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Transcript segment

Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted), p.96 · baric_ti:utt:00839

Page text: p.96 · original PDF

Date
2026-04-10 09:00 (day precision)
Type
transcript segment · interview
recipient
Christina Salazar, Harry Kazenoff, David T. Lambeth III, William Henderson, Clark Ervin, Jake Greenberg
speaker
Ralph S. Baric
In a laboratory setting.

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

  1. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    I would have, but I would also be uncertain that they would do that.
  2. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    And so you said that it would be -- this was gain-of-function. This proposal -- because this is the first time I'm hearing that -- because, I mean, PREEMPT, there were grants that were funded. So DEFUSE wasn't. But this is the first time I'm hearing that the actual call, the BAA was asking for --
  3. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    It was asking to understand cross-species movement of viruses down to the nucleotide level. And my interpretation of that was gain-of-function, and they discuss gain-of-function. Now, I found it very interesting that the letter that they provided shortly thereafter said that the experiments were DURC. DURC is Dual-Use Research of Concern. involving 15 pathogens, none of which is a coronavirus. So I never saw that letter in the review. Now, Peter Daszak may have gotten that letter, but we were told the main reason the grant was rejected was that we DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com proposed to do intervention studies in the bat caves, and they had said they wanted to do this in a more controlled setting.
  4. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    In the laboratory?
  5. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric
    In a laboratory setting.
  6. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    So when you say in a bat cave, what does that mean?
  7. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    It means one approach was to take doublestranded RNA and spray it in the bat cave and then induce innate immune responses in bats, so that those innate immune responses would control virus infection and virus titers would go down. So the idea would be the soldiers, before they went into a cave, they may spray the cave to lower the titer of the virus in the cave so it's less likely that they'd be infected. DARPA has kind of wild experiments.
  8. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    But where was that portion? So I think --
  9. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    Well, that would've had to have been done in China because it was based on the strains that would be found in the cave complex that they were doing their discovery work.

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