5 ms·

I looked up Major Murphy using Marine Online's Locator: he shows up, with his place of work as the Office of Naval Research. My initial skim of the docs didn't

I looked up Major Murphy using Marine Online's Locator: he shows up, with his place of work as the Office of Naval Research. My initial skim of the docs didn't raise any immediate red flags to me (things like poor adherence to Naval Correspondence standards for documents). Seems legit. Just my $0.02...

Kimcha 5y ago
Have you read the actual documents? Most of it is Murphy’s unsubstantiated opinion. All the quotes in the video are from Murphy’s opinion and not from the leaked funding request documents. Nowhere in the documents is any proof that DARPA rejected the research due to gain of function concerns. All we know from the documents is that HealthAlliance requested funding to research and vaccinated bats. That’s it. Everything else is fan fiction by a soldier.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>>Have you read the actual documents? Most of it is Murphy’s unsubstantiated opinion. His letter to the Inspector General lists reference documents. Even a cursory search via DDG yields some of them, which were covered on HN when they were released back in September ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965770 ). https://newsrescue.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/defuse-project-drastic-analysis-1.pdf https://newsrescue.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/defuse-pro... https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/defuse-project-rejection-by-darpa.pdf https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/defuse-p... https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-documents/ https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-do... >>>Nowhere in the documents is any proof that DARPA rejected the research due to gain of function concerns. Here's the rejection: https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/hr00118s017-preempt-fp-019-pm-summary-selectable-not-recommended.pdf https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/hr00118s... "The team discusses risk mitigation strategies to address potential risks of the research to public health and animal safety but does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research and DURC. Given the team's approach does potentially involve GoF/DURC research (they aim to synthesize spike glycoproteins that may bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSsr-CoV backbones to assess capacity to cause SARS-like disease), if selected for funding an appropriate DURC risk mitigation plan should be incorporated into contracting language that includes a responsible communications plan." Major Murphy's letter also states: "When synthesized with the EcoHealth Alliance proposal, US collections confirm EcoHealth Alliance was performing the work proposed. The analysts produce their reports in a vacuum, absent the context the proposal provides. As a fellow at DARPA, I could see both, and can do the synthesis." Do you have access to the intelligence agency collections plans, and/or their analyst outputs? What information do you have that contradicts his statement that his conclusions are corroborated by Top Secret intel analysis? >>>Everything else is fan fiction by a soldier. Are you ready to retract that accusation?

Kimcha 5y ago

Have you read the actual documents? Most of it is Murphy’s unsubstantiated opinion. All the quotes in the video are from Murphy’s opinion and not from the leaked funding request documents. Nowhere in the documents is any proof that DARPA rejected the research due to gain of function concerns. All we know from the documents is that HealthAlliance requested funding to research and vaccinated bats. That’s it. Everything else is fan fiction by a soldier.

post_from_work 5y ago
>>>Have you read the actual documents? Most of it is Murphy’s unsubstantiated opinion. His letter to the Inspector General lists reference documents. Even a cursory search via DDG yields some of them, which were covered on HN when they were released back in September ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965770 ). https://newsrescue.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/defuse-project-drastic-analysis-1.pdf https://newsrescue.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/defuse-pro... https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/defuse-project-rejection-by-darpa.pdf https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/defuse-p... https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-documents/ https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/the-defuse-project-do... >>>Nowhere in the documents is any proof that DARPA rejected the research due to gain of function concerns. Here's the rejection: https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/hr00118s017-preempt-fp-019-pm-summary-selectable-not-recommended.pdf https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/hr00118s... "The team discusses risk mitigation strategies to address potential risks of the research to public health and animal safety but does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research and DURC. Given the team's approach does potentially involve GoF/DURC research (they aim to synthesize spike glycoproteins that may bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSsr-CoV backbones to assess capacity to cause SARS-like disease), if selected for funding an appropriate DURC risk mitigation plan should be incorporated into contracting language that includes a responsible communications plan." Major Murphy's letter also states: "When synthesized with the EcoHealth Alliance proposal, US collections confirm EcoHealth Alliance was performing the work proposed. The analysts produce their reports in a vacuum, absent the context the proposal provides. As a fellow at DARPA, I could see both, and can do the synthesis." Do you have access to the intelligence agency collections plans, and/or their analyst outputs? What information do you have that contradicts his statement that his conclusions are corroborated by Top Secret intel analysis? >>>Everything else is fan fiction by a soldier. Are you ready to retract that accusation?