VIROLOGY INSTITUTE AS THE ORIGIN?
New evidence for the hypothesis that Sars-CoV-2 originated in the laboratory
Science author Nicholas Wade presents indications that speak in favor of an accident in the so-called gain-of-function research. He doesnt produce any evidence
Klaus Taschwer May 12, 2021, 6:00 am 1,265 posts
AP / Ng Han Guan
It has now been a good one and a half years since Sars-CoV-2 most likely jumped from an animal to a person somewhere in China and made them into a so-called index patient, i.e. the patient zero. But how and where exactly this happened is still unclear despite various efforts - for example the examination of no fewer than 80,000 animals in China. Research by international and local experts in Wuhan, organized by the WHO and China, also shed little light in February.
The only thing that is quite certain: the original hosts of the virus are horseshoe bats, a family of the bat family. But this is where speculation begins. While the WHO expert report, published belatedly in March, clearly favors the thesis of natural origin (from bat directly to humans or via an intermediate host) without concrete evidence, there are a number of more or less prominent supporters of the laboratory theory.
Image:
Schematic representation of the three possible origins of Sars-CoV-2. A: from bat to person, B: from bat via intermediate host to person, C: from bat via genetic modification and / or so-called gain-of-function research on humans (through a laboratory accident). (Source: "Should we discount the laboratory origin of COVID-19?")
Graphic: Rossana Segreto et al., Environmental Chemistry Letters 2021
Their supporters are sometimes completely unrelated to the subject - such as the German nanoscientist Roland Wiesendanger. In February, the multiple award-winning physicist presented his "study" collection of circumstantial evidence, which caused quite a stir in the media. However, his rather amateurish compilation did not provide concrete evidence.
Somewhat non conventional place of publication
The latest attempt to give the laboratory theory more plausibility comes from the US science journalist Nicholas Wade, appeared a few days ago in the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and reads more convincingly than Wiesendanger's opus. The "Bulletin" is not a relevant virological journal either. However, it regularly deals with questions of biosecurity and has repeatedly opposed the WHO on the question of the origin of the virus.
Accordingly, the text of the experienced science author Wade, who worked for a long time as a journalist for the "New York Times" and was heavily criticized for his controversial book "A Troublesome Inheritance" (2014), mainly provides indications that point to risky research at the Institute of Virology Wuhan as well as inadequate security measures. Some things are relatively new, but there is no "Smoking Gun", which the 78-year-old admits openly. The dense chain of arguments in his extensive text (reading time around 45 minutes) is well secured over long stretches and sounds plausible in many passages.
Gain-of-Function Research
Wade's main indication is that there was probably gain-of-function research with corona viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, right up until immediately before the start of the pandemic. This refers to risky (and therefore controversial) experiments in which pathogens are genetically or through certain animal experiments manipulated so that they can attack people. The aim is to better understand their interaction with human hosts and to prepare countermeasures, for example in the form of vaccinations.
Exactly such research was carried out by the virologist Shi Szengli (the so-called "bat woman") at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, with scientific support from the USA, as Wade argues. And he also promotes another (as it will show: supposed) evidence to the light of day: These experiments were subsidized from 2014 to 2019 by the non-profit Eco Health Alliance through research projects at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the USA, which in turn belongs to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Controversial role of Peter Daszak
A not entirely insignificant detail on the side - in Wade's argumentation: President of the Eco Health Alliance is the zoonoses specialist Peter Daszak, who was and is one of the most vehement opponents of the laboratory orthosis from the beginning and still is, but also belonged to the WHO expert team who toured Wuhan.
Daszak, in turn, described this research on coronaviruses (from minute 28) in an interview in Singapore at the beginning of December 2019 (and thus only a few days before Sars-CoV-2 became known) with these words, which Wade also quotes:
"Now, after six or seven years of this work, we have found over 100 new Sars-related coronaviruses. Some of them get into human cells in the laboratory, some of them can cause Sars disease in 'humanized' mouse models, are not treatable with monoclonal antibodies and cannot be vaccinated against, so these are a clear and present danger. " From minute 30 on, the topic becomes the easy genetic manipulation of these viruses.
All of the above doesn't prove too much either - except that Daszak is a professional.
In addition, Wade is trying to prove, among other things, that this gain-of-function research with coronaviruses at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan probably did not take place under the highest biological protection level (BSL) 4, but only under BSL 2 or 3. To this end, he recapitulates a number of earlier laboratory accidents that have led to the outbreak of infectious diseases in other places with other viruses.
Finally, he names some technical details about the genetics of the spike protein and the so-called furin cleavage site, which in his opinion (but also according to Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore) also point to an origin in the laboratory - through gain-of-function research. These details have, of course, been interpreted in exactly the opposite way by a number of other experts.
Deep political division
As Wade also emphasized several times: Ultimately, all of these is not conclusive evidence for the laboratory theory. Nevertheless, his text has generated some response in the USA over the past few days; The article and its reception also show how politically charged and divided the discussion on the subject is in the USA.
In the text, Wade complains that the left "mainstream press" has done far too little investigative work concerning the laboratory theory. On the other hand, it is clearly favored by the right-wing media and the Republicans, who, after the publication of the text, immediately applied to the US State Department to release previously secret information material about the Institute of Virology in Wuhan.
The bottom line is once again: We still don't know the exact details. The researchers attacked by Wade like Daszak have shot back several times on their Twitter channels in the last few days; but there were also a number of positive comments from the community. In the meantime, the National Institutes of Health rejected the accusation in the conservative Wall Street Journal, which is also attached to the laboratory theory, that the NIAID research funds were used to support gain-of-function research in China. However, in their response, the NIH cannot rule out that such experiments with corona viruses were carried out in Wuhan.
Nevertheless, there was a sharp argument between Republican Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci in the US Congress on Tuesday, also because of the allegation spread by Wade, in which NIAID boss Fauci once again confirmed that any gain-of-function experiments that were carried out on Institute in Wuhan were not funded with US money. (Klaus Taschwer, May 12, 2021)
Sources:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-fauci-and-the-origins-of-covid-11620419989
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ics/dr-fauci-covid-senator-paul-b1845788.html
Translated from german (mostly through google translate), original german source:
https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000126579958/neue-indizien-fuer-hypothese-dass-sars-cov-2-im-labor
