Ill-gotten Gains
Part 1

1,418 words

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Wuhan Cover-up and the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race
Skyhorse Publishing, 2023

The Wuhan Cover-up was published in the aftermath of the Covid epidemic, at the end of 2023, when Joe Biden was still President of the United States and several months after the World Health Organization had announced the end of a global health emergency. The author, John F. Kennedy’s nephew, is currently the American Secretary for Health and Human Services.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is by profession a lawyer who, until he entered politics, specialized in environmental litigation. He co-founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-profit organization devoted to clean water, with branches in many countries. He also co-founded the Children’s Defense League, an organization focused on what it believes are dramatically unreported numbers of vaccine injuries and side-effects. The Wuhan Cover-up follows Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci, a book which “puts the case for the prosecution” regarding virologist Anthony Fauci’s role in both the AIDS and Covid epidemics. Kennedy has much to say about Doctor Fauci in this book too.

The title of Kennedy’s book, combative and unrelenting, makes it clear what his position is. It is easy to guess that The Wuhan Cover-Up is written by a lawyer. Here is a leading attorney presenting the case for the prosecution. The book makes two core allegations: that the research at Wuhan was part of a bioweapon program, and that it caused the Covid-19 pandemic. The great majority of world leaders seem to wish that the subject of the origin of the pandemic be best forgotten. The Wuhan Cover-Up is a work which makes it clear that it should not be.

It should be borne in mind that are two major, very different, aspects to the Covid-19 phenomenon. Both give rise to extremely grave questions. One concerns the nature and origin of the novel SARS Covid virus strain, the other the global reaction to its spread (vaccinations, curfews, masks etc). Robert Kennedy’s book focuses on the first of these. Here he tells a story, with abundant evidence and references to support his case, of a far-reaching cover-up concerning the true nature of the viral research at Wuhan. The story aims to pinpoint the people who promoted, who funded and who protected that research. It recounts how research was concealed and hidden from public view and tells of leading players seeking to create a narrative of “no blame” and “no responsibility” so far as the pandemic is concerned, presenting their work on viral manipulation in the most favorable and reassuring possible light.

The cover-up in the title of the book concerns research on SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) corona viruses at the WIV (Wuhan Institute of Virology) in China and the collusion of secrecy and deception which the writer asserts existed between health organizations, medical publications, public relations managers, NGO’s, the American and Chinese military, universities and scientists, both Chinese and American, in funding, pursuing, managing and presenting that research.

The Wuhan Cover-Up thus seeks to answer a series of questions about work on the SARS Covid-2 virus. Who were the major players involved in researching and manipulating a pathogen which very rapidly attained a global reach and caused a pandemic? How did they manage public relations concerning their work? What players stood to gain financially or in other ways from the research at Wuhan and from the consequences of an escape or release of a pathogen? Were there vested interests involved in public information management around Covid-19, and if so, what were those interests? How were events reported by media and in professional journals? What was the relationship between the economic, political and scientific players involved?

In answering these questions the author relates a shocking tale. The Wuhan Cover-Up tells of disinformation, deceit, misappropriation of funds, abuse of science, contempt for ethics, neglect of professional duty, and in some cases what appears to be outright treason, on the part of those whose responsibility it was to inform the world about the nature of the new virus strain, its origins and the risks it posed.

Kennedy stresses that leading scientists were keen to deflect attention from the possibility that the virus came from the WIV. Every effort was made to sustain the narrative that the outbreak came “naturally”, that is to say through zoonotic transfer, that it “leapt” from an unidentified animal species to humans. As to the animal concerned, advocates of the natural outbreak theory speculate widely: bats, pangolins, and ferrets are among those put forward. At the time of writing this review, legacy media and government sources and scientific commentators around the world remain for the most part unwilling to concede the likelihood of a laboratory leak. Instead, they cling to the implausible zoonotic transfer theory, or at the very least pretend, in defiance of common sense, that both accounts of the origin of Covid-19 are equally plausible.

Readers of this book cannot fail to be struck by the abundance of bureaucratic organizations involved, many referred to by long and bewildering abbreviations. The gallimaufry of roles and functions belonging to different government agencies, NGOs and other organizations and their remits are hard to assimilate. Kennedy is obviously aware of this. There is a “cast of characters” and a glossary at the end of his book, but both are regrettably brief. Clarifications are limited to a few explanatory sentences. On the other hand, there are some references, for example “pangolin” and “lockdown”, which could easily have been omitted. A more complete glossary and “cast of characters” would have helped readers to negotiate their way through the maze of persons and organizations involved.

Readers of The Wuhan Cover-Up therefore have to concentrate to understand who is doing what and working for which organization. (One is reminded of the bewildering number of protagonists likely to appear in a Russian novel.) The end notes alone comprise a hundred pages of tiny print out of a 576 page book which is itself printed in smaller than average type. The Wuhan Cover-Up does not make for light reading, in any sense of the word.

Kennedy first provides a historical background to bioweapon research, one that is necessary to enable the reader to grasp how deceit and secrecy about the WIF could have been so prevalent and extensive. Between the first and second chapters there is a three page chart called “The Road to Wuhan”, depicting events relative to biowarfare from 1914 to 1991.

Kennedy’s dark tale begins in the early twentieth century, when bioweapon research attracted the attention of major powers. Bioweapon research can be understood as scientific work which focuses on examining the feasibility of using pathogens as a military weapon. This may well involve the culturing or breeding of pathogens. In many cases, it also means increasing the virulence of a pathogen by altering its genetic composition in order to enhance one or more of the following: pathogenesis, infectiousness, host range, virulence.

What exactly is a bioweapon? At the most general level a bioweapon might be seen to be any weapon comprising biological pathogens. By that definition it can be argued that a poison tipped arrow is a bioweapon, or cadavers catapulted into besieged cities or contaminated substances brought to a target population. Smallpox came with white settlers to the New World and decimated native populations; in the broadest sense of the word smallpox was thus a bioweapon. However, when Kennedy talks of bioweapons, he refers to those that have been created in a laboratory, although even here there is a gray area. What of natural pathogens, not altered in a laboratory, but simply cultured or bred in large numbers there and then spread over a target population? In the context of the WIV work however, “bioweapon” refers to a pathogen whose capacity is altered in a laboratory to enhance its potential, either for offensive or defensive strategic military use, or to gain knowledge of the threat an altered strain might pose naturally.

The Wuhan Cover-Up examines the relationship between scientific research into gene manipulation and the creation of bioweapons, but not the possible role of agribusiness in biowarfare. Research into genetically modified plants, altered to become more resistant to pests or disease, might point the way to considering the genetic modification of pests. This is not discussed at all in the book. Probably Kennedy had neither time nor space to discuss a potential or real relation between agricultural and bioweapon research. Answers to the question “could there be any relation between agricultural research and bioweapon research?” must therefore be sought elsewhere.