How Worried Should We Be About Boston University’s Gain-of-Function Covid Virus That Kills 80% of Mice?
BY DR RANDALL BOCK | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 23, 2022
This week, Boston University found itself at the centre of scorn over claims its laboratories were engineering a “SARS-CoV-3” virus that would (hypothetically) put humanity one lab-leak away from a renewed Covid pandemic.
In the midst of worldwide relief over SARS-CoV-2’s eventual replacement by the mild, ‘common cold’ Omicron variant, BU’s scientists have created de novo an “Omicron S-bearing virus”, potentially marrying Omicron’s transmissibility with the Wuhan strain’s dangerous pathogenicity.
Boston University leadership should not be shocked by the widespread condemnation of this experiment. It has its own hubris to blame: steamrolling neighbourhood opposition to the urban placement of America’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), through which BU amasses lucrative research grants. As the philosopher Spider-Man has said, “with great power, there must also come great responsibility.”
In this case, BU exhibits power, but avoids responsibility. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is examining whether these experiments should have triggered a federal review as ‘gain of function’ with SARS CoV-2’s gaining new or enhanced abilities, which NIH deems “inherently risky”. Boston University says it “did not have an obligation to disclose this research”, despite having received federal NIAID funding which BU states was only for “tools and platforms” used by the scientists.
“We take our safety and security of how we handle pathogens seriously, and the virus does not leave the laboratory,” noted NEIDL’s Dr. Ronald Corley. Cynics might point out that as recently as 2018, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) touted that its work “held the secret to preventing epidemics”. NEIDL has (probably) released fewer unintentional pandemics than WIV, so there’s that.
NEIDL can be seen as either a bulwark against – or conversely, a conduit for – bioterrorism. NEIDL houses the Level-3 Biosafety Lab (BSL-3) of this trans-viral graft experiment as well as one of the rare US BSL-4 laboratories, intended for studying the deadliest transmissible diseases, such as Ebola.
Lab-coat scientist researchers are not selected or rewarded for political acumen, nor should they be. Actual wet-lab work often embodies the phrase by which physicians tease anesthesiologists: “99% boredom and 1% panic” – but, without the panic. Instead, researchers have their 1%-portion comprised of the brief, refreshing glory on the occasion of publishing consequential results – the news of which usually stays within a small coterie of PhDs cognisant of the technical ‘twin-speak‘ pertinent to the narrow focus of the experiment performed.
Upending the news cycle, bringing fear and then furor to a Covid-weary populace, and a posse of paparazzi upon itself is not the usual modus operandi of researchers releasing a preprint dryly titled (as they often are): “Role of spike in the pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.12 Omicron“. Boston University’s Mohsan Saeed (et al.) ‘buried the lede‘ by not communicating clearly having formed a SARS-CoV-2 mutant through chimeric graft of Omicron spike onto SARS CoV-2.
The researchers’ insularity is evident in their not predicting that producing novel camouflage for the pandemic’s perpetrator would be sufficient cause for all hell to break loose. Given Dr. Saeed’s interim disappearance from the scene, it is assumed notoriety was not the researchers’ actual intent. His additional lack of communicating the societal need for a rejiggering of COVID-19 spare parts into a new mutant strain is its own problem.
NIAID says that the BU should have communicated in advance the purpose and nature of the study. BU responds that it did not have to because the primary funds were from BU itself. Medical ethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan says, “the entire research community would benefit from better communication.” Perhaps even earlier “better communication” might have obviated the experiment itself.
By focusing so intently within the micro-world, it’s perhaps forgivable virologists lose sense of the macro. Conversely, the general public has earned every right to be twitchy and tetchy over ‘gain of function’ engineered augmentations to SARS-CoV-2 after the many millions of excess deaths following what many suspect was a Wuhan lab leak.
The Daily Mail’s story headlined “‘This is playing with fire – it could spark a lab-generated pandemic’” had this graphic stating the mutant strain has an 80% kill rate.
Sensationalism definitionally entails shocking language at the expense of accuracy. Corrections are therefore in order:
- Yes, this lab is performing a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ experiment: putting Omicron’s spike protein (head) on ancestral SARS CoV-2’s envelope (body) – but, this is the standard operating procedure for virologists. Chimeric work allows comparisons to be made gauging the relative strength or pathogenicity of individual virion segments.
- Yes, this is a brand-new ‘deadly strain’ – but for a particularly and purposefully vulnerable strain of mice, not for humans. The new ‘Frankenstein’ Omicron-spike-and-Wuhan-body chimeric coronavirus caused 80% of hACE-2 lab mice to die – fewer, actually, than had perished from the ancestral Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 itself. For better or worse, these mice have been specifically genetically engineered to have 100% fatality to SARS-CoV-2. If the mice instead replicated human’s very low fatality rate against this virus (less than 0.1% in the non-vulnerable), it would be nigh impossible to make any statistically significant judgements in any experiment unless multi-thousands of mice were included in every phase.
This specific type of work was performed in an appropriate BSL-3 laboratory, and was technically legal even though it encompassed ‘gain of function‘ work. There had been a moratorium in the mid-2010s on such potentially dangerous work within the United States, but that was repealed in 2017. The rationale for reversing the moratorium was similar to that of any military’s maintaining and testing weaponry and engaging in wargames: “Researchers deliberately make viruses more dangerous to help prepare better responses to outbreaks that might occur naturally.”
Ostensibly, the moratorium was lifted to keep us safe; however, it was instituted for the very same reason, in 2014, to curtail scientists’ juicing up avian flu.
In 2011, Fouchier and Kawaoka alarmed the world by revealing they had modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so that it spread between ferrets (animals used for their similarity to humans’ influenza response). Critics worried a souped-up virus could spark a pandemic if it escaped from a lab (accidentally or as bioterror).
The flip-flopping in allowing gain of function research points to the dual needs in relation to such cutting edge science. Even as the moratorium was lifted, there were rules about the flow of information on gain of function experiments. Open communication is a prerequisite to scientific innovation but also can provide ready blueprints for any intrepid bioterrorist. An additional complication is that almost every study in the U.S. receives federal funds, creating a loophole of having to divulge sensitive results through any given FOIA request.
It is uncertain if BU’s newly chimeric COVID-19 mutant could qualify as a bio threat. Personally, I think not. Almost every one of its mutations is less efficacious than the parent. Viruses go through trillions in order to adapt sequentially to changing immune systems amongst the host. That researchers would come up with a highly dangerous one on the first try seems unlikely. In any event, there is vast natural immunity to Omicron and natural and vaccine immunity to ancestral SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19.
So what was the purpose of the BU NEIDL team? Since poor communication seems to be a threat throughout this story, it is perhaps no surprise that this preprint’s abstract section lacks clarity – and features instances of ‘begging the question (highlighted).
The recently identified, globally predominant SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (BA.1) is highly transmissible, even in fully vaccinated individuals, and causes attenuated disease compared with other major viral variants recognised to date. The Omicron spike (S) protein, with an unusually large number of mutations, is considered the major driver of these phenotypes. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant. The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells. In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%. This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.
Let’s translate the abstract into general English:
Omicron is milder – and its spike protein is structurally different enough from the ancestral Wuhan strains that an mRNA vaccine to SARS CoV-2 does nothing to protect mice from Omicron. This is somewhat immaterial because Omicron doesn’t make these mice sick in the first place (basically the same situation as with humans). So, with research funding in hand, what are we going to do? Let’s put an Omicron ‘Halloween mask’ on the dangerous Wuhan strain! How many mice will die? A lot, nearly 80%. That’s sounds really bad, but we forgot to mention (in this abstract) that Wuhan strain without the Omicron-spike mask kills 100% of these mice, which sadly are canaries in a coal mine, engineered to die from SARS-CoV-2. Conclusion: the stuff inside the SARS-CoV-2 envelope is the really bad stuff. With its very own original spike protein it’s more dangerous, but what did we expect? We just made a virus that’s different from a fairly dangerous one and it’s not quite as dangerous.
Thus restated, it becomes difficult to ascertain the genuine need for doing this experiment (whose results seem obvious, predictable and axiomatic). Einstein favored Gedankenexperimente (‘thought experiments’) using conceptual rather than actual experiments in creating the theory of relativity. There’s nothing like the ‘real thing’, but I’m imagining 99% of virologists could have foreseen a conclusion similar to this without having done any of the study. Moreover, most would not have seen a real point in doing this study in the first place. Of course, getting paid and churning research grants can help provide motivation.
Even without the researchers’ having read my own article “Is it Time to Accept That Omicron is not COVID-19?” in The Daily Sceptic, September 25, 2022 – they should still have had enough information to know Omicron (despite its Greek letter) is not a SARS CoV-2 variant nor lineal genomic or genetic descendent. Such information was easily available January 2022. With this in mind, the highlighted portions make little sense and the purpose of the study even less.
One virologist offered these criticisms of the preprint’s study (in confidence):
- Why put Omicron S on a virus that is no longer circulating? I’m not sure what scientific question they are trying to answer.
- The grants that are cited for the work were meant to study innate immunity. They claim they want to study the role of spike protein in phenotype but they are not using the proper controls.
- It would have made more sense to have reversed the experiment, i.e., put the Wuhan spike on the Omicron envelope.
- Also, site-directed mutagenesis (creating specific, targeted changes) would have been a more useful technique, given that there are so many mutations in Omicron’s spike protein compared to earlier variants.
- The authors’ conclusion, “These findings indicate that the S protein is not the primary determinant of Omicron’s pathogenicity in K18-hACE2 mice,” should say that “S protein was not a primary determinant of Wuhan pathogenicity”.
- They actually [downwardly] attenuate the Wuhan strain by putting the Omicron-S onto that virus, yet try to sell it as if they had made the virus more lethal.
- Overall, they seem to really be studying Wuhan pathogenicity in the context of Omicron spike.
All products and methods of technology (e.g. nuclear power, mining, fossil fuels) are variously considered ‘double-edged swords’. So too it is with these studies. There are potential benefits and potential risks. In this particular case, were the risks worth it? Was the study appropriately directed and was the information gleaned worth the global consternation? The answer to both is ‘no’.
“It’s not like they made this monster virus, that’s a complete misinterpretation,” states infectious disease specialist Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes. “Researchers compared the ancestral version, Omicron, and a combined version of the two to research what piece of the virus dictates how sick a person will get. What we see in animal models does not translate directly to what we will see in humans. The labs are extraordinarily careful in how they do these experiments. There are strict protocols in place to make sure that nothing produced in the lab is released into the environment.”
My assessment is that this is more ‘tempest in a teapot’ than monster – although Dr. Frankenstein’s methods and ethical issues find resonance here. That there is a federal investigation into this case is interesting for the side reason that it seems an admission against its own interest, namely to the possibility that virology laboratories can potentially leak mutant strains. Who would’ve thought? For so long, it was all but forbidden to consider such a possibility for China’s WIV, even though ancillary evidence is nearly conclusive it occurred.
Dr. Randall Bock is a primary care physician near Boston, Massachusetts, and the author of Overturning Zika.
Repeal the National Childhood Vaccine Act of 1986
Good products do not need universal liability shields, but bad actors are enabled by them.
el gato malo – bad cattitude – october 22, 2022
much as been made about the possibility of schools mandating covid vaccinations for kids to be allowed to attend.
it may or may not happen. perhaps it will be treated like a flu shot. perhaps they’ll try for requirements. it’s likely to vary place to place and many states are already saying “no way” and if imposed this could cause flood of school change and really unleash the idea of vouchers and free choice and a swansong for public schools.
in the end, i’m not sure how many are crazy enough to try it and honestly, i doubt that any public school system in america could survive for long mandating this.
i doubt that this is really what the approval is about.
and that is a thing we need to fix.
longtime gatopal™ jennifer cabrera has a simple, common sense solution:
If the predicted red wave produces a strong Republican majority in Congress, one of their first acts should be to repeal the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. No excuses, Republicans. Liability is the only mechanism that can produce safe vaccines.
because this law is an abomination.
it creates ALL the wrong incentives and has swollen the US pediatric vaccine schedule (which used to be 3 well tested vaxxes, MMR, DTP, polio) with ineffective or marginally effective crap lacking valid risk reward and possessing meaningful side effect tails.
the case for several (HPV, flu, rota, pneumococcal) is basically non-extant.
but hey, no liability, no need to worry.
interestingly, gardasil does not appear to have this coverage hence the mass of lawsuits.
stop me if this sounds familiar:
landing in court on this is not, perhaps “the system working” as this vaccine looks to have been approved and marketed on numerous false pretenses and perhaps outright fraud. but at least the system is cleaning up its mess after the fact and discouraging such behavior in the future.
and the covid vaccines put all the others in the shade in terms of corners cut and data looking dodgy. but if we shield them and other things like them from liability, where is the disincentive to act badly? (and if you just said “because the drug companies wouldn’t lie to us!” i have some denver harbor bonds to sell you.)
you can get around this exemption by pfinding phraud, but should this really be necessary (especially when they hide the data and thus could have all sorts of little gems in it that the public had not seen)?
so how about we end this harmful “safe harbor” instead?
there is NO good consumer protection reason for this act. it’s a license for pharma to misbehave and it eliminates accountability and incentive to test properly. if you want to jab your drugs into kids, you need to own the side effects.
if you fail to predict or disclose risks, you own the ill outcomes instantly and forever.
let them decide, on that basis, how many studies to do and for how long prior to release.
i would LOVE to see what a class action jury award for fraud in a child vaccine lawsuit looks like.
this is the reason we have a tort system.
let it work.
it’s really simple:
mandate + no liability = disaster and “soft mandates” are just as bad.
everyone passes the buck to claim “iT wUZ nEvER a MAnDatE!” when they know full well that it functionally was.
how many times did you see this?
you mandate, you own the side effects. simple, reasonable, and incentive aligning.
this is one we can easily do.
we made this law. it has had perverse, anti-consumer effects. so let’s unmake it.
no more liability waivers.
only voluntary informed consent to risk subject to strict disclosure liability. “oh, we never tested for that!” is no longer an excuse.
i am not saying you get to sue for any bad outcome. but if the risks were not disclosed or were misstated you can. if they did not look for fear of what might be found, they own that. the onus is on them to prove safety and delineate risks and share them accurately and completely.
this encourages full, accurate reporting so people can make real, informed decisions.
it’s kind of stunning that we don’t have this.
if any public agency requires a jab, they become liable for bad outcomes.
no one gets forced and drug companies need to make a case for risk reward that will convince people and providers of healthcare.
let the market find the proper level of testing and reporting.
because healthcare is everywhere and always a cost benefit decision.
and you need free choice and sound data to make such choices well.
not exactly rocket surgery, is it?
or did you need another tour of the land of perverse incentives and regulatory capture?
New Study Blames COVID on NIH, University of North Carolina — Finds Fauci and Baric’s Fingerprints on Pandemic Bug
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., J. Jay Couey, Ph.D., and Charles Rixey | The Defender | October 21, 2022
Critics have long questioned why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would fund experiments by University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill (UNC) professor Ralph Baric to develop a technique for hiding evidence of human tampering in laboratory-created super viruses.
Aided by some $220.5 million in National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funding, Baric developed a so-called “Seamless Ligation” technique, which he boasted could perfectly conceal all evidence of human tampering in laboratory-created viruses. Baric nicknamed his invention the “no-see’m” method.
Now a new study, “Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV2,” published on the preprint server bioRxiv, shows that — apparently unbeknownst to Baric — the “seamless ligation” concealment gimmick leaves its own minute but legible signature.
Most momentously, these same researchers have discovered that damning signature in the genome of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Baric’s technique has long been controversial. “It’s the artist that doesn’t sign his name to the painting; the virologist that doesn’t put his signature into the virus to let us know whether or not it is emerging naturally or whether it is produced in a laboratory,” said Jeffrey Sachs, chair of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, a task force that investigated the origins of COVID-19.
“All of it says, my God, there was really a big, very risky research agenda underway.”
This month, Sachs published the results of his 22-month investigation in The Lancet, including the damaging conclusion that COVID-19 was probably laboratory-generated and that the technology probably came from NIH-funded science.
Referring to Baric’s seamless ligation methodology, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein observed:
“It’s the exact opposite of what you would do if your interest was public health. Public health scientists would be marking their enhancements with red flags — not devising ways to hide them. The only reason you would want a concealer is to advance a sinister purpose — such as illegal bioweapons development — some mischief that the scientist didn’t want traceable back to his lab.”
Baric taught his “no-see’m” method to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli in 2016. In return, Baric received Chinese coronaviruses collected by Shi from bats in Yunnan province. (Scientists have linked the COVID-19 genome’s pedigree to closely related bats.)
Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute subsequently demonstrated their mastery of Baric’s high-risk technique in a series of published — and highly controversial — gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab. It has been even more puzzling to his critics that Baric, again with NIAID funding, chose to share this dangerous technique for weaponizing pathogens with Chinese scientists who have clear links to the Chinese military.
Experts say that the implications of this new study could be far-reaching. By pointing the finger at Baric, the study raises the possibility of potentially devastating liability for the NIAID and the University of North Carolina and other parties.
Scientists, including those close to Dr. Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly pointed out that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has genomic sequences that appear inconsistent with natural evolution: The COVID-19 virus is no longer infectious in bats, and its spiked protein feature — which is unknown in this family of coronavirus — includes numerous mutations that make it ideally infectious in humans.
The closest known coronavirus relative — a coronavirus from the Wuhan lab — is 96.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2. The peculiar spike accounts almost completely for the entire 3.8% difference. Oddly, there are multiple novel mutations in the spike and almost none in the rest of the genome.
Natural evolution would be expected to leave mutations distributed evenly across the genome. The fact that virtually all the mutations occur on the spike led these scientists to suspect that that particular Wuhan lab coronavirus collected by Shi Zhengli is the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 and that its new spike was implanted through engineering.
However, the unmistakable fingerprints of lab engineering were absent — leaving many experts wondering whether Baric’s technique was used to assemble a novel coronavirus with the engineered spike while removing the evidence of lab generation.
This new study connects the biological breadcrumbs that link federally funded research to a global pandemic. That trail leads directly to UNC and NIAID.
The authors of the study — a team of researchers from Duke University, University Clinics of Würzburg and an industry group — identified a characteristic signature in the amino acid code. That indelible artifact could only have emerged from Baric’s “no-see’m” methodology.
In an interview last spring, Baric himself confessed, that at the time the pandemic began, only two or three labs in the world were using his protocol – including his UNC lab and the WIV.
The study’s authors’ conclusions rest on the presence of unique sites in the COVID-19 virus. These sites allow special enzymes called “restriction enzymes” to cut the DNA into building blocks of unique size that then can be “stitched together in the correct order of the viral genome,” according to the study’s authors.
Essentially, Baric’s technique leaves behind unique spellings in the “genetic vocabulary.” The new words include “odd spelling choices” subtly distinguishing them from typical viral vocabulary.
The magic of Baric’s “no-see’m” technique is to invisibly weave these telltale “spelling” changes into the viral sequence between relevant genes without altering the viral protein. This is like changing the “spelling” of the word without changing its meaning; the casual listener will never notice the difference.
The research team used forensic tools to drill down on minute “spelling differences” in the SARS-CoV2 genome that betray laboratory tampering using the “no-see’m” technique.
Consider how a Brit would spell “colour,” “manoeuvre” or “paediatric.” The choice to spell a word in a certain way can reveal your nation of origin. Similarly, these nearly imperceptible changes in the viral sequence give away the laboratory origins of this virus.
In sharing his seamless ligation technique with Shi Zhengli, Baric assured that the WIV possessed all the required elements of the assembly process. EcoHealth Alliance’s infamous DEFUSE proposal describes the same techniques in detail. (submitted to The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in 2018).
The world now has proof positive that SARS-CoV2 is an engineered laboratory creation generated with technology developed by Ralph Baric with U.S. government funding.
Prosecutors and private attorneys representing clients injured by the COVID-19 pandemic now have a smoking gun. The gun points at humanity. Forensic scientists have now successfully lifted faint but precise fingerprints from the lethal pistol’s grip and trigger. Those fingerprints belong to the NIAID and the University of North Carolina.
Baric is Fauci’s favorite gain-of-function scientist. The cascade of NIAID funding to Baric and his UNC lab has financed 152 studies approaching a quarter-billion dollars.
Those federal grants have made Baric the global kingpin of gain-of-function science. In conformance with standard practice, it is probable that UNC pockets one-quarter to one-half of NIH’s financial felicities to Baric for “administrative costs.”
These monumental payments have probably incentivized UNC to turn a blind eye to Baric’s reckless experiments and to his controversial decision to transfer his dangerous technologies to a Chinese military laboratory known to suffer from deficient safety protocols and shoddy construction that make it, in the words of Congressional investigators, less secure than a “dentist’s office.”
UNC’s role in enabling the questionable conduct may have precipitated a global pandemic that could easily give rise to liability for negligence.
UNC and NIAID’s liability is now clear. But do we have positive proof that the Wuhan lab created the monstrosity that caused COVID-19?
The cumulative evidence strongly suggests that the Wuhan lab used Baric’s methodologies to cobble together the chimeric virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. But a few missing puzzle pieces still prevent us from definitively proving that this dangerous construction project occurred at the Wuhan lab.
As The Lancet Commission report concluded, the released emails show that NIH’s Dr. Francis Collins, NIAID’s Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak, and others are continuing to collaborate with Shi Zhengli and Chinese officials to suppress the public release of information that would allow us to complete this picture. Stay tuned!
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Aortic Dissection after COVID-19 Vaccination
Some Injuries are for Keeps
By Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake | Courageous Discourse | October 21, 2022
Yesterday I met a 42-year-old optometrist who six days after the second mRNA COVID-19 vaccination suffered a distal aortic dissection. He was healthy and was physically fit. He knew something was wrong when back pain and leg weakness developed resulting in severe effort intolerance on vacation. He rushed home, was hospitalized and underwent the appropriate diagnostics to determine the presence of an aortic aneurysm or widening of the aorta and then a discrete tear which blood flow now goes through the true lumen and a false lumen created by the dissection. This occurs in the outer third of the media or the muscular layer of the blood tube.
In his mind this catastrophic event is due to the COVID-19 vaccine, and I agree. The mRNA and Spike protein produced by the mRNA circulates in blood on average two weeks, so it is freely able to deposit in the lining of blood vessels and the vascular media of major vessels.[i] [ii] Once present, the Spike protein damages cells and incites inflammation which is a destructive process driven by white blood cells, cytokines, and complement. It is known that the second injection is approximately 80-fold more reactogenic with fever, pain, myalgia, etc. As part of that response, there can be a major surge in blood pressure due to release of catecholamines or stress hormones.[iii] This increase in the change in pressure over the change in time for each heartbeat is the driving force to initiate the tear in the aorta. Once this happens, there is no turning back, the rip goes down the major blood tube and threatens the blood supply to the spinal cord, vital organs, and legs. Each patient is different, with some having external rupture resulting in death. Others require emergency surgery or endovascular stenting to restore blood flow to vital organs. In the case of the optometrist, he was managed conservatively with medications to control blood pressure. Data from the International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection (IRAD) indicates he faces a 22% 3-year mortality rate and this is increased by his history of prior aortic aneurysm (HR, 2.17; 95% CI, 1.03 to 4.59; P=0.04).[iv] It is exactly this complication for which I have always advised patients with prior aortic abnormalities (aortopathies) to avoid COVID-19 vaccination. If you know someone who has died shortly after vaccination and they had antecedent back pain or a prior aneurysm, ask the family if there was an autopsy. This is important since aortopathies can be familial and other family members could be screened with imaging and genetic testing. This man’s life is indelibly changed because COVID-19 vaccination was for “keeps.”
Arrests made in Dutch journalists case
El Salvador Perspectives | October 18, 2022
Forty years have past since their crimes were committed. But in the past week, former military figures from El Salvador’s civil war have been arrested for their roles in the cold-blooded killing of four Dutch journalists covering that war.
In early 1982, El Salvador was a dangerous place for journalists covering the civil war between FMLN guerrillas and the country’s armed forces. Despite the danger, Dutch journalists, Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemse and Hans ter Laag, ventured out to the Department of Chalatenango to get an interview with guerrilla fighters. The Salvadoran army ambushed their group and killed all the journalists.
The ambush was one of the war crimes documented in the 1993 UN Truth Commission Report following the conclusion of El Salvador’s civil war:
On the afternoon of 17 March 1982, four Dutch journalists accompanied by five or six members of FMLN, some of them armed, were ambushed by a patrol of the Atonal Battalion of the Salvadorian armed forces while on their way to territory under FMLN control. The incident occurred not far from the San Salvador-Chalatenango road, near the turn off to Santa Rita. The four journalists were killed in the ambush and only one member of FMLN survived. Having analysed the evidence available, the Commission on the Truth has reached the conclusion that the ambush was set up deliberately to surprise and kill the journalists and their escort; that the decision to ambush them was taken by Colonel Mario A. Reyes Mena, Commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade, with the knowledge of other officers; that no major skirmish preceded or coincided with the shoot-out in which the journalists were killed; and, lastly, that the officer named above and other soldiers concealed the truth and obstructed the judicial investigation…
1. The Commission on the Truth considers that there is full evidence that Dutch journalists Koos Jacobus Andries Koster, Jan Cornelius Kuiper Joop, Hans Lodewijk ter Laag and Johannes Jan Willemsen were killed on 17 March 1982 in an ambush which was planned in advance by the Commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade, Colonel Mario A. Reyes Mena, with the knowledge of other officers at the El Paraíso barracks, on the basis of intelligence data alerting them to the journalists’ presence, and was carried out by a patrol of soldiers from the Atonal BIRI, under the command of Sergeant Mario Canizales Espinoza.
2. These same officers, the sergeant and others subsequently covered up the truth and obstructed the investigations carried out by the judiciary and other competent authorities.
During the war a judicial investigation of the events came to an end in 1988 when the judge on the case sought asylum outside of El Salvador after receiving death threats, and the 1993 amnesty law prevented any prosecution thereafter.
After the amnesty law was nullified, the Fundación Comunicándonos and the Asociación Salvadoreña para los Derechos Humanos (ASDEHU) filed a complaint on March 13, 2018 asking for El Salvador’s attorney general (FGR) to reopen the case and prosecute the military officers in command of the ambush. The ambassador to El Salvador from the Netherlands joined the human rights attorneys as they presented the demand, and expressed his hope that the FGR would investigate and bring the guilty to justice.
The case was reopened, and now arrest warrants have been issued by the judge.
El Faro English describes the week’s developments:
General Guillermo García, the minister of defense and strongman of the Salvadoran Army in the early 1980s, has been detained for his alleged responsibility in the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, members of the judicial branch involved in the case and two relatives of the victims confirmed to El Faro. Also arrested was Colonel Francisco Antonio Morán, the former director of the defunct Treasury Police, a fearsome security force tied to massacres, enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial activities attributed to death squads.
The arrests were ordered on October 13 by Judge María Mercedes Argüello of the trial court in Dulce Nombre de María, Chalatenango, after finding sufficient grounds for the accused officers to face trial for the murder of Jacobus Andries Koster, Jan Cornelius Kuiper, Hans Ter Laag, and Johannes Jan Willemsen, Dutch journalists ambushed and executed by the Salvadoran Army on Mar. 17, 1982, in rural Chalatenango.
General García and Colonel Morán were detained in the early hours of Friday, October 14, in their homes in San Salvador. Their first hearing was set for Monday, October 17.
The court also ordered the arrests of Colonel Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, former commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade of El Paraíso; Colonel Rafael Flores Lima, ex-chief of the Joint General Staff; and Sergeant Mario Canizales Espinoza, of the Atonal Battalion.
The 89 year old Garcia was deported from the US in 2016 after a federal court found him guilty of serious violations of human rights prior to his entry to the US. He has also been linked to other civil war atrocities such as the massacre at El Mozote and the killing of four US churchwomen.
Judge María Mercedes Arguello also ordered that authorities begin an extradition process against Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, former commander of El Salvador’s 4th Infantry Brigade, who currently resides in the United States. Reyes Mena is alleged to have given the orders in 1982 to kill the four Dutch journalists. The massacre occurred in Santa Rita close to the base of the 4th Infantry Brigade in El Paraíso, Chalatenango.
Dutch journalists from ZEMBLA tracked Reyes Mena down through social media activity to a house in the United States. He has reportedly been living in the US since 1984, two years after the massacre. From NL Times :
Zembla tracked down the colonel who ordered the murder of the four Dutch. The now 79-year-old Mario Reyes Mena has been living in the United States for four years. Zembla found him through his three adult children, who are active on social media.
In 1993 a United Nations truth commission concluded that Reyes Mena was responsible for the ambush and the murder of the Dutch journalists – Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Joop Willemsen and Hans ter Laag. That same year an amnesty law was passed in El Salvador, which meant that he could not be prosecuted in that country.
The ZEMBLA team tweeted the video of meeting Reyes Mena at his front door where they asked to speak to him about the allegations in the Truth Commission report.
Reyes Mena is seen answering the door in an ARENA T-shirt and angrily telling the reporters that he was never charged with anything. The video begins in English and later their conversation switches to Spanish.
The families of the victims and the Dutch government have been seeking justice in this case throughout the past 40 years. As prospects for reopening the case brightened, they published a multimedia website in English and Spanish which presents the story of the massacre, the historical context and the quest for justice.
Dutch news outlets reported reactions to news of the arrests:
For Gert Kuiper, the brother of the murdered Jan Kuiper, the news about the arrests came as a big surprise. “It’s really good news, I’m hopeful that they will be brought to justice. These arrests give me hope that impunity will be nullified,” he told NOS. Kuiper is also happy that El Salvador is asking for the extradition of Colonel Reyes Mena, the leader of the unit that shot the Dutch. He left for the United States two years after the murders and still lives there. “The Americans can hardly let him live his life in Virginia unmolested,” says Kuiper.
Gert Kuiper and other relatives received the news about the arrests from their lawyers. Zembla reports that representatives of the Dutch Public Prosecution Service are going to El Salvador to speak with the suspects.
Advocates for the families held a press conference on Monday, October 17, to praise the actions of the court:
It is a very important case, considered as a crime against humanity, for which truth and justice have been demanded for 40 years. It is one of the crimes described in the report of the [UN] Truth Commission for El Salvador; thus we must recognize the courage of the judge,” said Oscar Pérez, president-director of Fundación Comunicarnos, an organization that, together with the Salvadoran Association for Human Rights (ASDEHU), is advancing the case in El Salvador.
Featured Video
US Middle East Policy: The Growing Propensity for Genocide
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Gratitude of the Captured
- Hezbollah denies involvement in deadly attack on UNIFIL in south Lebanon
- The prospect of an expanded and far more violent war
- Canada’s Carney Revives Online Censorship Bill
- Israeli soldiers kill UNICEF truck drivers delivering water to Gaza families
- Iran defends limits on Strait of Hormuz passage
- ‘We warned you’: Hormuz Strait back to pervious state amid US blockade
- Iran rejects uranium transfer, warns of response to naval blockade
- US Middle East Policy: The Growing Propensity for Genocide
- Daniel Davis: Iran Reopens the Strait of Hormuz
- If Americans Knew
- Israel relegates another population to life in tents – Daily Update
- Senate again fails to block weapons to Israel
- Think the Iran war is a disaster? Blame these DC think tanks first.
- Number of Palestinian Prisoners Rises By 83% Since October 2023
- With multiple “ceasefires” in place, Israel keeps on killing in Gaza and Lebanon – Daily Update
- Mearsheimer: Israel Owns Trump
- Mark Levin and Jonathan Pollard Push for Nuking Iran
- TCN: America Enables Israel’s Crimes
- Israel’s Next Leader Will Be Just Like Bibi – but Without the Corruption
- Born into war, raised across borders: The story of Gaza’s premature babies separated from their parents amid Israel’s genocide
- No Tricks Zone
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
Aletho News 