reality paves the way for Kennedy’s indignant moral condemnation of the “long history of illegal bioweapons development by military and public health agencies masquerading as vaccine development.”
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Kennedy’s flagrant distortions of the written words of the researchers
Kennedy is not faithful to the intended meaning of the scientists that he cites. For example, Kennedy quotes from Peter Daszak’s 2008 grant proposal: “Two of these newly emerged viruses . . . are BSL4 agents that possess several biological features that make them highly adaptable for use as bioterror agents,” a sentence that, isolated as it is from the rest of the paragraph, gives the impression that Daszak was interested in developing bioterror agents. However, in that same paragraph, the grant proposal explains that these particular agents are different from “most notable viral agents of biodefense concern” (italics mine), because they possibly could be “spread in livestock as a source for transmission to humans.”2 The point Daszak is making here is that his research has significance from the point of view of biodefense, or defense against biological arms.
The paragraph from which Kennedy selectively quotes is found in the proposal’s section on “Significance,” which goes on to address the value of the research in “microbial surveillance” and in enabling investigators to “identify new pathogens before they emerge to threaten human health.” Furthermore, the proposal asserts, “we will not only be able to more accurately predict future transmission events, but we will be able to rapidly identify the relative threat posed by newly emerged related viruses. Further, through the identification of conserved therapeutic targets, we will enhance our ability to respond quickly and effectively to mitigate these threats.”
Thus, although the grant proposal makes reference to the adaptability of the identified viruses for purposes of bioterrorism, it does so in the context of a proposal that presents the significance of the research for biodefense, or defense against bioterrorism, and for prediction and control of pandemics. To be sure, it could be a scam, but for anyone to suggest that it is a scam, evidence would have to be presented, such as a whistleblower with contact with the funded research declaring that the lab was developing biological arms.
With a similar distorting orientation, Kennedy quotes from Baric’s 2007 paper, “Synthetic Viral Genomics: Risks and Benefits for Science and Society.” Kennedy writes: “Baric expresses his hope that ‘synthetic genomics’ will create a new generation of bioweapons immune to traditional countermeasures using ‘genetically modified and designer pathogens . . . newly emerging technologies in recombinant DNA, synthetic biology, reverse genetics and directed evolution.’” Here Kennedy gives the impression that Baric is proposing research to advance capacity for biological warfare, developing bioweapons that are immune to traditional countermeasures. But here is the full paragraph in Baric’s proposal, from which Kennedy quoted, with the words selected by RFK Jr. in italics:
“National biodefense strategies are focused on threats posed by this small group of plant, animal and human pathogens that occur in nature. However, counterterrorism think-tanks anticipate that these particular threats will ameliorate over the next decade because of medical countermeasures (e.g., drugs, vaccines, diagnostics), coupled with a limited set of pathogens that include all of the biological warfare characteristics. More important, the anticipated long-term threat in biological warfare is in recognizing and designing countermeasures to protect against genetically modified and designer pathogens made possible by newly emerging technologies in recombinant DNA, synthetic biology, reverse genetics and directed evolution. How will synthetic genomics effect future biological weapons development? What are the risks and benefits of these new technologies and how serious a threat do they pose for human health and the global economy? This paper builds upon earlier work and seeks to review the methodologies in isolating recombinant viruses in vitro and the application of these methods globally to biological warfare and biodefense.”3
It seems to me that Baric is implicitly proposing here a national biodefense strategy or counterterrorist strategy of developing countermeasures to protect against biological weapons that use genetically modified pathogens. Moreover, I would add that the development of the capacity to protect against bioterrorism is the general tone of the 2007 paper.
Later in the book, in Chapter 43, Kennedy writes:
“The virology community and its government funders routinely claim that the purpose of gain-of-function science is to predict natural spillovers and to develop countermeasures (vaccines). But Dr. Baric’s 2007 article unabashedly celebrates the recent revolutions in synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and cloning technologies as potential boons to a brave new era in bioweapons development. In contrast to his later statements, the Dr. Baric of 2007 adopted a refreshing frankness about the martial purpose of his gain-of-function dabbling. While Baric’s article periodically invokes the obligatory propaganda tropes that mask GOF [gain-of-function] as purely defensive or benevolent science, they seem like window dressing to an otherwise naked and giddy appeal to an audience of potential funders principally committed to developing bioweapons.”
Kennedy then quotes from the 2007 article, citing Baric as saying that “counterterrorism think-tanks anticipate that these particular threats will ameliorate over the next decade because of medical countermeasures (e.g., drugs, vaccines, diagnostics)”, with selections from Baric’s paragraph reproduced above. Kennedy then declares that Baric “proclaims that advances in genetic engineering and synthetic biology can be used to create new biological weapons able to evade these traditional medical defenses,” citing pages 39-51 of the Baric’s 2007 paper. However, these pages in Baric’s article discuss the central concepts of reverse genetics.
Kennedy quotes from the final paragraph of Baric’s paper. “The technology to synthetically reconstruct genomes is fairly straightforward and will be used, if not by the United States, then by other Nations throughout the world.” I provide here the complete final paragraph of Baric’s 2007 paper (the words that Kennedy selected for quotation are italicized):
“Chemical synthesis of viral genomes will become less tedious over the coming years. Costs will likely decrease as synthesis capabilities increase. Moreover, the technology to synthesize DNA and reconstruct whole viral genomes is spreading across the globe with dozens of commercial outfits providing synthetic DNAs for research purposes. DNA synthesizers can be purchased through on-line sites such as eBay. It is likely that engineering design improvements will allow for simple construction of larger genomes. The technology to synthetically reconstruct genomes is fairly straightforward and will be used, if not by the United States, then by other Nations throughout the world. It is also likely that synthetic genes and synthetic life forms will be constructed for improving the human condition and they will be released into the environment. As with most technology, synthetic biology contains risks and benefits ranging from a network to protect the public health from new emerging diseases to the development of designer pathogens. Synthetic genome technology will certainly allow for greater access to rare viral pathogens and allow for the opportunity to attempt rationale design of super pathogens. It is likely that the threat grows over time, as technology and information provide for more rational genome design. The most robust defense against the development of designer viral pathogens for malicious use may be basic research into the mechanisms by which viral pathogenesis might be manipulated so that applied counter- measures can be developed.”4
It seems to me that the thrust of this final paragraph in Baric’s 2007 paper concerns the threat of the increasing access to the technology needed for bioweapons development by actors with malicious intent, and that the best defense against this threat is basic research into the mechanism of deliberate viral reconstruction, so that countermeasures can be developed.
Baric appears to me to be a scientist seeking funding for his research. Some have said of him that he was sanguine about the potential risks of what he proposes, and perhaps this is true, but it seems to me that these risks are inherent in the area of knowledge in which his scientific research was taking him. If a nation were to refrain from investigating in this area because of the potential risks that its own research implies (via virus escape or theft, or scientists hiding their evil intent), would that nation be unprepared to respond to potential threats that have become real?
We are at an impasse. Responsible leaders of a nation with advanced scientific resources could responsibly refrain from developing gain-of-function research if there were a high level of certainty that no one could develop the knowledge and use it for malicious purposes. In the absence of such assurances, it does not seem unreasonable for states to support gain-of-function research in order to develop countermeasures, but under strict controls. This is in essence what many in the virology community and their funders have been saying and doing. Kennedy and other critics are saying that the controls are insufficient; and the researchers and funders counter that the critics want to establish controls so tight that the research itself would be blocked.
Drawing upon the example of Cuba, I wonder if perhaps the resolution of the impasse is social: less financial and prestige rewards for scientists, and more attention to a cooperative dialogue seeking consensus among researchers and political and social leaders, accompanied by greater public recognition of the achievements of the scientific community as a whole.
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From the perspective of the anti-imperialist states
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. correctly discerns that since World War II the United States government has constructed fear of some threat or enemy in order to justify expansion of imperialist power abroad and expansion of state power at home. The Cold War generated a social fear of communism, which ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist bloc. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City made possible the social construction of Islamic terrorism as a feared enemy. But the war on terrorism led to “endless wars” that were too costly in terms of deaths, damaged lives, loss of U.S. prestige in the world, and government debt. So the power elite picked up on the implications of the September 2001 anthrax attacks in the aftermath of 9/11, and it began to generate a fear of infectious diseases as the mechanism through which the government could expand its power internationally and domestically. Infectious diseases are a formidable, long-term enemy, enabling the war on germs to join the war on terrorism as the justification for the expansion of state power, increasingly infringing upon the constitutional rights and liberties of citizens. The wars on germs and terror benefit the military and intelligence agencies, medical and scientific bureaucracies, social media titans, Big Pharma, the health industry and health-related science, banks, and technological elite. The wars on germs and terror justify the state’s illegal and unconstitutional seizing of power at home and its unjustifiable interventionist policies abroad.
Kennedy in a general sense understands the importance of neocolonialism and imperialism in shaping the dynamics of the world since World War II. However, like virtually all intellectuals and political leaders of the United States, he has not observed the anti-imperialist construction by the neocolonized peoples. He therefore does not see that the anti-imperialist movement of the global South has been calling for cooperation among world powers in responding to the common threats to humanity posed by pandemics and terrorism. Viewed from the anti-imperialist perspective of the global South, the indirect cooperation of China and the USA in the development of knowledge useful to both in the common human struggles against disease and terrorism could be seen as a good thing, as a positive first step in the development of a more safe and secure world, which would be characterized by cooperation and mutually beneficial trade among nations.
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Kennedy, Robert F., Jr. 2023. The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.
Daszak, Peter. 2008. “Risk of Viral Emergence from Bats,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (Project Grant Number: 1R01Al079231-01).
Baric, Ralph S. 2007. “Synthetic Viral Genomics: Risks and Benefits for Science and Society” in ResearchGate, P. 37.
Ibid., Pp. 72-73.