News
Featured Image
Shutterstockshutterstock.com

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, June 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Recently unearthed reports have revealed that Google has long funded pathogen research by a collaborator of the Wuhan lab, from where COVID-19 is thought to have emerged, shedding new light on the strict censorship which the Big Tech company has enforced on discussions claiming that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory.

The National Pulse released a report June 19, noting that Google had been funding experiments conducted by Peter Daszak’s group EcoHealth Alliance, which itself has long partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in conducting gain-of-function research, particularly in coronaviruses, as further explained below.

Writing for the National Pulse, Natalie Winters noted how the relationship between Google and EcoHealth Alliance spanned at least a decade, with Google sponsoring a 2010 study on bat flaviviruses. Peter Daszak, along with EcoHealth’s Vice President for science and outreach, Jonathan Epstein, were among the authors of that study, and expressed their thanks to “Google.org,” as well as to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Defense, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Then a 2014 study on “henipavirus spillover,” with Daszak listed as one of the authors, was again funded by “Google.org,” as well as USAID. The study is also linked to bat-originated viruses and their transmission to humans, with the introduction noting that the study will examine the “Zoonotic transmission of lethal henipaviruses (HNVs) from their natural fruit bat reservoirs,” and any future potential transmission.

One year later, Daszak and Epstein were among those who authored a study on “Macacine herpes.” The paper examined the transmission of that strain of herpes, MaHV1, which was widely found amongst macaques in Asia, and how it could pass to those in case contact with the animals. Once again, Google funded the research, along with USAID.

Finally, Winters pointed to a more recent Google-sponsored study from 2018, authored by Daszak and Epstein, along with a number of scientists from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in southern China. The study itself is of considerable interest in light of COVID-19, as it deals with the concept of “behaviors and perceptions associated with transmission of pathogens with pandemic potential in highly exposed human populations at the animal-human interface.”

As Winters reports, the theme of the study is very much along the lines of Daszak’s later comments supporting a natural origin of COVID-19. It notes that such viruses and “zoonotic pathogens” are very likely to occur in the human-animal interactions which are very widespread in China. Possible places for this transmission to occur include “wet markets,” wrote the authors.

It was a wet market in Wuhan which was originally blamed for being the source of origin for COVID-19, not only by the mainstream media, but also by Daszak.

“Research has demonstrated that human-animal interfaces, such as within these wet markets, provide an ideal environment for infectious disease emergence, transmission, and amplification,” the study continued.

The Google-sponsored study also mentioned how SARS “emerged” in wet markets and was later discovered to have originated in bats.

Daszak’s relationship with Wuhan and COVID-19

Daszak himself has a long and somewhat tainted relationship with COVID-19 and the WIV, having funded research at the Wuhan lab for 15 years. Reports have already extensively noted how Daszak funded and collaborated with Dr. Shi Zheng-li, a world-renowned coronavirus scientist who works on bat-based, gain-of-function experimentation and heads up the WIV’s coronavirus studies.

Daszak’s organization, EcoHealth Alliance, along with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, funded (amongst others) a 2015 study by Dr. Shi, which manipulated bat spike proteins and the 2002 SARS virus in order to infect human cells.

Yet despite this knowledge, following the emergence of COVID-19, Daszak organized a letter, published in The Lancet in February 2020, categorically dismissing “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” He also thanked Dr. Anthony Fauci for denouncing the idea that COVID had originated in a laboratory.

Daszak was subsequently invited to be part of a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the virus in January 2021, acting as their sole American representative. Given Daszak’s vested interest in gain-of-function work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it may be no surprise that the report returned an “extremely unlikely” verdict on the theory that the virus originated in the laboratory. The investigation was described by the National Pulse as “wildly compromised.”

Google censorship of COVID-19

The revelations reported by the National Pulse come on the back of consistent and severe censorship over the last year by Big Tech, especially Google, of anyone who proposed or defended the so-called lab leak theory of COVID-19.

This censorship has not been at the public level only. Google has gone so far as to delete files from personal accounts, including a Google Drive copy of the film Plandemic, which among other things, argues that COVID-19 was created in a lab, and that the current panic is part of a “game” to “prevent the therapies until everyone is infected, then push the vaccines.”

The video was also blocked from Google’s video service, YouTube.

However, this is by no means the only instance of Google’s regular censorship of those who propose ideas with content similar to the very scientific research funded by the Big Tech giant.

America’s Frontline Doctors, a group which promotes effective, non-vaccine cures for COVID-19, was de-platformed for spreading “misinformation.” The group challenged the mainstream narrative in response to COVID-19, especially the logic of lockdowns and the experimental vaccines.

LifeSiteNews has also been affected by Google’s censorship, as YouTube banned LifeSite’s main account and deleted all videos after a number of temporary bans and warnings. YouTube also took issue with the April 12 interview that John-Henry Westen, LifeSite’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, conducted with Patrick Coffin, deleting it in under 24 hours for the alleged crime of “medical misinformation” about COVID-19.

As early as last April, YouTube’s CEO announced that the video platform would delete any content at odds with the World Health Organization on COVID-19: “[a]nything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy. And so remove is another really important part of our policy.”

Given the discovery that Google has long funded research into “zoonotic pathogens” and their transmission to humans, with the research being conducted by a collaborator of the WIV and gain-of-function research of coronaviruses, questions must surely be asked about the strict censorship of issues related to COVID-19 over the last year.