Scientist took a year to admit his links to Wuhan
A CONTROVERSIAL British scientist took more than a year to declare his links to a Chinese laboratory after opposing the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Dr Peter Daszak organised a letter in February 2020, cosigned by 26 other leading researchers, and published in medical journal The Lancet, which condemned ‘conspiracy theories’ that Covid-19 did not arise naturally.
The move is claimed to have shut down any debate over whether the virus could have escaped from a lab last year. But the zoologist, a Lancastrian who now lives in New York, had ties to Wuhan Institute of Virology stretching back 15 years.
Yesterday the editor of The Lancet, Dr Richard Horton, was forced to defend the 16-month delay before Dr Daszak’s important conflicts of interest were finally published in a memorandum in the journal this June.
Dr Horton, who was honoured at The Great Hall of the People in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 2008, to mark an ‘unprecedented’ collaboration between Peking University and The Lancet, admitted to MPs: ‘A hundred per cent, I completely agree, the information that we published in June as an addendum should definitely have been included in the February letter.’
But he told the Commons science and technology committee it took longer than a year to persuade Dr Daszak to formally record his links with China.
The Lancet editor said: ‘We ended up having a debate with him about, well, do you have a competing interest or not?’
Dr Daszak argued that he was an expert on bat coronaviruses in China, with a view that should be listened to. Dr Horton said: ‘It took us over a year to persuade him to declare his full competing interest, which we eventually did in June of this year.’
The journal editor was accused of doing ‘too little too late’ by Conservative MP Aaron Bell, who also questioned whether the controversial original Lancet letter had ‘served to close down scientific debate’.
On why Dr Daszak’s links with Wuhan Institute of Virology had not been checked, Dr Horton said: ‘We ask everybody who submits a piece that’s accepted for publication in The Lancet to declare their competing interests, and we take those statements on trust.
‘And in this particular case, regrettably, the authors claim that they have no competing interests, and of course... there were indeed competing interests that were significant, particularly in relation to Peter Daszak.’
The Lancet established an office in Beijing, in addition to its New York office and London headquarters, in 2010.
In 2015, Dr Horton travelled to Beijing to receive the Friendship Award from China – the highest honour awarded to ‘foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country’s economic and social progress’.
He claimed yesterday that China faced a ‘blame game’ over the origins of the pandemic, despite admitting that it had denied the World Health Organisation access to crucial information needed for an investigation into the cause of the outbreak. Leaked emails earlier this year revealed it was Dr Daszak who drafted the Lancet letter dismissing non-natural causes of the pandemic, such as a lab leak, as conspiracy theories.
As president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a not-for-profit organisation researching emerging infectious diseases, he asked colleagues to sign and ‘circulate it among some eminent scientists’.
On the ‘debate’ with Dr Daszak over his conflicts of interest, Dr Horton told MPs: ‘It’s quite an interesting debate, because his view was, look, I’m an expert in working in China on bat coronaviruses. That isn’t a competing interest – it actually makes me an
‘Do you have an interest or not?’ ‘In the court of public opinion’
expert with a view that should be listened to. Our take was, well, in the court of public opinion, that is a competing interest you should declare.’
Dr Horton faced comparisons with The Lancet’s notorious publication of a paper linking the MMR vaccine to autism, by disgraced academic Dr Andrew Wakefield, which was only retracted 12 years later.
Labour MP Graham Stringer said: ‘Was nothing learnt about trust in The Lancet from the experience with Wakefield?’