These are two remarkable virologists: Pyotr (on the left) a…

Today Konstantin Chumakov is an associate director of vaccine research at the FDA and a US citizen. Pyotr Chumakov used to be the director of an laboratory in Cleveland but returned to Russia after accepting a “mega grant” and becoming the head of

the Laboratory of Cell Proliferation at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. Both brothers were educated at the Moscow State University.

Konstantin Chumakov started his scientific work in molecular biology and eventually moved to medical applications. Pyotr studied medicine and although he become famous because of an important discovery in biology, he has always treated patients.

According to Konstantin Chumakov the two of them are in constant contact by Skype and are very close.

Now, after this long introduction, it is fascinating that in various interviews the two have expressed completely opposite view of the origins of the COVID-19 virus, without ever mentioning the other brother’s views (or being asked about them).

Piotr Chumakov was one of the first to suggest that the virus could have originated in the Wuhan lab. See for example, here:

https://t.co/Ec8uDbaFCE

He also expressed his great dislike for the WHO, which he called a harmful bureaucratic organization. He described the experiments on “gain of function” performed in Wuhan as “crazy”.

His brother, on the other hand, strongly critic used the idea that the virus could have been created in the lab (almost asserting that this was impossible), he said that the Chinese scientists “did nothing that the rest of us don’t do all the time” and praised the WHO, which he

admitted was bureaucratic but called it very helpful and added that he often worked with them.
But lest anybody assumes that Konstantin has become a usual member of the American establishment, I should add that he defended Trump’s recommendation of hydroxychloroquine

as emergency treatment for coronavirus (saying that it works “somewhat” and is not dangerous) and criticized the Democrat governors that banned the treatment. He has also said that he was “absolutely opposed” to compulsory vaccination.

So why such a divergence on the question of the origin of the virus? I have to say here that I am much more convinced by the arguments of Pyotr Chumakov. First of all, because there are very few people in the world who know as much as he about artificially modifying viruses. This

is something that he does all the time. His work is on using viruses to treat very late cancer, when no other treatment works. The idea, which is actually quite old, is to use viruses to attack tumorous cells. This is called viral oncology. In order for a virus to do so you have

to modify it, so that it attacks only tumorous cells and leaves health ones alone. The problem is that each tumor is different and a virus can be effective against one but not another. For this reason the method used by Chumakov is to keep a huge collection of viruses and try

them on different cancer cells. Chumakov has had some remarkable successes treating cancer patients assumed to be terminal and his lab has a medicine ready but the scientific situation in Russia is so bad, it’s not sure how long it will take for tests to be completed.

Pyotr Chumakov has stated several times that only what is alleged to have been done in Wuhan is possible to do, but he can do it himself and demonstrate it. He also said that he can do it in such a way that nobody will be able to tell whether the mutation occurred naturally or

was the result if human intervention. He called for an international investigation into what happened at the Wuhan lab but added that the Chinese clearly are not going to let anyone do this and nothing will proved (unless somebody talks).

Why does then Konstantin Chumakov

strongly deny any such possibility, without even trying to answer the points made by his brother? Well, one obvious reason is that not a single interviewer (and there have been many interviews with both) has ever asked one of the brothers about the public statements of the other.

Until someone does, one can’t escape the impression that the reason lies in the very different position of the two brother-scientists. Konstantin Chumakov is at the very hear of American medical science establishment, which is also deeply involved in what happened in Wuhan, as

the original research on these bat viruses started in North Carolina and was transferred to Wuhan after the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on its financing. It is this research, by the way, which involved making viruses more pathogenic, that Pyotr Chumakov described

as “crazy”. Unlike his brother, Pyotr Chumakov, has broken with the American medical establishment when he moved back to Russia. He has in other interviews expressed strongly critical views of the grant system in the US, which according to him in “recent years” became corrupt,

the role of the pharmaceutical industry (to be fair, he has said even more critical things about research work in Russia. In fact, he said that he has to give up a part of his salary to finance his research and depends for income on a farm, which is run by his wife and where he

goes to drive a tractor at weekends).
Anyway, I think think thus is an interesting case, which illustrates some quite serious problems with the current state of scientific research in medicine.

These are two remarkable virologists: Pyotr (on the left) and Konstantin Chumakov. They are brothers, Pyotr us one year older. Their parents were famous Soviet virologists Mikhail Chumakov and Marina Voroshilova.

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