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“CORONAVIRUS” mentioning Kirsten E. Gillibrand was published in the Senate section on pages S4731-S4732 on June 23.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
CORONAVIRUS
Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, it seems like every week, we get a new update on the timeline for the origin of the COVID-19 virus. This week, we learned that in October of 2019--October 2019--that over 1,000 soldiers from over 100 countries had gathered in Wuhan, China, for a military Olympics, if you will.
Then what we learned is that, several weeks after that event, many of our own athletes and our own military personnel became ill, as well as folks from other countries. We went back further and talked to some of those soldiers. They told us that Wuhan, China, looked like a ghost town during that event. A town of over 11 million people looked like a ghost town.
What I am frustrated about is that the CDC has not investigated this, that the military has not investigated it, and that, during the proper times, we could have tested their antibodies. When we learned of this, maybe, perhaps, in March or in April, they probably still had antibodies. Even today, we could investigate it, but we need the FDA to do its job as well. We need the FDA to pass a T-cell test so we can go back and see if these soldiers who became ill after this event--to see if, indeed, this was from the COVID-19 virus.
Certainly, the timeline, by all accounts, is going backward every month, but I think it is time to update the American public, too, on what I feel are the lab origins of this virus. Certainly, this is just a theory, but I think we need to look into and discover and talk more about the biological origin of this virus.
This is a model of COVID-19, the virus that has killed millions of people across the world. It looks very much like the original SARS virus, with an exception, and that exception is a protein spike. The protein spike that I am talking about is composed of two units. We will call those two units S-1 and S-2, and this is a model of that COVID-19 protein spike. It is very special. It is very unique.
Let's talk about the S-1 spike just for a second. The S-1 spike looks very similar--it looks exactly like viral gain-of-function research that was conducted between a lab in North Carolina and with Dr. Shi, the ``bat lady'' from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That S-1 spike sticks to lung cells like glue. Again, this is NIH-funded research, the North Carolina lab, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
What we did is we took the basic, original SARS virus, and we slapped a protein spike on it that made it stick to human cells like glue. Think of it as being like a key in a lock. Think about, if you have a human cell as the lock, that there needs to be a special key. So they invented a special key that would impact and go into only human cells. That was done in about 2015, but then, after that, things go dark. We don't know what happened, but, somehow, this COVID-19 virus has another part of this protein spike, and we will call it the S-2 unit.
The theory is that, in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and, possibly, in the Wuhan CDC Lab, further research was done. They developed a special part of this spike--again, the S-2 unit. This is what is so special about it: It has what we call a furin cleavage site. The furin cleavage site is--and don't take it from me; take it from Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore.
Dr. Baltimore said that the furin cleavage site with its double arginine codon--and I am paraphrasing here--is the smoking gun for the lab origin of the virus in that this double arginine codon just doesn't occur in nature and that only human cells have the ability to use that furin cleavage site and break this into two separate units. That is what allows this virus to dump its genetic material into human lung cells and replicate.
As a physician, as a person who has studied virology a bit, this protein spike just doesn't look like it comes from nature. Everything about it would suggest that it was made in a laboratory. It is just too mean. It is too angry. It is just too perfect. It is too infectious. The unique thing about it is, though some would make us believe that this virus comes from bats, this virus doesn't like bats.
It only took American scientists and Chinese scientists 4 months to discover the origin of the original SARS virus, that it came from a bat and then it went to another animal, an intermediate host. It only took us 4 months to discover that virus. The MERS virus, on the other hand, it took us about 9 months. Here we are 18 months later, and we don't have any type of an intermediate host. All of the mapping that we are seeing points to this virus being made in a laboratory.
Now, the Wuhan lab could disprove me. They have the data to prove me wrong, but I am afraid that the data is now gone. It is gone forever--
most likely destroyed--unless, of course, we can find it in a cloud somewhere.
It is outrageous that a comprehensive investigation on the origins of COVID-19 has still not been carried out. Now, I am proud that this body passed a resolution that Senator Gillibrand and I put together that calls for a transparent investigation of the COVID-19 outbreak, mandated by the World Health Assembly. It unanimously passed this body, and that resolution demands a full and transparent investigation to include the United States and our allies and our partners around the world.
Now, it is time for the Senate to do our job. It is time for the Senate to fully investigate the origins of this virus as well. It would be utterly irresponsible to suffer through the worst pandemic in a century and not have the origins fully investigated.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
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