AS EXPERTS TELL MoS’S IAN BIRRELL THAT THE OFFICIAL PROBE IS A ‘CHARADE’
THE World Health Organisation’s inquiry into the source of the pandemic is a ‘charade’ to appease China, leading experts on biosecurity and infectious diseases have told The Mail on Sunday.
Instead of seeking the truth, last week’s initial findings, they say, were a political stunt that help the Beijing government in its desperation to be exonerated.
The scientists accuse the UN body of brushing aside concerns over a possible lab leak in Wuhan to push ‘fanciful’ theories that Covid-19 emerged outside China and could have been imported into the city on frozen food.
BRUNO CANARD
Structural virologist and director of research of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research.
‘The WHO investigation is a masquerade. There are so many conflicts of interest and obfuscation that it is as if you asked Hassan Rouhani [Iran’s president] to lead an international check on Iran’s nuclear programme. The WHO is committing credibility suicide.’
RICHARD EBRIGHT
Biosafety expert and professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
‘The mission was a charade. It has no credibility. Its members were willing – and, in at least one case, eager – participants in disinformation. The predetermined, preordained purpose was to raise the false-flag proposal that the virus originated outside China... and arrived in Wuhan through international travel or internationally shipped frozen food. No serious person considers internationally shipped frozen food as a plausible explanation of how the virus arrived in Wuhan.’
DAVID RELMAN
Biosecurity expert and professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, California.
‘If the only information you’re allowing to be weighed is provided by the very people who have everything to lose by revealing such evidence, that doesn’t come close to passing the sniff test.’
FILIPPA LENTZOS
Biosecurity expert at the Departments of War Studies and of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London.
‘The mission’s messaging was clearly political – not scientific – and aligned very closely with Beijing’s narrative of a possible origin source outside China’s borders. They provided no credible evidence for why they do not feel the lab-leak hypothesis should remain on the table or why other explanations were seen as more likely.’
COLIN BUTLER
Former WHO adviser and epidemiologist at Australian National University.
‘The dismissal of the lab-leak theory could have been provided in a novel by George Orwell. The evidence against this hypothesis appears to boil down to something like: “We spent three hours at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, we talked to the people there, and we formed the opinion they are honest and competent. When they said the virus had not leaked, we believed them.” I am over-simplifying, but this conclusion is based on flimsy evidence. WHO greatly harmed its reputation by including Peter Daszak [a British scientist] on the team when he has such obvious conflicts of interest from his work and friendships in Wuhan.’
JACQUES VAN HELDEN
Professor of bioinformatics at Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France.
‘The WHO panel concluded the lab incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely and would not be further studied, but did not provide a single scientific argument. We must keep exploring every scenario, evidence-based and prejudicefree, while avoiding speculation and political hijacking.’
MONALI RAHALKAR
Microbiologist at Agharkar Research Institute in India, who has spent the past eight months investigating the origins of Covid-19.
‘Ruling out the lab-leak hypothesis without solid evidence makes no sense. The outbreak started in Wuhan. This city hosted Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and two other centres carrying out research into coronaviruses.
The WIV institute collected the closest known relative to SarsCov-2 [the virus that causes Covid-19] and other viruses from a coal mine in southern China, where miners developed a mystery respiratory illness.’
NIKOLAI PETROVSKY
Professor of medicine at Flinders University, Adelaide, and coronavirus vaccine developer.
‘This preliminary report goes further than many might have expected in emphasising two key assertions made by the Chinese government but challenged by others: that the virus source of the pandemic may lie outside China and the possibility the transmission into China occurred via frozen food. The idea the virus was brought into China on frozen feeds is at best fanciful and looks to be a smokescreen. A truly independent investigation remains needed.’
RAINA MACINTYRE
Infectious diseases expert and head of Biosecurity Research Programme, Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Australia.
‘The team does not reveal anything substantially new. The virus may have emerged in nature but a lab accident is also a possibility as the BSL4 lab (WIV) was studying bat coronaviruses – including the virus found in the miners outbreak in 2012. They do not provide any evidence for dismissing a lab leak.’
ROSSANA SEGRETO
Microbiologist at University of Innsbruck, Austria, and author of papers examining possible genetic manipulation of the virus.
‘The WHO team does not seem to be acting seriously by dismissing a lab leak before the world’s media, then later saying all hypotheses require further study. The structure of Sars-Cov-2 shows this virus could have been produced artificially. There is still no scientifically verifiable proof the pathogen developed naturally, yet a potential human error-induced lab accident as a source of the pandemic was ruled out. This is negligent, putting us all at risk, when there are multiple examples of previous lab accidents and dozens of laboratories around the world are experimenting with mutated pathogens with potential to trigger a pandemic.’
JAMIE METZL
Healthcare and technology expert, member of the WHO advisory committee on human genome editing.
‘I was appalled by the announcement that the possibility of an accidental lab leak does not merit further investigation. While no evidence has yet been found indicating Covid-19 stems from transmission between animal hosts in the wild or from frozen foods, as the committee entertains, significant evidence points to accidental leak as a possible origin. We need urgently an unrestricted forensic investigation without access managed by the Chinese authorities.’
ALINA CHAN
Molecular biologist at Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
‘The investigation served China’s purposes by delivering precisely the outcome it wanted since the WHO was saying things such as the need to investigate frozen food transmission and suggestions the virus came from another country while ruling out a lab leak. This felt like a performance. WHO has shown that it has no leverage against a country such as China that plays hardball.’
RASMUS NIELSEN
Professor of computational biology at University of California, Berkeley.
‘No responsible scientist should make strong claims about the origin at this point. Chinese researchers were banned in March from investigating and other researchers have not had access to samples and data. It is my understanding from press statements the only evidence used to exclude a lab leak is the apparent high safety standards of lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This is a very weak statement that is more political than scientific.’
MICHAEL LIN
Associate professor of Neurobiology and Bioengineering at Stanford University, California.
A very weak statement that is more political than scientific
‘The idea of transmission by frozen food is theoretically possible but so far there’s been no known cases of this happening. The perfunctory investigation, consisting of asking Chinese officials and scientists questions, is far from adequate in putting to rest concerns about lab leak.’