NIH-Funded Labs Create 100% Lethal H5N1 Chimera Virus in Mammals

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A new bioRxiv preprint made available online earlier this month confirms that the same network of labs long tied to dangerous gain-of-function influenza experiments have just announced the creation of a new engineered bird flu chimera virus with 100% lethality in mice.

The project—funded by U.S. federal agencies and carried out by an international consortium of virology heavyweights in the U.S., Japan, Egypt, and Austria—reportedly used reverse genetics to stitch together parts of wild avian influenza with a 1934 laboratory flu strain.

What They Made

According to the study, scientists created a “6:2 reassortant” H5N1 virus:

• Surface genes (H5 and N1) came from highly pathogenic wild H5N1 isolates—including a bald eagle from Florida (2022) and a dairy cow from New Mexico (2024).
• The internal genes came from the A/Puerto Rico/8/1934 H1N1 strain (PR8), a vaccine backbone said to be prized for its ability to grow efficiently in eggs and mammalian cells.
• Researchers removed the polybasic cleavage site from the H5 gene—an intentional genetic alteration to modify pathogenicity.

The resulting chimera is designed to replicate far more efficiently in the lab than wild-type H5N1 and to serve as a vaccine production candidate.

This is a textbook case of gain-of-function: the engineered virus now has new properties the original wild strains never possessed.

“A/bald eagle/Florida/W22-134-OP/2022 (H5N1, 6:2 A/PR/8/34) … and A/Vietnam/1203/2004 (H5N1, 6:2 A/PR/8/34) viruses were generated by reverse genetics … with removal of the H5 polybasic cleavage site,” the preprint reads. “The internal gene segments … belong to the donor vaccine strain A/Puerto Rico/8/1934 (H1N1, A/PR/8/34).”

Engineered H5N1 Chimera 100% Lethal in Mice

The study’s own results make clear that the newly engineered “6:2 reassortant” H5N1 chimera was deadly in mammals.

In their words:

“The protective efficacy of these different vaccine strategies against a highly lethal challenge dose of 25× the median mouse lethal dose (LD50) with a homologous virus was assessed (Figure 1G). All mice in the saline group and the lowest vaccine dose (0.0015 μg) with CpG quickly succumbed to the viral infection (100% mortality), and mice vaccinated with the lowest dose with Alum (0.0015 μg) were partially protected from mortality (60% mortality).”

This confirms that the engineered H5N1 chimera virus was 100% lethal in mice under experimental challenge conditions.

Who’s Behind It

The author list reveals a global network of virology power players:

• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY) – Dept. of Microbiology, Center for Vaccine Research & Pandemic Preparedness (C-VaRPP).
• The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA).
• University of Wisconsin–Madison – Influenza Research Institute, home to Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann, both previously at the center of gain-of-function controversies.
• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, TN).
• University of Tokyo / National Center for Global Health and Medicine Research Institute (Japan).
• Dynavax Technologies Corporation (Emeryville, CA) – manufacturer of CpG 1018®, the adjuvant used in the study.
• Medical University of Vienna & Ludwig Boltzmann Institute (Austria).
• Cairo University (Egypt).

These are not fringe labs—they are the exact same institutions tied for years to high-risk influenza engineering under the guise of “pandemic preparedness.”

Who Paid for It

The preprint’s acknowledgments detail direct funding from U.S. federal agencies and international partners.

While full details vary across institutions, major streams include:

• NIAID/NIH grants supporting Mount Sinai’s Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness.
• U.S. government contracts supporting Kawaoka’s University of Wisconsin Influenza Research Institute, historically funded to perform transmissibility studies on avian flu.
• Corporate involvement through Dynavax Technologies, which has a vested interest in promoting its CpG adjuvant for new pandemic vaccines.

Taxpayer-funded U.S. dollars and corporate partnerships are bankrolling new purported chimeric bird flu viruses in global labs.

Why It Matters

Clade 2.3.4.4b H5N1 is said to have already spilled into mammals—including cows in the United States—and even into humans.

Instead of reining in risky work, researchers are constructing chimeric versions of these viruses with enhanced growth properties for vaccine development.

This raises urgent questions:

• Why is the federal government funding labs to engineer new forms of H5N1, when wild strains are already spreading in nature?
• What safeguards prevent these altered viruses from leaking—as past influenza and SARS-like coronaviruses have?
• How much transparency is owed to the public, who may one day be told they need the very vaccines created from these engineered chimeras and whose countries’ may be shut down by the government in response?

Bottom Line

What the study calls “pandemic preparedness” is, in plain terms, the lab creation of a new H5N1 chimera—stitched together from wild isolates and optimized for lab growth.

The fingerprints of NIH, international gain-of-function veterans, and industry players are all over it.

Once again, the same circle of researchers accused of courting disaster with engineered flu viruses are engineering more of them—with the bill footed by taxpayers, and with future profits flowing to pharma partners.

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