Why I don't trust Bill Gates to genetically modify Artemisia annua, and neither should you

This is another article about Artemisia annua. I’m going to write a “Go Fund Me” for a study. Thing is, Bill Gates has already been working with the plant for a long time, and of course he’s quite well funded. So some people may not feel that there is a need to do a study. Thing is, I don’t trust the man, and the methodology and results I’ve seen from them is inexcusably bad. So I’ll lay that out a bit here.

DoorlessCarp recently made an extensive research effort of Therapeutic properties of Artemisia annua and other species of the genus Artemisia.

I’ve proposed a new method to test all the chemical compounds in artemisia Anna and other herbs for therapeutic use, that is contrary to what is done and approved by Pharma and the FDA. In other words it will work.   

As DC laid out in great detail, the therapeutic properties of A. annua are extensive are well-known, but not well-researched in my opinion.

At first glance it seems like the type of research that I would like to do has already been done by the likes of Pharma, China and Bill Gates.   Here I will lay out some good reasons to believe that their research is incomplete or suspect.

First, I will talk a bit about the history of the isolation of Artemisinin from A. annua. Then, I will talk about Bill Gates efforts to genetically modify A. annua to produce Artemisinin.

ISOLATION OF ARTEMISININ BY TU YOUYOU

All information in this section comes from Tu Youyou's biography that she submitted to the Nobel Prize Committee.

Artemisinin was derived from research that began in China in 1964 to aid the soldiers of North Vietnam with an anti-malarial drug.   Tu Youyou searched all the ancient texts of China for anti-malarial recipes and discovered A. annua.  

In October 1971, Youyou et al determined that an ether extract of whole leaf Artemisia annua was 100% effective against malaria in rodents.  They divided the ether extracts into neutral and acidic portions and tested them on monkeys infected with malaria in December 1971.  The neutral portion of the extract had the same high effectiveness on monkeys.

In April 1972, Youyou’s team began isolating “crystals” from the neutral portion of the ether Artemisia annua extract.  In November 1972, they isolated several crystals using silica gel column chromatography.  One of the crystals showed some effective against malaria, which they called artemisinin, or Qinghaosu (青蒿素).  

Between August and October 1973, Youyou's team conducted tests of the artemisinin on humans with malaria. The tests had poor results. They thought the pills might not be dissolving well enough, so they modified the pills, but were only able to test the modified pills on three test subjects due to the low amount of test subjects available with malaria due to the lateness of the malaria season.

In September 1973, artemisinin was modified to dihydroartemisinin using sodium borohydride reduction. They tested dihydroartemisinin on rodents with malaria and found that dihydroartemisinin was more effective than artemisin.

Summarizing Youyou's research that won the Nobel Prize:

They searched China's ancient medical records for plants that cured malaria, and found one. They reduced the plant to a handful of chemical compounds without any consideration of the total number of compounds in the plant or the synergistic effects between the compounds. They found that the best of the compounds they had isolated, artemisinin, didn't work too well, and they modified it into dihydroartemisinin. If they ever tested dihydroartemisinin against the whole leaf of the plant, they didn't say so.

In order to do a scientifically-correct study of A. annua and genus Artemisia, I believe that every compound must first be identified and quantified in the whole leaves of the plant. Then, with the knowledge of what compounds are in the whole leaf, varying samples of the whole leaf of the plant can be tested against selected diseases. The effective compounds, including synergistic effects between multiple compounds, can be isolated using a statistical method called regression analysis. It’s really not complicated. It may cost a lot of money for the chemical analysis, but it’s not complicated in theory.

In other words, first figure out what nature has to offer. Figure out what works in nature before you start playing around with random chemical reactions to see what happens. I believe that an "open source" study of all the compounds in the genus is in order. I don't believe that mankind should take China and Bill Gates word for what works and doesn't work, and let them genetically modify the plant, which may come to replace natural species.

The paper of DoorlessCarp reviewed some studies that showed that the whole leaf of A. annua was better than Artemisinin. Artemisia afra, another species of genus Artemisia, has no artemisinin in it, but is still effective against multiple viruses including SARS2.

Nevertheless, Bill Gates has used the research of China and others on Artemisinin as a basis to genetically modify Artemisia annua for the production of Artemisinin.

BILL GATES RESEARCH

I initially set about to reference some good reasons not to trust Bill Gates, and became a bit overwhelmed with the task.  Everything that Bill Gates does in the name of Charity serves a sinister purpose of what he calls “population control-” what I call murder, maiming, and forced sterilization.

From climate engineering, vaccine alliances, huge purchases of farmland, synthetic foods, genetic modifications of seed, genetic extinction, to blatant depopulation, the list of evil projects this modern J.D. Rockefeller engages in goes on and on. He is the Proverbial "wolf in sheep's clothing.”

For those who believe that the motives of Bill Gates are good, however, you can still appreciate the principle of capitalism that competition is a good and desirable thing. You can support a project to check his work and perhaps build a better mousetrap.

Here’s some of what he’s done with A. annua so far.

In December 2004, the Gates Foundation gave $42.6 million to OneWorld Health Institute to fund a research partnership to develop semi-synthetic artemisinin using genetically engineered microbes.

In June 2006, the Gates Foundation gave $13.6 million to York University, at the "Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP)" to create what they described as a non-genetically modified version of Artemisia annua with a high yield of Artemisinin. They sprayed the plants with a chemical that was designed to cause mutations in the plant, then bred whatever mutations yielded the most artemisinin.

In January 2010, CNAP scientists at the University of York published the first genetic map of Artemisia annua. CNAP received a second grant from the Gates Foundation.

In September 2010, the Gates Foundation invested in Monsanto and Cargill to genetically modify plants in Africa.

In November 2011, CNAP announced a partnership with East-West Seeds to distribute their modified A. annua seeds with a target of controlling 20% of acres of Artemisia grown in the world.

In February 2012, Bill Gates said that the world needed more genetically modified seeds. The referenced article notes that the claims and promised results from prior genetically-modified crops were false.

Professor Ian Grahan of the CNAP team noted that between 2014-2017, seed sales of CNAP's genetically-modified seeds had produced enough artemisinin to produce over 62 million Artemisinin Combination Treatments in accordance with guidelines from the World Health Organization, but that deaths from malaria were still 435,000 per year in Africa.

Not good. The whole leaf of many species of Artemisia probably would have had better results, even without knowing how they worked.

So I’ll write up how to do a study the right way, starting with a blank piece of paper, ignoring all the other research to date. The paper of DoorlessCarp establishes that it works somehow or another, and that’s good enough.

Charles Wright