Chinese scientists are experimenting with a mutated strain of the coronavirus that causes 100% death in “humanized” mice.
The deadly virus, known as GX_P2V, attacked the brains of mice engineered to reflect a similar genetic makeup to humans, according to a study published last week in Beijing, the New York Post reports.
“This highlights the risk of GX_P2V spreading to humans and provides a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses,” the authors wrote.
The deadly virus is a mutated version of GX/2017, a strain of coronavirus that was reportedly discovered in Malaysian pangolins in 2017, three years before the pandemic.
All mice infected with the virus died within just eight days, which the researchers noted was a “surprisingly” rapid death.
GX_P2V infected the lungs, bones, eyes, tracheas and brains of dead mice. In the days before death, the mice rapidly lost weight, displayed a hunched posture, and moved extremely sluggishly.
While frightening, the study is the first of its kind to report a 100 percent death rate in mice infected with a virus associated with the coronavirus, far surpassing previously published results from another study, the researchers wrote.
More importantly, the study results do not clearly show how this would affect people.
Francois Balloux, an expert in epidemiology at University College London’s Institute of Genetics, criticized the research as “appalling” and “scientifically completely pointless”.
“I don’t see what could be learned from forcibly infecting a strange strain of humanized mice with a random virus. Conversely, I could see how such things could go wrong. The preprint does not specify the level of biosafety and biosafety measures used for the research,” the professor wrote on X.
Gennadi Glinsky, retired professor of medicine at Stanford, wrote: “This madness must be stopped before it is too late.”
