Transcript segment

Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted), p.96 · baric_ti:utt:00841

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

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.

In context

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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.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

In the laboratory?
2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open

In a laboratory setting.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

So when you say in a bat cave, what does that mean?
2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric

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.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

But where was that portion? So I think --
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.
2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open

I recall that there was some Michigan --
2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open

Yeah. There was a Michigan group that had these kind of sprayers -- DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com

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