Dr. rer. nat. Valentin Bruttel
Background:
B.Sc. in Biomedicine (University of Würzburg, Germany)
M.Sc. in Molecular Medicine (Trinity College Dublin)
PhD in Immunology (Tumor immune escape mechanisms, see https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/frontdoor/index/index/year/2016/docId/12725)
Inventor of a HLA-G based therapeutics platform for antigen-specific tolerance induction in autoimmune diseases (https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2018274545B2/en), which won several biotech innovation awards (https://bio.nrw.de/innovationspreis-2022-der-bioregionen-deutschlands-verliehen/)
Author of a preprint describing the frequency of mutations within and pattern of endonuclease restriction sites in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 strongly indicates a synthetic origin (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1)
Conflicts of interest
I hold several patents on HLA-G derived therapeutics and their use to treat autoimmune diseases, have reveived funding for the underlying scientific work from the Bavarian State and two German Ministries, and some compensation as an inventor from the university who has licenced some of my invetions to a Canadian Biotech Company.
I declare no conflicts of interest regarding COVID, have never received any funding for virological projects, for Immunology or bioengineering research in anyway connected to SARS-CoV-2, have never met any WIV or DEFUSE associated virologist, have never received compensation for my investigations into the origin of SARS-CoV-2, have never received funding or money from Chinese sources or the NIH...).
I have been invited as a speaker to talk about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 at several scientific conferences (and, as it is usual for speakers, have been given free food and in one case also a free room at the conference center by an Bavarian State associated organisation and a DFG financed research consortium running the conference).
A (slightly adapted) online version of the talk can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuuY94tsbls&)
My perspective on Wikipedia, backstory and interest in the lab leak hypothesis/covid origins
First, I believe that transparency is important and highly appreciate Wikipedia, I use it constantly, even for initial scientific literature research (which many consider a no go), but IMO it is just very good to start looking into a new topic as it often lists key reviews, from which the primary scientific literature can be easily found. I also believe (and hope) that others use it as much, which would make it highly influential on our society.
Second, regarding COVID, I have had a huge trust in the scientific system, have always wanted to become a scientist, and as an atheist scientific evidence and empathy have been the key guidelines in my life. When I first saw that pretty much all domain experts agreed that SARS2 came from a zoonosis, I also trusted them. But a later closer look into the respective publications, such as the proximal origin, revealed that the evidence they provided was in no way sufficient for completely excluding the possibility of a laboratory origin as they did in their conclusions. Unlike what the lab leak Wiki page suggests, the WIV was not just any diagnostic lab as you find it in any bigger city, it was the most important reference center for bat coronaviruses. Bot just in China, but in the entire region. It must have been obvious to those virologists that it could have been involved in an accidental leak in many ways that just could not be excluded with the given data: a WIV researcher could have come home infected from a sampling trip to Yunnan, an unaltered sampled virus could have leaked, a virus could have been passaged on human cell lines or humanized mice and thereby adapted to human receptors (the rapid spread of this outbreak indicated that the virus was well adapted to humans already when it was first found, was highly unusual). None of these methods, which the WIV had used before for on similar viruses, could have been excluded without an immediate and thorough search of all of the labs, which was not done.
So I started digging a bit. Checked which sort of viral experiments the WIV had done recently, and noticed that they had used the exact same type of restriction enzymes (BglI, BsmBI and BsaI, of which the latter 2 are better) for constructing viruses that I was also using to construct the DNA plasmids for our therapeutics. That they had assembled their viruses from several DNA fragments, and that this left a pattern in the RNA genome which was obviously present in SARS2, but in none of the related viruses. And while the pattern was suspicious already, I later discovered something even more suspicious together with colleagues on twitter: when comparing SARS2 to related viruses, especially to RaTG13, there were just way to many synonymous mutations in exactly those restricition sites that a WIV group had used for synthetic viral assembly in 2017. Hi frequencies of silent mutations in restriction sites used for genome assembly is another halmark of synthetic viruses. Unlike a FCS, these sites do not play a role in the life cycle of viruses, so this could not be attributed to natural evolution. So I tried contacting virologists to tell them about this observation, hoping that they would either pick it up or refute it with valid counterarguments. Neither happened. Most of them became rude or just turned silent when they realized that some handwaving would not silence me.
In the meantime, my girlfriend had to start working at the ICU. I remember many nights when I had brought the kids to bed when she would come home, we would have a glass of wine, and she told me about another (yes, often slightly obese, but so what) patient in his late fifties who was on the respirator and would most likely die within the next days. Who would never again bring his kids to bed, would not see them become adults, would not meet his grandchildren.
While many of my colleagues often mentioned potential political consequences when it would be proven that SARS2 came from a lab, such a US/Chinese war, I realized that this was way too important to stay silent about it. If this sort of research was not stopped, another lab accident could just as well kill as many people as a war. I promised myself to ignore all political implications, and to just focus on my job as a scientist, to always tell the truth when it comes to this topic. So we published our preprint. The reactions were massif. After initially some positive articles, the tone changed, and we were called cranks, conspiracy theorists, amateurs and so on in international, national an regional newspapers. It was a preprint clearly labeled as written for bioengineers like myself, but most newspaper didn't care, they just asked the virologist that they had on speed dial for his opinion, and many of them just started ad hominem attacks. My own university clinics published a statement in which they claimed that similar patterns could be found in any related virus, and when I asked them for an example, the showed me one using normal restriction enzymes, which always produce the same sticky ends, so could never be used to orderly assemble a viral genome from 5-6 parts. It included a statement which said that the virologist who had done the analysis said that he didn't know if it is technically possible to use these enzymes. I told them it wasn't. They didn't care. Did not provide any valid example. Wrote that we were sloppy, used wrong statistics, but never said what exactly was wrong. Not even one virologists addressed the key finding of our preprint, which was the absurdly (P=9e-8) high frequency of synonymous mutations in these restriciton sites.
And then came more evidence. The DEFUSE proposal, which is much more than what the page currently suggests. It explains - the time of the outbreak - the location - the precisely integrated human-identical FCS - the highly divergent RBD - the high affinity for both receptors (hACE2 and DC-SIGN) - of course the restriction site pattern and even mentioned the precise sequencing company from which the sequencing data came in which Csabai and Solymosi later detected the most ancestral SARS2 genome and - DNA from a specific cell line always used for synthetic genome assembly. It also proved that at least fifty scientists all over the world had known that the WIV planned to work with viruses with synthetic FCSs, and that for more than a year, not one of them admitted this. Even later synthetic plasmids with a 100% SARS2 identical spike protein in production plasmids were found in 2019 patient samples. Again, DEFUSE exactly mentions what they planned to do with such plasmids. And yes, DEFUSE was not funded, but highly similar projects were, also via the NIH.
And then came the private emails, chats and senate investigation protocols, which proved that the same virologists who had publicly declared that we were liars and amateurs (e.g. Andersen) had also looked into restriction site patterns, had come to the conclusion that a lab accident was "friggin' likely". But decided to publish the opposit conclusion due to, i quote, "pressure from above", to "prevent investigations and stricter regulations", and because "any journalist can be misled". And obviously our journal still cannot find any virologist willing to review our paper.
Ben Hu, the first author who had assembled viruses at the WIV using BsaI and BsmBI was identified at one of the first 3 COVID patients by intelligence sources, both other also coming from the same lab.
And here we are. To be honest, your page on the lab leak hypothesis is highly problematic for both of us. It is technically well made, provides many references, so it looks very plausible to readers not familiar with the topic (which is the vast majority). As it also contains some extremely fringe origin theories, it further implies that those who consider a lab origin to be likely do so based on these fringe theories.
On the other hand, it does not even mention most of relevant molecular evidence, and still referres to papers as being reliable that came from authors with massive undeclared conflicts of interest or that have privately called a lab leak highly plausible. The selection of topics and wording also show that it is very biased against a lab accident, clearly not neutral. Anyone remotely familiar with the actual evidence will immediately see this. I can provide evidence for everything I said, most is in my talk linked above, many quotes can be found in my substack (German). I would be happy to help improve this page, but as I stated, I am new here, so the decision on what to do and how to do it is entirely yours.
I am sure this statement contains reasons to completely block me based on being not objective enough, potentially too emotional (I personally believe fighting the next comparable lab accident is one of the most rational things in the world), or because I am too much focused on one issue. But I trust that you are also aware of your responsibilities here, as Wikipedia is highly influential and could affect the public perception on how urgently improved regulations for biosafety and comparable experiments are needed.