BOOK BEHIND SARS BIOWEAPONS CLAIM

Material cited in Australian report written by professor who says his theory was not taken seriously

It sounded like the stuff of tabloids, but a claim published at the weekend that Chinese military scientists discussed weaponising a deadly strain of coronavirus came from a mainstream Australian media outlet.

The Weekend Australian reported that a document written by People’s Liberation Army scientists and Chinese public health officials five years before the Covid-19 outbreak had described Sars coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”.

The report said in the document, the Chinese scientists outlined their ideas that a third world war would be fought with biological weapons.

The report quoted a digital forensics specialist who had “previously analysed leaked Chinese government documents” as verifying the authenticity of the paper.

It also quoted British and Australian foreign affairs and intelligence officials as saying the document – which was “obtained by the US State Department” – raised major concerns about China’s lack of transparency over the origins of Covid-19.

But the “document” cited in the report is far from being leaked, top-secret military material. It is a 261-page book published in 2015 that can be easily bought online and that, according to a number of book shops, did not sell well.

The “document” in question is The Unnatural Origin of Sars and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons. It does discuss whether the coronavirus could be used by terrorists as a weapon against China – but it does not suggest that the country was weaponising the coronavirus.

The book was published just over a decade after the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars. In it, the authors questioned whether the Sars virus could have been a biological weapon released by a terrorist group against China.

The lead author was Xu Dezhong, a retired professor of infectious disease with the Air Force Medical University in Xian.

“Based on ample evidence in epidemiology, molecular biology and evolutionary biology, this book concludes that Sars-CoV may have an unnatural, or manmade origin,” the authors said.

The Sars virus disappeared suddenly and completely a few months after the outbreak, suggesting the incompatibility of an artificial virus with the human body, they argued. But most scientists say Sars had a natural origin, with researchers from Guangdong and Hong Kong concluding the virus made the leap to humans from civet cats.

The Weekend Australian article described Xu as a lead scientist in the Chinese military who reported to top health and military leaders during the Sars crisis. But Xu, then 70 years old, complained in the book that his theory was not taken seriously in China. He said he submitted a paper on his Sars’ origin theory to The Lancet, and wrote to the director general of the World Health Organization – all to no avail.

There was a full chapter in the book about possible methods to build biological weapons. But most of that content came from an unclassified US military document drafted by Michael Ainscough, a colonel at the USAF Counterproliferation Centre.

In the book, Xu said he translated Ainscough’s paper as it was written a year before the Sars outbreak in China. The timing did not mean the US government created Sars, but it did indicate American efforts in the research, development and deployment of biological weapons using genetic methods, the book said. Xu could not be reached for comment.

The consensus in the international scientific community is that Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, originated in animals before making the leap to humans.