Tag: Lab leak

Omicron is very different from the previous variants of concern, and a new study presents evidence that it evolved specifically in mice. Which raises an intriguing possibility: did Omicron leak from a lab?

Viral, a new book by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley, describes the role that citizen journalists played in debunking the theory that it was a naturally occurring virus in bats that accidentally jumped to the human population.

The Lancet has published an article calling for an "objective, open and transparent debate" on Covid's origins – a whole 19 months after its pages "strongly condemned" the lab leak theory as a "conspiracy".

After acquiring information about the WIV, Josh Rogin called around to get reactions from US officials. He discovered that “a large swath of the government already believed the virus had escaped from the WIV lab”.

by Cephas Alain In his final speech from the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that an arms race would take resources from other areas – such as building schools and hospitals. As interest has increased in the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic it has cast the spotlight upon the behaviours of parts of the scientific community, including the role of peer review, conflicts of interest and the ownership and funding of professional journals. In turn, this can all be considered within national and international political and organisational contexts. ‘Big Pharma’ is also under scrutiny. This article seeks to explain the general nature of the potential threat posed by Big Pharma. It is not a new story. Indeed, it can be usefully discussed with the help of a 60 year-old Presidential address. On September 5th, 2021, LBC radio host and commentator Maajid Nawaz drew an analogy from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation as 34th President of the United States on January 17th, 1961. Maajid Nawaz suggested that the threat to democratic society described by President Eisenhower of the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ has, at least to some degree, been supplanted by a ‘Big Pharma Industrial Complex’. He also suggested that the behaviours of governments in pursuing Covid related policies, such as the vaccination of ...

Many left-wing commentators are still reluctant to concede that COVID might have escaped from a lab in Wuhan. A new study confirms that recent coverage of the theory has been driven by right-wing media.

Ralph Baric is one of the world's leading coronavirus experts. In a recent interview with the MIT Technology Review he said, “If you study hundreds of different bat viruses at BSL-2, your luck may eventually run out.”

A report from Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the U.S. Congress has said the "preponderance of evidence proves" the virus leaked from the WIV "sometime before September 12th, 2019".

Last February, The Lancet published a letter signed by 27 scientists calling the lab leak a "conspiracy theory". Now the Editor-in-Chief of The BMJ has said the lab leak is "plausible and worthy of serious inquiry".

The authors of the Lancet letter from last February have penned a new letter for that journal. However, they mischaracterise the lab leak theory, and don't apologise for calling it a "conspiracy theory".