Not many experts have openly endorsed the lab leak theory of Covid origins.
There are the ‘internet sleuths’ who make up DRASTIC (several of whom remain anonymous). There’s the science writer Nicholas Wade. And there’s Matt Ridley and Alina Chan – co-authors of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. (In a recent interview, Ridley told me that both he and Chan now think a lab leak is “more likely”.)
Few others have been willing to come out and say that, yes, the balance of evidence favours a lab leak. This may be because they’re genuinely undecided, or because they hold the opposite view (that the evidence favours a natural spillover).
However, I suspect that many experts are scared of endorsing an idea their colleagues have gone to great lengths to suppress – an idea the Chinese government has called “a lie concocted by anti-China forces”.
Which makes a recent blog post by the biologist Nick Patterson something of a bombshell. Patterson is highly respected for his contributions to mathematical and computational biology. He’s also a polymath.
After obtaining his PhD in mathematics from Cambridge, he worked as code-breaker for GCHQ. He then moved to the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, where he developed mathematics models for market prediction. And for the last 20 years, he’s been analysing human genetic data at MIT.
In his recent article, Patterson states that “by far the most likely cause of the pandemic was an accidental leak of an engineered virus”. So he not only believes that Covid leaked from a lab, but also that it was engineered beforehand.
According to Patterson, the “smoking gun” is a grant application by EcoHealth Alliance to DARPA (the research agency of the U.S. Department of Defence). “As far as I can make out,” he writes, “the plan here was for WIV to collect live virus, ship it to the USA, have US scientists genetically modify the virus, and then ship modified virus … back to China”.
Although the grant application was rejected, Patterson notes, “a dirty not-so-secret is that often a good slice of work proposed in a grant application has in fact already been done and for sure when a grant is rejected the scientists involved consider how they can proceed anyway”.
Patterson clarifies that he’s not claiming “the proposed research was directed towards biowarfare”, only that it had the effect of enhancing viral pathogenicity.
Will other experts now speak up? We’ll have to see. In the meantime, Patterson’s article is worth reading in full.
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Scotland, and Glasgow in particular, were once known for irreverence, disputatiousness and intellectual enquiry. How far my country has fallen. I’m a non believer but well done William Philip for demonstrating to so-called ‘progressives’ how an open and free society ought to work.
I am a believer, but most of the ‘non-believers’ I know will thank you for standing up for our children.
Hear hear!!! Mind you I’d like to know where the Anglican Church has been for the last 2 and bit years? Masking up and hiding under their beds as far as I can make out.
Good work, Mr Philip. If your church were nearby, I would become a member of your congregation. As it is, I have found for many years that churches have no interest in anything other than dogma and worshipping false idols. Jesus of Nazareth would (in my opinion) be dismayed at the things done in his name…
And that is so true.
It matters not a jot that this is against religious teaching, it’s a fundamental assault on childhood and the age of consent.
These people need to be stopped, by any means necessary.
✅ 👍
We should remember how close we came, under the Blair government, in reducing the age of consent to pre-puberty. There are a disproprtionat number of people (mainly men) among the political class whose focus is disgusting to most voters.
And now in the week just passed Jeremy Hunt has appointed Patricia Hewitt as advisor to our ‘conservative’ government.
We really do need to watch and pray and protect our children.
Staff members of venues-for-hire being able to dictate which people may or may not hire the venue by threatening impromptu-strikes is decidedly a case of the tail wagging the dog. These people have no authority to interfere with legal activities of other people and that they claim to practice certain sex acts certainly doesn’t confer any to them.
The venue claimed that the agenda was in opposition to the values of members of staff who are part of the LGBT community. Did they consider the values of staff members who aren’t LGBT and may well share some of the concerns being highlighted by the conference? Of course they didn’t!
My guess would be they don’t have any: Should they – through some oversight – managed to get hired, they’ll be bullied to hell until they leave again.
You can listen to the Tron’s sermons via podcast, It’s called Tronline. I highly recommend their teaching.
Very well done, Dr Philip and your congregation there. It is so vitally important for today’s generation of children and young people (and of course for future generations) that they are protected from harmful ideologies, and encouraged to live wisely. When I take primary and secondary school assemblies, I see wonderful children and young people in front of me, and I think – What a world it is into which they are growing up! May all of us with any influence with the young lead them towards what is true, honourable, just, pure, lovely and commendable.
Perhaps the Civic House needs to do a purge of the judgemantalists who are biased and hold such poor values. Get rid!
Oops spelling – judgementalists.
In a train one day there were 2 young girls of about 15 in the seats in front of me, and as often is the case, young people have not the tact to keep their personal conversations a bit quieter so others cannot hear and so they were not keeping their voices down. They were speaking about sex in a way that was clear had been picked up at school . They spoke of being attracted to the same sex, and saying things like ” I think I sometimes fancy girls” or “I am not sure whether I am gay or bisexual or some other gender”. —-I think you get the idea. Their conversation was immature, and that can be expected from young people of that age, but there was something sinister about the fact that their conversation and the ideas within that conversation had clearly come from what they had been hearing in school. They clearly had not grasped reality from fantasy in their interpretation of the nonsense they had been hearing, and this is a cautionary tale.
These policies originate with the UN. What started as an organisation to try and prevent war has become an organisation to impose Global Communism.
Unesco: https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-health-and-well-being/cse-campaign
The UN is a direct continuation of the league of nations and the only wars it was ever supposed to prevent where European landwars involving Germany. All permanent members of the so-called security council have continued to make war all over the world whenever it suited them and many of the other members as well.
I’ll openly admit.. there are some subjects, in the absence of clear data and facts I’m inclined to ask – tell me what to do! (and by that I mean.. point me in the right direction, to investigate and make an informed decision).
On this issue though, in my gut I know I’m right. Putting my faith aside which also teaches us such a thing as tough love – ‘he who spares the rod spoils the child?’ When you’re unable to consent it’s best leaving it to those who can. Leave the kids alone, leave their innocence alone.
We’ve already good reasons to delay sex-ed until a specific age, why go changing this with so much uncertainty? This whole “gender” issue is progressing so quickly we’ve no idea the long-term impacts. Now we want to go teaching this min[e/d]field to kids? Let alone the more extreme gender affirming, puberty blocking, literal surgery that will now have to be covered as a result if we’re to go down this road?
For those who haven’t the gut instinct, for whatever reason, it’s not difficult to imagine the absence of that same instinct in a child – and we want to go confusing them further and ask them what they [think they] want?
Many parents, even those who are aware of and concerned about the propaganda their children are being exposed to at school, seem ill-prepared to counter it. I applaud this conference and Dr.Philip’s support of it. I note that there’s a useful “Resources” page on the Tron church web site, but if any materials from the conference itself have been made available to a wider audience, it would be useful to know.