Scientists in ‘cover up’ over links to Wuhan lab
All but one who dismissed Covid leak theory in influential Lancet letter have ties to institute
‘Our entire area of virus research has been contaminated politically. We bear the scars to show it’
ALL but one scientist who wrote a letter in The Lancet dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have come from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or funders, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
The influential journal published a letter on Mar 7 last year from 27 scientists in which they stated that they “strongly condemned conspiracy theories” surrounding Covid.
It effectively shut down scientific debate about whether Covid was manipulated or leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
Yesterday, researchers who were blocked and branded conspiracy theorists for attempting to investigate a link called it an “extreme cover-up”.
Though he declared no conflicts of interest at the time, it has since emerged that the letter was orchestrated by the British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the Us-based Ecohealth Alliance, which funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where the leak was suspected.
The Telegraph can now disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in the letter had connections to the Chinese lab, through researchers and funders closely linked to the Wuhan team.
Although Mr Daszak eventually declared his involvement in Ecohealth Alliance, he failed to mention that five other signatories also worked for the organisation. A further three were from the Uk-based Wellcome Trust, which has funded work at the WIV in the past.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, the director of the trust and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), who signed the letter, has also published work with Dr George Gao, the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whom he describes as an “old friend”.
Dr Gao, who went to Oxford, is a former Wellcome research assistant, and Mr Daszak previously claimed that Dr Gao had supported his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences in the US.
Dr Gao also has close connections to Dr Shi Zhengli, the scientist known as “batwoman” who was leading research into bat coronaviruses at Wuhan. Her team discovered a virus in a cave in Yunnan in 2013 that is the closest ever found to Sars-cov-2, which causes Covid.
Another signatory, Prof Linda Saif, of Ohio State University, spoke at a workshop in Wuhan in May 2017 with Dr Shi and Dr Gao, organised partly by the WIV. Topics discussed at the meeting included gain-of-function experiments, which increase the infectivity of a virus, and the level of security in Chinese labs. Prof Saif ’s talk dealt with animal coronaviruses.
Two other signatories are in the leadership team of the Global Virome Project, of which Mr Daszak is treasurer. Dr Gao helped to launch the project and Ecohealth Alliance is a partner.
The project’s goal is to identify at least 99 per cent of potential zoonotic viral threats to human health and food security. It took over from the Predict project, which uncovered more than 1,000 unique viruses in animals and humans.
It has since emerged, however, that Predict part-funded controversial work by Wuhan researchers on bat coronaviruses which were altered to see if they could infect humans. The funds came via Ecohealth Alliance.
In an email on Feb 8, released under freedom of information requests, Mr Daszak revealed he had composed the letter after being asked by “our collaborators” in China for a “show of support”.
Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St George’s, University of London, and the Norwegian scientist Birger Sorensen, who struggled to have work published showing a link between the virus and Wuhan research, said that there had been an “extreme cover-up”.
Commenting on the discovery that so many were linked to China, they said: “This article is the first to show beyond reasonable doubt that our entire area of virus research has been contaminated politically. We bear the scars to show it.”
Other signatories with links to the Wuhan team include Professor Kanta Subbarao, who spoke at a conference in Wuhan, part organised by the WIV, on emerging disease in 2016.
Dr John Mackenzie, of Curtin University of Technology in Australia, put his name to the letter, but failed to mention he was still listed as a committee member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the WIV.
Five other signatories had all published articles with Professor Ralph Baric, who was collaborating with Dr Shi and the WIV on research genetically manipulating coronaviruses to see if they could be made to infect humans.
Crucially, Prof Baric was omitted from the list of signatures, but had initially been asked to join by Mr Daszak. Emails have recently come to light between the pair showing that they decided to blur their association in case it looked “self-serving”.
Mr Daszak told Prof Baric he would distribute the letter in a way that “doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximise an independent voice”.
Of all 27 signatories, only Professor Ronald Corley, of Boston University, appears to have no links. Although an addendum was made to the letter in June this year, pointing out Mr Daszak’s links to Wuhan, no others revealed any conflict of interest at the time.
Professor Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, New Jersey, who has fought to uncover the truth behind the pandemic, said: “For the June addendum, The Lancet invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests.
“Incredibly, only Daszak appears to have done so. Conflicts of interest were not reported for any of the other 26 signers of the letter... The standard remedy for fraudulent statements in scientific publications is retraction. It is unclear why retraction was not pursued.”
Several of the signatories have since changed their stance, with Prof Peter Palese, a microbiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, now calling for a full inquiry.
Dr Charles Calisher, of Colorado State University, said the letter never intended to suggest that Covid might not have a natural origin, rather that there was insufficient data.
Professor Stanley Perlman, a signatory from the University of Iowa, said: “It is difficult to eliminate a possible lab leak as part of the process, so this still needs to be considered.”
Professor Bernard Roizman has gone the furthest, telling The Wall Street Journal in May that he is now convinced the virus was accidentally released by a “sloppy” scientist.
Mr Daszak was removed from the UN’S Covid commission looking at the origins of the pandemic in June over his scientific impartiality, but is still part of the World Health Organisation’s Covid investigation team. This month, he cowrote an article in the journal Nature with the WHO team claiming there was still little evidence for a lab leak theory and warning that it may soon be too late to uncover how the pandemic started.
Prof Dalgleish said: “It may now be too late to get to the bottom of what happened with the pandemic because of this stalling but I think enough evidence is out there. It may be that if they hadn’t been doing this work the pandemic might never have happened.”
When approached, The Lancet and the Wellcome Trust refused to comment further on the letter. Nobody from Ecohealth Alliance had responded at the time of publication.