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The lab was also intended to work on "developing a vaccine program focusing on basic and translational research" related to viruses of pandemic potential that are at risk of being "weaponized," including SARS. After the creation of the lab was initially announced, the project expanded, eventually becoming UPMC's Center for Vaccine Research, which was launched in 2007. The Center for Vaccine Research was the second such institution to be officially added to the NIAID's "biodefense" RBL network.
The opening of both this lab and UPMC's Center for Vaccine Research was made reality thanks to the efforts of the main authors of the June 2001 Dark Winter bioterror simulation, a controversial exercise that eerily predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks as well as the initial, yet bogus, narrative that Iraq and Islamic extremist terror groups were responsible for those attacks. However, the anthrax used in the attacks was later revealed to be of US military origin. As noted in Part I of this series, participants in the Dark Winter exercise had foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks and others were involved in the subsequent "investigation," which many experts and former FBI investigators describe as a cover-up.
Dark Winter was largely written by Tara O'Toole, Thomas Inglesby, and Randall Larsen, all three of whom played integral roles in the founding or operations of UPMC's Center for Biosecurity, along with O'Toole's mentor, D. A. Henderson. UPMC's Center for Biosecurity was launched in September 2003, just days before the NIAID announced it would fund the RBL lab that would later become the UPMC's Center for Vaccine Research.
Notably, just days after the attacks on September 11, 2001, O'Toole, Inglesby, and Larsen personally briefed Vice President Cheney on Dark Winter. Simultaneously, Cheney's office at the White House began taking the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin to prevent anthrax infection. In the weeks between that briefing and the 2001 anthrax attacks, Dark Winter participants and several associates of Cheney, namely members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) like Donald Kagan and Richard Perle, asserted that a bioterror attack involving anthrax would soon take place.
In the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Henderson "was tapped by the federal government to vastly increase the number of [biodefense] labs, both to detect suspected pathogens like anthrax and to conduct bio-defense research, such as developing vaccines," with the announcement of UPMC's RBL being part of the launch of the O'Toole-led Center for Biosecurity at UPMC, where Henderson was named senior adviser. In 2003, the Center for Biosecurity was set up at UPMC partially at the request of Jeffrey Romoff to be "the country's only think tank and research center devoted to the prevention and handling of biological attacks," with UPMC's Center for Vaccine Research being the hub of a new "biodefense research" lab network Henderson was setting up and managing at the time. That network remains technically managed by the Fauci-led NIAID.
Also noteworthy is that the Center for Vaccine Research's director, from its opening in 2007 until 2016, was Donald Burke. Burke is a former biodefense researcher for the US military at Fort Detrick and other installations and, immediately prior to heading the UPMC center, was a program director at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he worked closely with O'Toole and Inglesby.
At the time of the 2003 announcement regarding the creation of what would become UPMC's Center for Vaccine Research, Tara O'Toole stated:
"This new laboratory will enable University of Pittsburgh medical researchers to delve further into possible treatments and to develop vaccines against diseases that might result from bioterrorist attack or from natural outbreaks."
A few years later, after she was nominated to a top post at the Department of Homeland Security, O'Toole was slammed by experts over her excessive lobbying "for a massive biodefense expansion and relaxation of provisions for safety and security." Rutgers microbiologist Richard Ebright remarked at the time that "she makes Dr. Strangelove look sane." It was also noted in hearings that O'Toole had worked as a lobbyist for several "life sciences" companies specializing in the sale of biodefense products to the U.S. government, including Emergent Biosolutions - a very controversial company and a key suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
The history of the Center for Vaccine Research's RBL, particularly the network of people who prompted the lab's creation, raises concerns about the nature of the Corona-thrax experiment currently being conducted within the facility. This is especially true because the researcher conducting the experiment appears to be ignorant about key parts of the research he or she is conducting.
For instance, the FOIA-redacted researcher incorrectly states that a recombinant virus proposed for use in the study is incapable of infecting human cells, while the IBC members note that this is not the case. In addition, the unnamed researcher falsely claimed that one of the viral vectors for use in the investigator's study did not express Cas9 (a protein associated with CRISPR gene editing) and gRNA ("guide RNA," also used in CRISPR) and was unaware that handling those agents requires an enhanced BSL-2 lab (BSL-2+) as opposed to a typical BSL-2 lab.
Apparently such errors among researchers involved in Covid-19 research at UPMC is not an anomaly. During another UPMC IBC meeting included in the FOIA release, the IBC noted the following about a separate research proposal:
"In the investigator's notes in responses to changes requested by the IBC pre-reviewers, the investigator indicates that RNA from SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 infected cells will be obtained from BEI resources. Genomic RNA isolated from cells infected with SARS-CoV-1 is regulated as a Select Agent by the Federal Select Agent Program and neither the University nor this investigator are registered for possession and use of these materials [emphasis added] (SARS-CoV-1). The investigator must NOT obtain SARS-CoV-1 genomic RNA without prior consultation with the University's RO/AROs for Select Agents."
This part, in particular, caught the attention of Jonathan Latham, who noted that it was odd that "a university researcher is trying to obtain approval for an experiment which no one at the university is allowed to do." Latham added in an interview that "apparently this applicant is totally ignorant of the regulatory environment and by extension the risks of SARS-CoV, which is a highly infectious virus whose escape from a lab has already led to at least one death."
While Latham assumed that this was a "university researcher," it is worth noting that the use of the UPMC Center for Vaccine Research's RBL is not exclusive to researchers affiliated with the university. Indeed, as noted on the NIH website, "Investigators in academia, not-for-profit organizations, industry, and government studying biodefense and emerging infectious diseases may request the use of biocontainment laboratories," including the RBL managed by the Center for Vaccine Research.
In addition, the Center for Vaccine Research website notes that "scientists from outside the University of Pittsburgh can work in the RBL through a collaboration or contract. Outside scientists must comply with all University of Pittsburgh training, documentation, regulatory, and medical requirements." This means that outside scientists using the facility are also subject to IBC review. Both the NIH and Center for Vaccine Research sites note that, for an outside researcher to use the UPMC RBL facility, approval from the center's director must be obtained.
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