Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Triggers Overdue Debate About China’s Secretive Ethnically-Targeted Bioweapons Research
Loophole in Biological Weapons Convention treaty allows nations to conduct bioweapons research under cover of vaccine development
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is feeding anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that China created COVID-19 as a bioweapon to kill whites and blacks but spare Chinese and Jewish people, says the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
“The claim that COVID-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and black people is deeply offensive,” an ADL spokesperson told the New York Post, “and feeds into sinophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.”
Kennedy made his remarks at a dinner party last Tuesday. “There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted,” said Kennedy. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
The New York Post cites The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at the University of Tel Aviv to note that “Kennedy’s remark echoes well-worn anti-Semitic literature blaming Jews for the emergence and spread of coronavirus.”
But there was nothing anti-Semitic about Kennedy’s remarks, nor did he say that the Chinese government deliberately targeted whites and blacks and spared Jewish and Chinese people. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not,” he said. And a few hours ago, in response to the brewing controversy, Kennedy tweeted, “I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.”
It’s true that Kennedy pointed to evidence that Covid had a different impact on different groups. “There are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy said at the dinner party. And in his tweet, he wrote, “I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews.”
The paper Kennedy linked to in his tweet concluded, “Human genetic factors may contribute to the extremely high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 and to the relentlessly progressive disease observed in a small but significant proportion of infected individuals, but these factors are largely unknown.”
At the same time, Kennedy is right to raise the alarm about China’s bioweapons program. And the debate over bioweapons research, which includes research into vaccines to protect against them, is long overdue.
A person in the U.S. intelligence community told Public, “We are deeply concerned about China’s potential ability to generate ethnically targeted products. And there are other countries with similar capabilities, such as Russia and Iran.”
Another senior investigator within the US government told Public, “When discussing bioweapons, ‘ethnic targeting’ is absolutely a goal that the Chinese government has declared. The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] markets ‘ethnic targeting’ with a positive spin for ‘public health.’ In public health arenas, ‘ethnic targeting’ becomes ‘precision medicine.’”
Reached by telephone, Kennedy told Public, “My point was that what they’re doing is horrendous. Instead of being at war, we should be signing treaties for peace and for controlling bioweapons.”
What, exactly, do we know about ethnically-targeted bio-weapons? And what should be done about it?
Toothless Biological Weapons Convention Treaty
Kennedy’s team shared with Public passages from Kennedy’s forthcoming book, The Wuhan Cover-Up. In it, he quotes Air War College alumnus Colonel Michael J. Ainscough of USAF Counterproliferation Center.