DRASTIC

DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) is a loose collection of internet activists assembled to investigate the origins of COVID-19, in particular the lab leak theory.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Composed of about 30 core members, and primarily organized through the social media website Twitter,[1][7][8] DRASTIC was formed in February 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.[7] DRASTIC members called for a "full and unrestricted investigation" into the origins of COVID-19, conducted independently of the World Health Organization;[1] most scientists thought that COVID-19 likely had a natural origin, and some considered that a potential lab leak was worth investigating.[4][2][9][10]

This article is about the internet activist group. For a definition of the term "drastic", see the Wiktionary entry drastic.

Many of DRASTIC's members use pseudonyms, while identified members have backgrounds including mycology,[11][12] neuroscience, and data science.[7][13]

Mojiang mine

In May 2020, a DRASTIC member discovered a master's thesis and a PhD thesis, according to which three bat guano miners from Mojiang county in Yunnan Province who fell ill with a pneumonia-like illness in 2012 had actually died from a SARS-like coronavirus.[8][14] After the miners fell ill, and before the causative agent was determined, Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists visited to collect virus samples to investigate whether the cause was a novel coronavirus. According to scientists at the WIV, clinical assays showed the causative agent of the illness was likely not any of the several discovered coronaviruses, but instead fungal in origin.[15][16] One of the samples collected, RaBtCoV/4991, later renamed to RaTG13,[17] was the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 before more closely related wild coronaviruses were discovered,[18][19] which led to speculation that it might be related to the origin of the pandemic.[20][21] However, while RaTG-13 and SARS-CoV-2 are related, they are not closely enough related to be the product of genetic engineering or passaging in a laboratory.[22] Analysis of clinical reports from the patients furthermore indicates that they were not infected with SARS-CoV-2.[23] The role of the Mojiang miners incident has been reported to be a key part of efforts to investigate the origins of the virus, and Anthony Fauci has urged China to release further information about the miners.[20]

Project DEFUSE grant proposal

In September 2021, DRASTIC leaked a rejected grant proposal by EcoHealth Alliance and co-investigators, submitted to DARPA in 2018. The proposed project cost $14.2 million and was aimed at "defusing the threat of bat-borne coronaviruses". The leaked documents included a plan to insert "human-specific" furin cleavage sites into SARS-like bat coronaviruses. The furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 generated some controversy early in the pandemic, as the closest related known coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, RaTG-13) do not contain such a site. This anomaly is most likely the result of recombination,[24][25] and has not been seen in similar viruses because of inadequate sampling and sequencing of this group of viruses.[26][27] Many other animal coronaviruses do contain such sites.[28] Under close genetic examination, SARS-CoV-2 shows no signs of genetic modification and no precursor virus has been identified.[29] While the mere presence of the furin cleavage site is not suspicious, some scientists argue the fact that these experiments were proposed raises concerns.[30][31][32]

Other activities

In 2021 CNET reported that members of DRASTIC have engaged in personal attacks against virologists and epidemiologists on Twitter, falsely accusing some of working for the Chinese Communist Party.[1]

References
  1. Ryan, Jackson (April 15, 2021). "How the coronavirus origin story is being rewritten by a guerrilla Twitter group". CNET. Archived from the original on June 16, 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
  2. Lawton, Graham (2021-06-05). "Did covid-19 come from a lab?". New Scientist. 250 (3337): 10–11. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(21)00938-6. ISSN 0262-4079. PMC 8177866. PMID 34108789.
  3. Kannan, Ramya (June 6, 2021). "Online group digs deeper into coronavirus leak theory". The Hindu. Archived from the original on June 8, 2021. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
  4. Maxmen, Amy; Mallapaty, Smriti (2021-06-08). "The COVID lab-leak hypothesis: what scientists do and don't know". Nature. 594 (7863): 313–315. Bibcode:2021Natur.594..313M. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01529-3. PMID 34108722. S2CID 235395594. Archived from the original on 2021-06-15. Retrieved 2021-06-25.
  5. Washington Post Editorial Board (February 5, 2021). "We're still missing the origin story of this pandemic. China is sitting on the answers". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 29, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
  6. "World 'not impressed' by the WHO's COVID-19 origins report". Sky News Australia. February 14, 2021. Archived from the original on June 4, 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
  7. Aublanc, Manon (March 29, 2021). "Qu'est-ce que DRASTIC, le collectif qui enquête sur l'origine du virus ?". 20 minutes (in French). Archived from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
  8. Eban, Katherine (June 3, 2021). "The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19's Origins". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on June 6, 2021. Retrieved June 7, 2021.
  9. Frutos, Roger; Gavotte, Laurent; Devaux, Christian A. (March 2021). "Understanding the origin of COVID-19 requires to change the paradigm on zoonotic emergence from the spillover to the circulation model". Infection, Genetics and Evolution. 95: 104812. doi:10.1016/j.meegid.2021.104812. PMC 7969828. PMID 33744401.
  10. Oreskes, Naomi (September 2021). "The Lab-Leak Theory of COVID's Origin Is Not Totally Irrational". Scientific American. To be clear, most scientists think animal spillover is the most likely explanation because that's where most new diseases come from.
  11. Probst, Maraike; Flatschacher, Daniel. "Rossana Segreto". University of Innsbruck. Archived from the original on 28 June 2021. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  12. Fridstrøm, Aksel (2020-12-02). "Will the upcoming WHO investigation in China look into the possibility of a lab leak starting the pandemic?". www.minervanett.no (in Norwegian). Archived from the original on 2021-06-28. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  13. Colomé, Jordi Pérez (June 18, 2021). "The online detectives sowing doubts about the origins of the pandemic". El País. Archived from the original on 2021-06-24. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
  14. "Summary of DRASTIC findings by anonymous member seeker". The Week. Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2021-07-02.
  15. Qiu, Jane. "How China's 'Bat Woman' Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus". Scientific American. Retrieved 6 October 2021. Although the fungus turned out to be the pathogen that had sickened the miners...
  16. Stanway, David (9 June 2021). "Explainer: China's Mojiang mine and its role in the origins of COVID-19". Reuters. Retrieved 6 October 2021. Scientists returning to the mine at the end of 2012 found samples of a pathogen that came to be known as the "Mojiang virus", found in rats and unrelated to SARS-CoV-2. Subsequent research was unable to confirm whether it caused the miners' illness. According to the Wuhan Institute of Virology's Shi Zhengli, China's top bat coronavirus researcher, the workers' pneumonia-like symptoms were caused by a fungal infection. Shi and her team also said in research published last November that they had retested 13 serum samples from four of the patients and found no sign they had been infected with SARS-CoV-2.
  17. Hinshaw, Jeremy Page, Betsy McKay and Drew (24 May 2021). "The Wuhan Lab Leak Question: A Disused Chinese Mine Takes Center Stage". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 4 October 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. Mallapaty, Smriti (24 September 2021). "Closest known relatives of virus behind COVID-19 found in Laos". Nature News. 597 (7878): 603. Bibcode:2021Natur.597..603M. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02596-2. PMID 34561634. S2CID 237626322.
  19. "Amid Wuhan lab's denials, why a copper mine is back in focus in COVID origin hunt". The Week. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  20. Stanway, David (9 June 2021). "Explainer: China's Mojiang mine and its role in the origins of COVID-19". Reuters. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  21. "China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins". AP NEWS. 20 April 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  22. Kasprak, Alex. "The 'Occam's Razor Argument' Has Not Shifted in Favor of a COVID Lab Leak". Snopes.com. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
  23. Frutos, Roger; Javelle, Emilie; Barberot, Celine; Gavotte, Laurent; Tissot-Dupont, Herve; Devaux, Christian A. (March 2022). "Origin of COVID-19: Dismissing the Mojiang mine theory and the laboratory accident narrative". Environmental Research. 204 (Pt B): 112141. Bibcode:2022ER....204k2141F. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2021.112141. PMC 8490156. PMID 34597664.
  24. Wu, Yiran; Zhao, Suwen (January 2021). "Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses". Stem Cell Research. 50: 102115. doi:10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115. PMC 7836551. PMID 33340798.
  25. Whittaker, Gary R (October 2021). "SARS-CoV-2 spike and its adaptable furin cleavage site". The Lancet Microbe. 2 (10): e488–e489. doi:10.1016/S2666-5247(21)00174-9. PMC 8346238. PMID 34396356.
  26. Ruiz-Aravena, Manuel; McKee, Clifton; Gamble, Amandine; Lunn, Tamika; Morris, Aaron; Snedden, Celine E.; Yinda, Claude Kwe; Port, Julia R.; Buchholz, David W.; Yeo, Yao Yu; Faust, Christina; Jax, Elinor; Dee, Lauren; Jones, Devin N.; Kessler, Maureen K.; Falvo, Caylee; Crowley, Daniel; Bharti, Nita; Brook, Cara E.; Aguilar, Hector C.; Peel, Alison J.; Restif, Olivier; Schountz, Tony; Parrish, Colin R.; Gurley, Emily S.; Lloyd-Smith, James O.; Hudson, Peter J.; Munster, Vincent J.; Plowright, Raina K. (May 2022). "Ecology, evolution and spillover of coronaviruses from bats". Nature Reviews Microbiology. 20 (5): 299–314. doi:10.1038/s41579-021-00652-2. ISSN 1740-1534. PMC 8603903. PMID 34799704.
  27. Wang, Wen; Tian, Jun-Hua; Chen, Xiao; Hu, Rui-Xue; Lin, Xian-Dan; Pei, Yuan-Yuan; Lv, Jia-Xin; Zheng, Jiao-Jiao; Dai, Fa-Hui; Song, Zhi-Gang; Chen, Yan-Mei; Zhang, Yong-Zhen (29 June 2022). "Coronaviruses in wild animals sampled in and around Wuhan at the beginning of COVID-19 emergence". Virus Evolution. 8 (1): veac046. doi:10.1093/ve/veac046. PMC 9214087. PMID 35769892.
  28. "Close cousins of SARS-CoV-2 found in a cave in Laos yield new clues about pandemic's origins". www.science.org. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
  29. Holmes EC, Goldstein SA, Rasmussen AL, Robertson DL, Crits-Christoph A, et al. (September 2021). "The origins of SARS-CoV-2: A critical review". Cell (Review). 184 (19): 4848–4856. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.017. PMC 8373617. PMID 34480864. Under any laboratory escape scenario, SARS-CoV-2 would have to have been present in a laboratory prior to the pandemic, yet no evidence exists to support such a notion and no sequence has been identified that could have served as a precursor...The SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site (containing the amino acid motif RRAR) does not match its canonical form (R-X-R/KR), is suboptimal compared to those of HCoV-HKU1 and HCoV-OC43, lacks either a P1 or P2 arginine (depending on the alignment), and was caused by an out-of-frame insertion...There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an unusual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering...Further, there is no evidence of prior research at the WIV involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses."
  30. Engber, Daniel; Federman, Adam (September 25, 2021). "The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
  31. Kormann, Carolyn (October 12, 2021). "The Mysterious Case of the COVID-19 Lab-Leak Theory". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
  32. Lerner, Sharon; Hibbett, Maia (September 23, 2021). "Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk Coronavirus Research". The Intercept. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
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