Wild West

An interesting development in the Wuhan lab leak story:

A leading UK scientist privately criticised biosecurity in Wuhan laboratories as the “Wild West”, in emails discussing the possible origins of the coronavirus.

In February 2020 Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, a leading research charity, was part of a group of scientists who were concerned that the virus might have leaked from a laboratory.

Also involved in discussions were Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, who helped lead the US coronavirus response, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser.

Their discussions with some of the world’s leading geneticists and virologists led to the publication of an extremely influential research paper that ultimately concluded the coronavirus showed no signs of having been manipulated in a laboratory.

However, before that paper’s publication in March 2020, Farrar and others had expressed concern that it might not have had a natural origin. Their worries centred on some of the genetic features that appeared to imply genetic manipulation.

Farrar later said that during this time he had been advised to use a “burner phone” to avoid surveillance by foreign powers.

The group’s emails have been the subject of intense speculation among those who believe that early concerns about the virus’s origin were wilfully suppressed, and that the subsequent paper by those involved in their discussions was part of that process.

Although the emails have been released before, parts were redacted.

The unredacted tranche, released under freedom of information rules, shows that the scientists were especially shocked by learning the details of one of the experiments being carried out in Wuhan. This involved passing a virus between mice that had been genetically modified to express the receptor proteins used by coronavirus to infect cells.

Francis Collins, then the head of the US National Institutes of Health, which helped fund some of the research in Wuhan, said on February 4, “Surely that wouldn’t be done in a BSL-2 lab?”. BSL-2 refers to only a medium level of biosecurity. “Wild West,” Farrar replied.

On February 19, Farrar was a signatory of a letter in the Lancet journal, dismissing “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”. The letter added: “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”

Scientists involved in the email discussions have said that their initial worries were allayed after proper investigation of the genetic code of the virus.

This resulted in a paper in the Nature Medicine journal, written by a team Farrar had helped convene, which concluded: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

So they knew that potentially dangerous experiments were taking place in the Wuhan lab, and they knew that the security levels there were poor, but when it came to protecting their reputations these scientists just rallied round and denied everything.

This isn't some minor issue here: this was a pandemic that killed millions and dramatically affected the whole world....

Comments

[Richard]

Interesting. It's not a conspiracy theory to suggest that covid might have had an unnatural origin; it is most definitely a conspiracy to conceal that fact if covid did have an unnatural origin.