Monkeypox escaped from laboratory?
The monkeypox epidemic currently cropping up in countries around the world appears to come from a "laboratory strain," according to a source in the European Centers for Disease Control. I have read 2 articles about the hypothesis on this: one from Ukraine and one from Wuhan.
1)Independent investigator Dr. Benjamin Braddock said on Twitter that an unnamed ECDC source told him that preliminary analysis of monkeypox revealed that the virus appears to come from a laboratory and could be related to biological research from the United States in Ukraine.
ECDC source tells me that the preliminary analysis of monkeypox indicates that it is “a third lab strain with unknown characteristics” and that there is chatter about this being somehow related to Moscow’s charges against U.S. biological activities in Ukraine.
A joint Russian-Chinese has launched an investigation into where it originated, if it is detectable in the research conducted by the United States in Ukraine; whether there is a link to US-led biological research on smallpox in Ukraine.
Faced with increasing cases of monkeypox in the US and Europe, the ECDC source says the agency is intent on buying smallpox vaccines from the Bavarian Nordic biotechnology company, even if they have not been tested on this particular strain of monkeypox.
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the World Health Organization warned Ukrainian authorities to destroy all high-threat pathogens being researched in biolabs to prevent spills in the public. On Friday, the Russian Parliamentary Commission for Investigations into US Biological Laboratories in Ukraine accused the US of conducting illegal smallpox and Ebola research at clandestine laboratories in Ukraine.
2)The Wuhan Institute of Virology has assembled a genome of the monkeypox virus, making it possible to identify the virus through PCR tests, using a method that the researchers themselves have defined as dangerous for the potential creation of a "contagious pathogen". The study was first published in February 2022, just months before the last international outbreak of monkeypox cases.
Since MPXV infection has never been associated with an outbreak in China, the viral genomic material needed for qPCR detection is not available. In this report, we employed dual-selective TAR to assemble a 55 kb MPXV genomic fragment comprising E9L and C3L, two valuable qPCR targets for the detection of MPXV or other orthopoxviruses. As an efficient tool for the assembly of large DNA fragments up to 592 kb in length, TAR (recombination associated with transformation) assembly has become essential for the preparation of infectious clones of large DNA / RNA viruses.
The document acknowledged that TAR applied in virological research could raise potential safety concerns, especially when the assembled product contains a complete set of genetic material that can be recovered into a contagious pathogen.
References:
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/22/wuhan-assembled-monkeypox-strains/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995820X22000414
