Readers of the Tusk know I’ve spent the better part of my life digging into heretical science—research that the mainstream either refuses to look at or pretends doesn’t exist. From the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis to the possibility of pre-Ice Age high technology, we’ve always asked the forbidden questions and followed the data wherever it leads.
This week, I’ve taken that same instinct—what some would call a contrarian reflex—and pointed it in a new direction: one that hits close to home.
I’ve published an op-ed in the Carolina Journal on the subject of UNC-Chapel Hill’s virology program, and the deeply troubling evidence that it played a central role in creating the SARS-CoV-2 virus that killed over 20 million people globally.
Yes, you read that right. And no, it’s not hyperbole.
This isn’t just speculation. Thanks to court-ordered documents pried loose by the nonprofit watchdog US Right to Know, we now know that Ralph Baric’s lab at UNC:
- Engineered novel SARS-related coronaviruses in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
- Created these viruses with enhanced pandemic potential—on purpose.
- Proposed misleading the U.S. government about where the research would be conducted—claiming Chapel Hill, but planning Wuhan.
- Delivered both the blueprint and the lab-grown mice with humanized lungs needed to bring these viruses to life.
And all this happened not in secretive foreign biolabs—but right here in North Carolina.
While you and I were locked down in our homes in the spring of 2020, UNC was dealing with a lab worker who got bitten by a mouse infected with a synthetic SARS-CoV-2 strain. They told the local health department. They asked the researcher to quarantine. Then they carried on like nothing happened.
Imagine, for comparison, if that had been a radioactive leak at NC State’s nuclear reactor. The entire region would have been on red alert. But with viruses—somehow—we get silence, shrugs, and million-dollar awards.
UNC gave Ralph Baric the O. Max Gardner Award. The News & Observer made him Tar Heel of the Year. The NIH gave him $208 million.
But what Baric and UNC gave the world may be far darker.
As I write in the piece, this is less Mary Poppins than Mary Shelley. Frankenstein wasn’t just a metaphor—he was a warning. We ignored it.
And just like we do with the Younger Dryas comet, the Carolina ivory tower, the media, and most of our political class don’t want to talk about it. It’s too messy. Too damning. Too disruptive.
But disruption is what the Tusk does. It’s what I do. Whether it’s meltglass in the Andes or mouse bites in a BSL-3 lab, I believe the truth deserves sunlight.
The editorial has already led to—and coincided with—very interesting developments that seemed impossible not long ago. I look forward to sharing more with you in the near future.
So take a few minutes to read my full op-ed, published here at the Carolina Journal. It’s long past time for North Carolina—and the world—to grapple with the implications of this catastrophic experiment.
Let’s not wait for history to repeat itself.
—George Howard
Cosmic Tusk