Media Twists RFK's Remark at NY Press Event

Big pounce on candidate's talk about COVID-19 susceptibility variation.

By JOHN LEAKE

The media is afire with screaming headlines and chatter about RFK, Jr. (allegedly) floating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about COVID-19 at a recent press event in New York. The presidential candidate’s allegedly outrageous remarks were captured in a video (apparently shot clandestinely) of him sitting at a dining table, talking to his companions about the frequently observed and documented fact that some ethnic groups appear to be more susceptible to severe COVID-19 illness than others.

So, what exactly did RFK, Jr. say?

We need to talk about bioweapons. …. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes. The Chinese have done the same thing. In fact, COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. The races that are most immune to COVID-19 are—because of the genetic structure, the genetic differentials among different races, of the receptors, of the ACE-2 receptors—COVID-19 is targeted to attack caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We don’t know if it was deliberately targeted or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic differential impact of that. We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons, and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. That’s what all of those labs in the Ukraine are about. They are collecting Russian DNA so that we can target people by race.

What are we to make of this statement? Let’s start with his assertion that the United States and China are investing in developing ethnically target bioweapons. A quick search of the literature revealed several recent reports in which American and Chinese officials accuse each other of developing racially targeted bioweapons.

The Coming Threat of a Genetically Engineered ‘Ethnic Bioweapon, The National Review, April 10, 2023.

Pentagon Making Race-Specific Bioweapons to Target Citizens, China Says, Newsweek, May 11, 2023.

Could you make a genetically targeted weapon? The Guardian, 28 October 2004.

The Guardian piece cites a report issued by the Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity II conference in which the British Medical Association expressed the following renewed concern:

The BMA, which dismissed the idea of genetic weapons in a 1999 report (Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity I), has lifted its new concerns from the work of a German group called the Sunshine Project. It looked at how mutations in our genome called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) differ between specific ethnic groups and concluded: "Genome data in public databases revealed that hundreds, possibly thousands, of target sequences for ethnic specific weapons do exist. It appears that ethnic specific biological weapons may indeed become possible in the near future."

What are we to make of RFK, Jr.’s second claim about “genetic differentials among different races, of the receptors, of the ACE-2 receptors”?

A quick Google search for Ethnic Susceptibility to COVID-19 ACE-2 Receptor yielded 504,000 results. At the top of the list was the 2022 paper SARS-CoV-2 Susceptibility and ACE2 Gene Variations Within Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds.

An augmented Google search for Ethnic Susceptibility to COVID-19 ACE-2 Ashkenazi Jews yielded 92,500 results. At the top of the results was a series of academic papers about variations of DNA polymorphisms in ACE2 and TMPRSS2 and how these variations seem to render some ethnic groups more or less susceptible to COVID-19. with Ashkenazi Jews apparently being less susceptible.

If RFK, Jr. can be fairly criticized for any of his remarks, it is that some of his statements could be interpreted as jumping to conclusions.

To me, what is most compelling and charming about RFK, Jr. is his immense curiosity about the world, and his love of conversing about it. Like all great conversationalists, he is frequently inclined to wander into domains of EMERGING KNOWLEDGE in which we are in the process of investigating new leads and making fresh discoveries, without having yet reached the point of complete understanding.

If his interlocutors are intelligent and sympathetic to the fact that he is acting in the capacity of an investigator following new leads, and NOT presuming to possess full knowledge of the subject, then he is safe with such expositions.

However, given that he may, at any given time, be in the presence of a hidden viper poised to strike him for every stumble and misstep, then he is well-advised to be more careful about what he speaks about.

As a presidential candidate (as distinct from an investigative author) it would probably suit him to get out of the weeds of bio-technical matters, and stay focused on major policy issues.