Dwelling in the dim corridors of Geneva, where the World Health Organization (WHO) convenes its mandarins, a new evil edifice of power is rising, one that fuses the spectre of lab-engineered pandemics with the iron grip of international mandates. On November 7, 2025, the WHO issued a terse press release that landed like a muffled thunderclap: Nations are now haggling over the first draft of the "Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing" (PABS) annex, a legally binding appendage to the freshly minted Pandemic Agreement. This isn't some bureaucratic footnote; it's the scaffolding for a permanent global network to harvest, hoard, and hurl pathogens, and their digital blueprints, into a centralised vault under WHO oversight. The word "pandemic" peppers the announcement 14 times, a hypnotic incantation underscoring the agency's grand design: a standing army of surveillance and response, poised to orchestrate the next outbreak from cradle to crisis.
Yet, as diplomats ink this pact in smoke-filled rooms, laboratories worldwide, often with public funds and scant oversight, are birthing the very monsters it claims to tame. From chimeric bird flu viruses stitched together in South Korea and Brazil to hybrid horrors funded by the NIH in Europe and tested in Alabama, scientists are engineering pathogens with enhanced lethality, transmissibility, and immune evasion. The mainstream chorus, from CNN to the CDC, breathlessly warns of H5N1 as the "next big one," even as these lab Frankensteins multiply in BSL-3 suites. Coincidence? Or choreography? This discussion peels back the veil: The PABS isn't preparedness, it's a pipeline for peril, channelling man-made microbes into a WHO web that could ensnare sovereignty, exploit the vulnerable, and ignite the inferno it pretends to douse.
At its core, the PABS annex breathes life into Article 12 of the Pandemic Agreement, adopted amid fanfare at the 78th World Health Assembly in May 2025. What was once a gentle nudge for "voluntary" data-sharing now morphs into ironclad obligation: Countries must surrender biological samples and genetic sequences of "pathogens with pandemic potential" to a WHO-coordinated repository. In exchange? Vague vows of "fair and equitable" access to diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines derived therefrom. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus, the WHO's silver-tongued steward, hails it as "solidarity — our best immunity," a multilateral mantra masking the machinery of control.
Negotiations kicked into high gear at the Intergovernmental Working Group's (IGWG) third powwow, November 3–7 in Geneva, co-chaired by Brazil's Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes and the UK's Matthew Harpur. For the first time, delegates dissected a draft text, hashing out modalities for this pathogen bazaar amid input from civil society and Big Pharma apparatchiks. Optimism abounds: Nunes predicts a polished product for the 79th Assembly in May 2026, unlocking ratification by national parliaments and the Agreement's entry into force, needing just 60 signatures to bind the world. Once ratified, the WHO evolves from advisor to architect: Detecting outbreaks via shared surveillance, funnelling sequences to favoured labs, and doling out countermeasures through its logistical chokehold.
This isn't hyperbole, it's the blueprint. The PABS creates a "multinational pathogen clearinghouse," where genetic data flows one way (to Geneva) and benefits trickle back on WHO terms. Imagine: A novel flu strain emerges in Indonesia; samples ship to the WHO hub; sequences flood global databases; vaccines brew in Basel or Boston. Poorer nations get scraps, 10% of production at "affordable" prices, while the agency arbitrates disputes and enforces compliance. It's the full-spectrum dominance of health: From wet market whisper to worldwide lockdown, all under one unelected roof.
As the PABS gears up to collect these digital demons, labs are unleashing them with reckless abandon. Consider South Korea's May 2025 coup: Researchers fused genes from three flu strains into a chimeric H5N1 beast, boasting "increased viral stability, altered host targeting, and enhanced human cell entry." Published in Virology Journal, this gain-of-function (GOF) gambit, heat-resistant, aerosol-ready, mirrors the very tweaks that could spark a super-spreader. No risk assessment mentioned; just a nod to "vaccine development" as cover.
Brazil's Butantan Institute piled on in June, reverse-engineering three H5N1 candidates from a 1934 lab backbone, mass-producing them in a million eggs, and jabbing rats to boot. These unnatural amalgams? Tailored for mammalian mischief, echoing NIH-backed work in Japan and Egypt that birthed a 100% lethal chimera in mice. China's Sinopharm wasn't idle: September saw a VLP gripping cells 64-fold tighter and a recombinant killer wiping out every test mammal.
Across the pond, NIH dollars bankrolled a hybrid H5N1 in European labs,spliced with H1N1, H2N2, and influenza B, then shipped to Alabama for ferret trials. Nebraska's USDA-NIH duo followed, boosting growth in cow cells for a "cattle vaccine" that reeks of dual-use peril. The UK's APHA engineered two enhanced H5 strains in September, while Russia's Vector toyed with spike proteins for "needle-free" delivery. Each claims the noble pursuit of prophylactics, yet each flirt with catastrophe: A leak here, a sabotage there, and H5N1, already eyeing humans at a 52% fatality clip, morphs into the apocalypse.
These aren't rogue actors; they're subsidised sorcerers, funded by the very entities (NIH, USDA, WHO partners) now scripting the PABS to "share" their spawn. As bird flu whispers grow, cattle culls in the US, human cases in Texas, these lab-born variants stand ready to amplify the alarm, justifying the WHO's web.
Beneath the solidarity spiel lurk landmines. First, sovereignty's slow bleed: Nations forfeit biosecurity autonomy, compelled to cough up samples on WHO demand, with penalties lurking for laggards. Intellectual property? A bonanza for pharma giants, shared data fuels patents, but "benefits" to origin countries? Often illusory, as seen in COVID's lop-sided largesse.
Security? Catastrophic. Centralised databases are hacker honeypots — imagine state actors or eco-terrorists rifling through H5N1 blueprints. Dual-use dilemmas abound: Vaccine research doubles as bioweapon R&D, with scant oversight post-COVID revelations. And equity? Administrative snarls could bottleneck responses, turning "timely sharing" into tardy triage.
Critics, from Knowledge Ecology International to MSF, decry the opacity, even as stakeholders now "observe" as a pilot, the real haggling stays shadowed. The US, under RFK Jr.'s HHS, balked at the core Agreement, slamming it as "dysfunction locked in." Yet momentum marches on, with the IGWG eyeing December wrap-up.
This is no mere accord; it's the capstone of a control grid. The Pandemic Agreement, wedded to amended International Health Regulations (effective September 2025), arms the WHO with "pandemic emergency" declarations, surveillance supremacy, and resource rationing, now turbocharged by PABS-fed pathogens. As labs churn chimeras, the system primes for a self-fulfilling prophecy: Detect the designer bug, sequence it swiftly, deploy the dictated response. Dissent? Branded a threat to "humanity."
The bottom line: Under "preparedness," the WHO forges chains, centralising data, dictating distribution, diminishing dissent. With bird flu's lab spectres circling, this isn't protection; it's provocation, a global gamble where the house always wins. Nations, awaken: Ratify at your peril, or reclaim the reins before the next "outbreak" plandemic is engineered in plain sight. The clock ticks to 2026; the choice, to us all.
https://jonfleetwood.substack.com/p/who-builds-international-pandemic