biolab: yup the conspiracy theory guys and the Philippine watchdogs were right

three years ago, I noted that Ecohealth was tryin to build a biolab here in the Philippines, but was stopped when a Solon noticed it wasn't funded by HHS but by the Dept of Defense.

 even after the HHS stopped funding all ecohealth projects apparently Ecohealth was getting money from the Dept of Defense. (Ecohealth connected with the Wuhan lab covid scandal).

But the Phil gov't noticed the source of the money and refused it....   the money was never used according to the website that tracks govt grants, and the grant time ended. 

PhilStar has the 2022 story:

The lawmakers warned that the US-DRTA is the official combat support agency of the US for countering weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosives.

“A civilian laboratory was constructed using funds of a foreign military agency, which has the responsibility of managing and integrating the US defense department’s chemical and biological defense science and technology programs,” the measure reads.

 

The resolution stressed that the task of civilian cooperation on bilateral agricultural concerns lies with the US department of agriculture and not on agencies under the defense department.

 I kept an eye on the webpage for the grant money, and eventually the date expired and it was removed.

well, anyway, there also has been a lot of conspiracy theories about biolabs, including those in the Ukraine.

I didn't follow it so no opinion on it except biolabs in countries are needed for tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, q fever etc and other animal diseases that can destroy farm animal and spread to humans. 

The  detection by monitoring farm animals is routine to prevent epidemics (see last year's All Creatures Great and Small, which included plots on TB testing of cattle, and later Brucellosis was discovered: And infected one of the vets).

so anyway I figured biolabs were legitimate...except a small nagging problem, i.e. that the Lab in the Philippine had it's goal to collect and seek possible pathogens not in farm animals but in wild animals that could crossover and infect people.

In other words, looking for possible infectious stuff not checking for diseases that are actually infecting animals and hurting people.

So why worry? Uh, they are seeking out these diseases, collecting samples, and then doing investigations on the germs...does this include to collect it and investigate it (including gain of function research) so they could either start an epidemic or evolve it for biowarfare?

So anyway, Tulsi Gabbard, who was a Democrat who won more votes in the primaries than Kamela and then promptly got onto a terrorist watch list for air travel, which made her mad enough to change   parties and Trump put her in charge of the various intelligence agency stuff. 

She is leaving due to her husband having cancer (in our prayers) but has posted some stuff about the corruption in those agencies including this post about biolabs:

Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.

In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function… pic.twitter.com/RkPHnAbka9

— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) June 12, 2026

...>

check out the thread if you are interested.

So monitoring diseases that could decimate agriculture and spread to humans is good... but who checks if these labs are doing basic public health, or maybe searching for diseases to use as bioweapons? that is where the conspiracy theories come in. After Covid, the trust in the world wide public health system has gone down, and this is leading to deaths because parents won't vaccinate their kids  

and I won't get into the corruption in the many governments and even in western  NGOs. 

By the way: The US is not the only one funding such labs: global biolab interactive map

This article is about Chinese labs in Ethiopia and this article discusses biolabs in Africa   funded by China etc. 

the plague the plague

 Legal Insurrection notes that the experts are planning to make a new plague vaccine.

there has been a vaccine for over a century, but it's not very good, and requires several doses. It was given to the US military recruits who were deployed to high risk areas in the past... 

But it doesn't protect everyone, and alas now there are reports of antibiotic resistance.

I posted a lot of stuff about this on my medical blog.

given the fact that it is present in some rodants on the west coast of the USA, and given the garbage and rat infestations due to the homeless encampments (where already there have been cases of typhus and a Hep A epidemic), there is a bit of a worry. 

Docs in the IHS in the Navajo area would see a few cases a year, and usually if treated with antibiotics would cure it. But in a city, the average doc might not recognize it.

But when is the pneumonic form ( pneumonia), it can kill you within a day and is very infectious. In the past both Russia and the US investigated it as biowarfare agent. 

And of course the conspiracy types (and Russia) point to the biological labs in the Ukraine as a danger, even though most of these labs are about identifying and making vaccines for humans and animals. 

But the USA/EU/Russia/China are not the only ones who have these labs... Iran has one, and of course so does Israel

not only could these labs have a lab leak that could cause an epidemic (Brucellosis release in Chinese lab making a vaccine for example) but if a sociopathic leader got hold of it, it could cause problems.

Key scary scenerio:

Models developed by this expert committee predicted that the intentional release of 50 kg of aerosolized Y. pestis over a city of 5 million would, in its primary effects, cause 150,000 cases of pneumonic plague and 36,000 deaths.

 Tom Clancy call your office. We have a new plot for you.

Who had private Chinese biolabs in California on your bingo card?

 StrategyPage has a long analysis about what was going on with that Chinese biolab in California that made headlines last year but since then has sort of dropped out of the headlines.

I should note that Strategy Page is not a conspiracy site, and they are more accurate than much of the MSM on what is going on inside countries where I have personal knowledge. (Philippines, Colombia, West Africa, South Africa).

That shoddy lab in California  was discovered 7 months ago, not by the feds, but by a local building inspector, and the local authorities had a lot of problems getting the CDC etc. interested in finding what was being done there. 

At first, the lab was supposed to be about testing for Covid.

but later investigations found a lot more infectious specimens inside.

USAToday story here. the story has sort of disappeared from the news, but a Congressional committee issued a report  last November about what this was about.

The Congressional report includes this complaint:

The CDC’s insisted that there was “no evidence” that Select Agents were within Reedley Biolab or that Zhu and UMI imported infectious agents and “insufficient evidence at this time” of legal violations. It seems to have made this claim without conducting any investigation beyond reading the labels that were in English on a limited number of the pathogenic samples.,,,

WTF? 

conclusion:

At a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country. At worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation’s defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future.

Italics mine...ya think? 

It is therefore incumbent upon Congress and the Executive Branch to address these vulnerabilities now before it is too late.

As I said: The story sort of disappeared from the news since then.

What me worry?

So what was this all about? 

  StrategyPage's summary here analyzes this in light of Chinese history and culture, such as the mandate of heaven, chronic corruption, and a resurgence of the war lord mindset that has plagued China for 2100 years.

So if the regime falls, the local warlords want weapons to retain power.

This tries to explain why small private rich guys might be investing in such labs. 

As SP explains:

A case can be made that the Chinese government has been waging a covert war on America for years. At least a few of the Chinese with biowar labs in China would certainly presume government approval for creation of similar labs in America, plus that would give them far greater bragging rights and status among their peers. China’s government has lost control of its regional leaders, who are now waging private wars against America. With weapons of mass destruction.

italics mine. 

So why does SP think this is done by a rich guy to gain power, not by the imperial Chinese government?

Because Xi isn't that stupid.

Had it been an official Chinese government biowar lab, that would have been an overt act of war. Fortunately, it wasn’t, but it is still a big problem because the California lab is unlikely to be the only one, and we absolutely dare not assume it was.

Hmm.. one wonders if the Chinese have such labs here in the Philippines.

Another note: It is often said that people/countries that are guilty will accuse their victims of doing what they are actually doing. This might explain Russia and China and the leftist Americans pointing fingers to Ukrainian biolabs.

Now, I have no idea what is in those Ukrainian labs, but I do know that local biolabs are needed to monitor diseases in both humans and animals, and to diagnose new outbreaks, and that even these diagnostic/vaccine producing labs can result in local epidemics, such as anthrax in Russia or brucellosis in China.

Yet these labs are needed:  I often cite the local outbreak in 2009 of Ebola Reston virus in local pig farms, that also infected a few local workers non fatally. 

this NatGeo article discusses that outbreak, and the detective work used to identify what was going on 

But there is a huge difference in labs that diagnose the latest outbreaks in animals or humans, and make vaccines to stop them, and labs such as the one in California that just was doing....exactly what is the question.

So one does wonder if there are more private biowar labs out there operating under the radar of the authorities in the USA, or maybe even in third world countries.