DEFUSE research proposal

In 2018, the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance submitted a grant proposal to DARPA describing its intent to test engineering bat coronaviruses in a way that would make them more easily transmissible to humans. A significant part of the experiments was planned to be carried out at the Wuhan lab.

It would be an improbable coincidence for all the following events to occur without a causal link:

1. Scientists declare their plan to introduce a highly specific mutation (insertion of a proteolytic cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells) into a particular type of virus (bat coronaviruses). The following year, a virus with the specified properties is discovered outside the confines of the laboratory.
2. The same researchers express their intention to engineer the virus for enhanced transmissibility to humans. The following year, the spread of a new virus results in a pandemic of a magnitude seen about once per century.
3. The proposed location for this experiment is the city of Wuhan. The first cases of the infection emerge in the same city.