7 questions to Christian Drosten

From a concerned but anonymous scientist

Seven questions for Professor Christian Drosten of Charité – Universitätsmedizin in Berlin, Germany:

With the now wider perspective on SARS-CoV-2 origins from recently published data (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39690420/), it is probable that a RaTG13 bat coronavirus backbone combined with a gain-of-function (GoF) associated, non-natural MERS-MA30 furin cleavage site (FCS) domain, and followed by directed evolution through propagation in human or artificially humanized cells, was a pre-pandemic recipe for SARS-CoV-2. The low fidelity (high error rate) of RaTG13 replication machinery (isolated and fully sequenced by 2018 in China) coupled with the increased virulence associated with MERS-MA30 spike FCS (laboratory produced by 2017 in the labs of Stanley Perlman and colleagues at the University of Iowa, USA, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28348219/) was a disastrous match. This potentially dangerous situation likely had been known among leading coronavirus virologists well before the pandemic:

As such, a simple spike sequence chimera comprising a RaTG13 backbone and a MERS-MA30 FCS domain presents the same phylogenetic distance (92.86% spike gene nucleotide sequence identity) to Wuhan-Hu-1 as to the Saudi Arabia-Jeddah SARS-CoV-2 strain of March 2020 (Genbank QKU37093.1), the first human coronavirus documented with a spike protein FCS domain identical to the lab-generated MERS-MA30 CoV (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39690420/). Thus, on this pre-pandemic genetic background, the Saudi 2020 SARS-CoV-2 strain and the original Wuhan strain have the same phylogenetic age. This in turn might suggest that, globally, Wuhan had not been the only regional site of SARS-CoV-2 introduction into the human population.

The origins of SARS-CoV-2 may thus not be fully understood without MERS, MERS GoF (including the artificial MERS-MA30 strain, which evolved through passaging in genetically humanized mice), and especially not without Germany's role:

For an international MERS research consortium (RAPID, Risk Assessment in Pre-pandemic Respiratory Infectious Diseases) under German leadership (Christian Drosten as principal investigator, PI, and coordinator) was active, between 2017 and 2022, in MERS GoF research and in testing pandemic potentials:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V1wkIK52WVtkoKpVjG1BMqqgIupzw_rQ/view

https://www.gesundheitsforschung-bmbf.de/de/untersuchung-der-funktionalen-diversitat-von-zirkulierenden-varianten-des-mers-coronavirus-7189.php

Funded in 2017 by the German government (German federal ministry BMBF award 01KI1723A) and led by Drosten, experiments on MERS CoV included input from US virologists like Stanley Perlman (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=perlman+drosten&sort=pubdate). Indeed, no later than 2017 Drosten knew about Perlman's lab-generated MERS-MA30 coronavirus, as their joint 2018 MERS paper (submitted 2017, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29507189/) discussed Perlman's increased virulence presenting MERS-MA30 CoV ("virus has been serially passaged in mice to derive mouse-adapted MERS-CoV, such mouse adaptation and increase in virulence for mice have often been associated with deletions or frameshift mutations in all the accessory proteins, including ORF5 (19, 20)"), and thus rendered Drosten's appeasing MERS GoF rationale dangerously irresponsible and irrational (pages 15 and 16, section 3.2 in RAPID application: "Serial passage will often lead to mutations that are not controlled by error correction enzymes, in particular deletions of non-essential accessory genes which may lead to a loss of function over passages, instead of an adaptive gain of function.").

Given the pre-pandemic and FCS-mediated connection between SARS-CoV-2 and the older (GoF) MERS-MA30 CoV, the latter of which does not naturally exist (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39690420/), Drosten's affidavit from 2 March 2022, in which he declared that he did not conduct any GoF experiments in the sense of SARS-CoV-2 origin theories that involve non-natural viruses, is at least questionable (Drosten: "Ich betreibe keine ,,Gain-of-function-Experimente'' im Sinne der Theorien um einen Laborursprung von SARS-CoV-2, also Experimente, in denen Viren entstehen, die so in der Natur nicht existieren und absehbar eine erhöhte Gefährlichkeit für den Menschen darstellen.")

RAPID (MERS) consortium research was done specifically in collaboration with partners in Saudi Arabia under Saudi leadership of Esam Azhar, head of the Special Infectious Agents Unit (King Fahd Medical Research Center) in Jeddah:

https://www.gesundheitsforschung-bmbf.de/de/rapid-risikobewertung-bei-prapandemischen-respiratorischen-infektionserkrankungen-7188.php

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=azhar+drosten&sort=pubdate

Azhar and his "unit" were in fact the ones to report the first coronavirus with a spike FCS identical to Perlman's MERS-MA30 outside of a transgenic laboratory (murine) animal (collected, isolated and sequenced from a Saudi SARS-CoV-2 infected patient in March 2020; isolate SARS-CoV-2/human/SAU/86267/2020):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/QKU37093.1

This is not irrelevant, because the same Special Infectious Agents Unit officially listed and still lists (December 2024) "Prof. Christian Drosten" as a "researcher" in their own ranks:

https://kfmrc.kau.edu.sa/Content-141-EN-280312#team

All of this should raise the alarm given that Saudi Arabia biolabs (especially those with BSL 3, or higher) have been independently evaluated with the lowest scores internationally for biosafety and for dual-use-research:

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/assets/global-biolabs-report-2023.pdf

Drosten should therefore be asked, for example, the following questions:

1.) When, where, by whom, and what kind of MERS GoF experiments were conducted under your scientific leadership, specifically following GoF research as proposed in 2016 and 2017, funded by the German BMBF (RAPID consortium, award 01KI1723A), where you served as principal investigator and (international) coordinator?

2.) In those experiments, were MERS-MA30 spike genetic markers of increased virulence (e.g., spike Ser749Arg, as published by Perlman and his group in 2017) explored for their pandemic potential?

3.) Why and since when have you been officially a member of the Special Infectious Agents Unit (King Fahd Medical Research Center) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia?

4.) What work did you conduct or lead at this unit between 2017 and 2022? Specifically, were you involved in the collection, isolation, and sequencing of isolate SARS-CoV-2/human/SAU/86267/2020?

5.) Prior to March 2020, did your work there or elsewhere include dual-use-research (of concern), and/or gain-of-function research on SARSr-CoV or MERS CoV?

6.) During your international collaboration under RAPID consortium and/or while holding a researcher position at the Special Infectious Agents Unit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, did you know about the dangerously low biosafety and dual-use standards as well as lack of oversight in Saudi Arabia's virology labs?

7.) As a member of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, did you already discuss the above evidence for a non-natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 at the group's meetings? If not, do you plan to do so?

With the new year 2025, the German public is still awaiting an official, comprehensive and open investigation into the "corona years" and critical decisions and actions that predated the COVID-19 pandemic. Answers to the above questions could provide a valuable contribution.

Sincerely,

A Concerned but Anonymous Scientist