Scientists from around the world have criticised the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) investigation into the origins of Covid, saying that the agency has not properly looked into the lab leak theory. The group wrote in a letter to the academic journal Science: “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover [from animals to humans] both remain viable.” Ian Birrell has more in the Mail on Sunday.
In a highly significant move, 18 scientists from the world’s top universities, including Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, have demanded further investigations into the origins of the pandemic…
[They wrote:] “More investigation is needed to determine the origin of the pandemic. Knowing how Covid emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks.”The signatories include Ravindra Gupta, the Cambridge Geneticist who has played a key role in Britain’s response to variants.
Another is Ralph Baric, a U.S. epidemiologist who carried out controversial experiments on coronaviruses which included collaborating with Shi Zhengli – the Wuhan scientist nicknamed “Batwoman”.
Their research manipulated bat viruses to make them more infectious to human beings.
Although the work by Baric and Zhengli was funded through the EcoHealth Alliance charity, leaked emails revealed that Baric declined to join the charity’s British Director Peter Daszak in efforts to dismiss suggestions of a possible lab leak.
When the pandemic erupted, Daszak secretly organised a statement with some fellow scientists to the Lancet which “strongly condemned” conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid did not have a natural origin.
U.S. funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology was halted after it was reported by the Mail on Sunday.
Yet Daszak was asked to join a WHO joint study team into the pandemic origins, despite his clear conflicts of interest.
The new letter to Science criticises the WHO inquiry for claiming a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely” when there is no strong evidence to support either theory.
“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” it said.
“A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimise the impact of conflicts of interest.”
The criticism demonstrates how the ground is shifting fast on the issue as scientists and politicians challenge the conventional wisdom that Covid emerged naturally in Wuhan, the site of several key Chinese laboratories.
These labs include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which specialises in the study of bat-borne viruses and where there are known safety concerns…
Only a few scientists and journalists dared challenge the narrative that dismissed the idea of a possible lab leak for the first year of the pandemic…
The argument began to shift when Stanford Microbiologist David Relman, another of the Science signatories, published a landmark paper demanding a serious investigation of both theories.
Worth reading in full.
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oh what, are scientists actually thinking for themselves now?
‘Scientists’ (good and bad) are not one corporate body.
if scientists were doing what they should be doing we would never be here
Some of them are doing what they should be doing, but they’re being ignored by the government and marginalised, censored and ridiculed by the media.
Definitely a welcome moment of “Fiat Lux” on the questions of Chinese bio-warfare, and the murky contacts that apparently exist between the Chinese and other nations and individuals.
I hope that investigation gains momentum and traction, although the CCP will be doubtless be mobilising all possible apparatuses of threats, lying and deception it can muster, and will be ably assisted by its minions and hired help, such as WHO.
I was slightly surprised at the UK Column’s item on this on Friday. They were at massive pains to dismiss the idea of a laboratory leak on very specious grounds, for some reason. It gave the impression of being a bit of a fixed idea.
The reality is that an engineered virus doesn’t have to be deadly, conspiratorial, or meant as a bio-weapon. It’s the area of research that is relevant.
The coincidence of Wuhan and its known centrality to gain of function research must leave open the ‘escape’ hypothesis. A rogue bat in a market is no more likely.
I’m not sure this story is an entirely helpful development.
Debate over the origin of the virus has little direct bearing upon what we do to “manage” it. It doesn’t change whether “vaccination” is a viable defence, or whether dangerous, new, variants are a likely prospect.
However, the idea that this may be a bio weapon is liable to stoke the public’s fears, and, concomitantly, its desire to be oppressed and experimentally injected. At a minimum, the discussion merely reinforces the virus’s status as a major concern, within the public consciousness.
On the positive side, the news should inspire distrust in “scientific consensus” and the WHO. I just hope it’s not too late in the game for this to help us.
“transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimise the impact of conflicts of interest” – The criteria I hope the masses can adopt from the piece.
This is wrong I believe. The origin potentially has a direct bearing on the response. The current assumption is that lockdowns and “cures” are needed to combat the myriad of possible animal to human viruses and that establishment scientists and governments are trustworthy to do this.
If however it becomes plausible to a large number of people that it escaped from a lab, accidentally or deliberately, then faith in the scientific establishment and governments will be completely thrown into disarray and the response will be seen not as an innocent necessity but an abhorrence brought about by scientific and establishment incompetence or nefarious design. I think it could destroy the concept of “The Science”. A lot of prominent names who have been presented as our saviours will come to be seen as dangerous meddlers e.g. Fauci, Gates et al.
I wonder how many of the zero covid advocates are motivated not by fear of this particular virus, but of the possibility that China (which now knows that its totalitarian state can quickly crush an outbreak in a way that democracies which believe in habeas corpus cannot) may start a future pandemic deliberately as an act of war?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Y843FFJvI&t
Hmmmm….this interview was conducted in December 2019.
Interesting link, thanks.
The article implies that the WHO failed to investigate the lab leak theory properly because of pressure from the Chinese government, however, as the two largest contributors of funds to the WHO are in fact the US Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is it not reasonable to assume that they are complicit in any apparent cover-up?
Doesn’t the CCP influence the WHO not through direct financial contributions, but by bribing the government officials (especially in Africa) responsible for electing the WHO’s leadership?
If the lab leak theory were correct, what would be the policy implications for Western governments?
A worldwide ban on gain-of-function research would seem like an obvious response, but how could such a ban be enforced given that the country where this pandemic started is a dictatorship armed with nuclear weapons?
Bear in mind the American involvement in the research. It’s quite possible the Chinese wouldn’t even have bothered if they weren’t put up to it by those who wished to circumvent the ban on gain of function research in the US.
Pussy-footing. A very small and unimpressive gesture. It is well documented what was going on in the Wuhan laboratory, and Fauci, Daszak et al are just being obstructive (why wouldn’t they be?):
See Steve Hilton (Fox news) below
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6225847837001#sp=show-clips
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6227902415001#sp=show-clips
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6229978391001#sp=show-clips
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6232251393001#sp=show-clips
&
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rand-paul-reveals-dr-faucis-deception
The important issue to get to the origin of the pandemic can be used by others (politicians, epidemiologists) to distract for the even more dangerous question below.
Why did the whole world copy China’s supposed Lockdown policy? The obvious manipulation of this response from China buying influence everywhere is in a way an even more serious question as our whole response has been conditioned by them