Francis Boyle, a former advisory board member for the Council for Responsible Genetics, is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. 

His educational background¹ includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, a juris doctor (lawyer) degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in political science. For decades, he’s advocated against the development and use of bioweapons, which he suspects COVID-19 is. 

In fact, Boyle was the one who called for biowarfare legislation at the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, and the one who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by George Bush Sr. 

In our first, March 8, 2020, interview, Boyle shared his views on the origins of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Here, we continue our discussion, as more details have emerged about this virus. One of the criticisms raised since our last interview is that Boyle has no formal training in virology. When asked what makes him qualified to speak about this particular virus, he says:

“I went to the University of Chicago, which is one of the top five universities in the country, if not the world. There I took their bio pre-med sequence, which was biochemistry, population biology and genetics, and got straight A’s. 

I was in there competing with all the University of Chicago bio pre-med students for grades and my biochem lab partner went to Harvard Medical School. 

I won the University of Chicago’s Sigma Zi award and prize in biology for my graduating year. They gave out one per year and it usually went to seniors, but in my case, they had to make a special exception because I was a graduating junior. 

So, yes, I’m not a scientist, but one of the reasons the Council for Responsible Genetics asked me to get involved was that my knowledge in this field was well-known to my life science friends there on the Harvard faculty, and that’s how I got involved here. 

I had basic rudimentary training, actually very good training, at the University of Chicago, and my professors there, professor friends at Harvard in the life sciences, I guess they vouched for me. So, when I was asked to join shortly after CRG was founded in 1983, I agreed to do so and they asked me to handle their biological warfare work.” 

SARS-CoV-2 — A Biological Warfare Weapon

“Novel coronavirus” means it is a new virus not previously known to previously infect humans. The currently held conventional view is that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted through animals (zoonotic transmission), specifically bats. Boyle dismissed this notion in our initial interview, and still refutes the idea.

While a widely-cited paper,² published in the Nature journal on February 3, 2020, claims to establish that SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus of bat origin that then jumped species, the work of one of the authors of that paper, Shi Zhengli, actually involved the weaponization of the SARS virus. (Another Nature paper³ published that same day reiterates the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic is zoonotically transmitted.) 

However, according to Boyle, other scientific literature establishes that this is indeed an engineered synthetic virus that was not transmitted from animals to humans without human intervention. 

For starters, a Lancet paper⁴ published February 15, 2020, by physicians who treated some of the first COVID-19 patients in China showed that patient zero, the one believed to have started the transmission, was nowhere near the Wuhan seafood market. 

What’s more, there were no bats sold in or even close to the market. At least one-third of the patients reviewed also had no exposure or links to that market. This data supports the counter-hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 was not zoonotically transmitted but is in fact an engineered virus. 

Even U.S. politicians and intelligence agencies are starting to say they believe the virus leaked from the Wuhan BSL4 lab.^5,6 In our first interview, Boyle discussed published research establishing that the novel coronavirus is SARS, which is a weaponized version of the coronavirus to begin with Wuhan BSL 4 lab, with added gain-of-function capabilities that increases its virulence (makes it spread easier and faster). 

“I also went through the scientific article where the Australian health board working with Wuhan … genetically engineered HIV into SARS,” Boyle says. “So, that is all verified in scientific papers. In addition, it seems to me that they took that back to the [Wuhan] BSL4 and applied nanotechnology to it. 

The size of the molecules are maybe 120 microns, which indicates to me we are dealing with nanotechnology. That’s [something] you need to do in a BSL4. Biological weapons nanotechnology is so dangerous, people working with it have to wear a moon suit with portable air … 

We also know that one of the cooperating institutions [to Wuhan BSL4] was Harvard, and that the chairman of the Harvard chemistry department, [Dr. Charles Lieber], a specialist in nanotechnology, set up an entire laboratory in Wuhan where [according to reports] he specialized in applying nanotechnology to chemistry and biology. 

My guess is, based on what I’ve read in the literature, that they tried to weaponize all that together. And that is SARS-CoV-2 that we are dealing with now. 

So, it’s SARS, which is genetically engineered biowarfare agent to begin with. Second, it has gain-of-function properties, which makes it more lethal, more infectious. It has HIV in there. That was confirmed by an Indian scientist … and it looks like nanotechnology [has been used] … An MIT scientist who did a study found that it traveled 27 feet through the air. And that, I guess, was in lab conditions. 

That, I think, is why it’s so infectious, and that is what I believe we are dealing with here … [This is] why the 6-foot [social distancing recommendation] by the CDC … is preposterous. Even doubling that will do you no good. If there is nanotechnology, it floats in the air …

I am not saying that China deliberately released this, shooting itself in the foot. But it was clear they were developing an extremely dangerous unknown biological weapon that had never been seen before, and it leaked out of the lab. 

And as you see in the Washington Post,⁷ U.S. State Department officials … [reported] back to Washington that there were inadequate safety precautions and procedures in that lab to begin with. We also know that SARS has leaked out of other Chinese biological warfare labs. So right now, I believe that is what happened here …

I personally believe that until our political leaders come clean with the American people, both at the White House and in Congress and our state government, and publicly admit that this is an extremely dangerous offensive biological warfare weapon that we are dealing with, I do not see that we will be able to confront it and to stop it, let alone defeat it.”

The Origin of SARS-CoV-2

While Boyle made the origin of SARS-CoV-2 clear in our initial conversation, as I started reading some of the literature it really was shocking because one of the primary investigators on the 2015 paper⁸ from the University of North Carolina — “A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence” — was Dr. Shi Zhengli, a virologist who in 2010 had published a paper⁹ discussing the weaponization of the SARS virus.

Normally, while the coronavirus found in bats may be SARS,¹⁰ it typically does not infect humans as it does not target the ACE-2 receptor. The infectious agent causing the current pandemic is called SARS-CoV-2 — SARS standing for “serious acute respiratory infection” and CoV-2 indicating that it’s a second type of SARS coronavirus known to infect humans.  

SARS-CoV-2, of course, contains the genetic modification to attach to ACE2 receptors in human cells, which allows it to infect them. Zhengli’s publications show that she engineered this bat coronavirus into one that crosses species and infects humans. She has in fact been working on this for more than 10 years. 

“That is why I said SARS was a bioengineered warfare weapon to begin with,” Boyle says. “And that is what … [the University of] North Carolina and … the Australian lab were trying to make even more dangerous with the gain-of-function and the HIV. So … SARS was a biological warfare [agent] to begin with, it leaked, and that is the origin of the [COVID-19] epidemic.”

In addition, an Indian paper^11,12 that ended up being withdrawn due to intense political pressure, shows a specific envelope protein from the HIV virus called GP41 was integrated in the RNA sequences of SARS-CoV-2. In other words, the implication is that the HIV virus was genetically engineered into SARS. 

So, in summary, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a bioengineered bat coronavirus¹³ — which was initially benign and nontransmittable to humans. Zhengli then genetically modified the virus to integrate spike proteins that allows the virus to enter human cells by attaching to ACE-2 receptors. That was the first modification.

The second modification was to integrate an envelope protein from HIV called GP141, which tends to impair the immune system. A third modification appears to involve nanotechnology to make the virus light enough to remain airborne for a long time, apparently giving it a range of up to 27 feet.¹⁴