Corona Daily 081: Chinese Lab Leak Theory: Part Two

In this debate of natural spillover vs lab leak, it is critical to understand a term “Gain of Function Research.”

In virology, this research is done with the intention of better forecasting future pandemics and developing solutions to them. Scientists take a virus, usually known to endanger humans, and start tweaking it to make it more transmissible or more lethal. This is a dangerous game. The idea is to develop in the laboratory viruses that may start deadly pandemics in the future, so as to develop medicines and vaccines in advance.

Scientists who support such research argue this is the only way to stay ahead of the epidemics. New diseases emerge all the time and viruses keep evolving. This research allows the world to stockpile vaccines and antibodies.

The opponents agree this objective may be noble, but the research is capable of building Frankensteins. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist, were scientists and professors. In their scientific endevour, they probably didn’t plan to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – but that is what happened in the end.

The troubling thing is that the Wuhan laboratories routinely create viruses more dangerous than those existing in nature. The Chinese don’t deny those man-made mutations. They argue they can do it safely, and stay ahead of nature in the game. Dr Shi Zhengli, the Chinese Batwoman, and her team has done work on inserting cleavage sites into viruses to check if that enhanced their ability to infect humans.

Such man-made viruses are called Chimera viruses. Combining two pathogenic viruses increases the lethality of the new virus. That is why Chimeric viruses are generally considered a bio-weapon. The USSR had secretly tried combining encephalitis and small pox, and later Ebola and smallpox.

There have been cases of lab leaks before. But most have infected and killed very few people. Scientists believe that the annual H1N1 flu (1977-2009) was the result of a leak. The strain first appeared in Eastern Russia, and its genes were identical to a 1950 strain that was presumably stored in a Russian freezer for 27 years. The virus behaved as if it was deliberately weakened. The assumption is that Russian virologists were trying to develop a vaccine against the return of the 1918 flu.

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Having established that the Wuhan scientists have worked on developing Chimera viruses, let us now go through all the evidence that has emerged so far.

On 23 May, the Wall Street Journal published a report that three researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology had become sick and were hospitalized in November 2019. Their symptoms were consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This is part of the US intelligence report that was not previously disclosed.

Shi Zhengli and the Chinese government have denied anybody from the institute was ill. So, it is the American word against the Chinese word. We live in a world where it is difficult to trust any government. If US intelligence really had any evidence, it is impossible that Donald Trump would have let it go. Unless more specific evidence is produced, it is difficult to take the WSJ report as proof of anything.

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On 19 February 2020, a group of public health scientists had issued a statement in the Lancet in support of the Chinese scientists. It strongly condemned conspiracy theories that covid-19 doesn’t have a natural origin. Genome analysis, the statement said, overwhelmingly concludes that the coronavirus originated in wildlife.

One of the authors was Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance in New York. Now it turns out that the letter was organized and drafted by him. Dr Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the covid virus really leaked from the research he financed, he may be held potentially guilty. Dr Daszak pro-actively hid this conflict of interest. The lancet letter ends with: “We declare no competing interests”.

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(Story continued tomorrow)

Ravi