July 4, 2025

By Sean Adl-Tabatabai

The NIH has secretly engineered over 200 new gain-of-function COVID viruses, designed for heightened transmissibility, in a clandestine project at Washington University School of Medicine, as exposed in a January 15, 2025, Science Advances study. Funded by multiple NIH grants, this alarming research, conducted amid a media blackout, raises fears of another lab-leaked pandemic, with critics decrying the reckless creation of these synthetic SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Detailed in the peer-reviewed study, the experiments used advanced genetic techniques to modify the viruses, intensifying concerns as U.S. intelligence and lawmakers increasingly point to a lab-related origin for COVID-19. The high-risk pathogen research, conducted under the NIH’s oversight, has sparked outrage, with warnings that such work could unleash catastrophic consequences, prompting urgent calls for transparency and stricter controls to prevent an accidental global health crisis.

Naturalnews.com reports: The study confirms researchers used a reverse genetics system to construct the viruses, assembling genetic material not found in nature. Each pathogen was tagged with a unique six-nucleotide “barcode,” allowing scientists to track individual strains during animal experiments. According to the paper, the team pooled “>200 barcoded SARS-CoV-2 viruses” based on equal infectious viral titers.

SNIP