"US Scientists Propose Creating SARS-CoV-2-Like Viruses in Wuhan"

Newly obtained documents reveal that American scientists planned to collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to engineer novel coronaviruses with features similar to SARS-CoV-2, including furin cleavage sites and receptor binding domains adept at infecting human receptors, a year before the virus emerged. The documents detail experiments that could have generated the virus' rare properties and challenge arguments against the relevance of the research proposal to the origins of the pandemic. The grant proposal, rejected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, suggests that data central to the pandemic may be found not only in China but also in the U.S.