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There was a time when the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory was too hot to touch. The idea that Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had made a catastrophic blunder and allowed a new, highly contagious coronavirus to slip out of their lab into the surrounding province, seemed to be fodder for theorists. conspiracy and fuel for xenophobes and anti-Asian racists. But earlier this year, two events gave the theory a little boost.
On May 14, Science Magazine published a letter signed by eighteen researchers titled “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19”. Its authors argued that the World Health Organization’s investigation, conducted in partnership with China last year, was superficial at best: only four of the report’s 313 pages assessed the possibility of a laboratory accident. . Shortly after the letter’s publication, President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct their own investigation. They returned three months later empty handed. The president blamed Chinese government officials, who had apparently “worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing [critical information]. “
To flesh out the competing scenarios, four scientists – including three co-signers of the May 14 letter – engaged in a virtual debate on September 30, sponsored by Science Magazine. Panelists spent an hour arguing the merits of the laboratory leak theory against the possibility of a “natural overflow” – the dominant belief that the virus originally passed from an animal to a human.
“We want to show that you can have a civilized discussion with people who don’t necessarily agree with each other,” Jon Cohen, debate moderator and editor of Science Magazine, said at the start of the report. emission.
Panelists included Michael Worobey, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Arizona who signed the May 14 letter. Worobey said that although he had kept an “open mind,” he now believes a lab leak is unlikely. He pointed out that research had revealed that animal species susceptible to coronavirus – namely palm civets and raccoon dogs – were being sold and slaughtered at the Huanan Market in Wuhan, China, where the first cluster of 27 COVID cases -19 has been reported.
“If it started with research, why does it seem like it started in one of these markets? ” he said.
Worobey made her case alongside Linfa Wang, a bat coronavirus researcher at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. The unlikely Worobey, who seemed convinced but unsure of a natural spillover scenario, Wang vehemently objected to the possibility of a lab leak.
Wang – who works closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – said researchers at the lab collect and study coronaviruses, but still wear PPE and take precautionary measures, making the virus much more likely. was first contracted by a civilian. Wang also defended the WIV’s main bat coronavirus researcher, Shi Zhengli, who has become the target of supporters of the lab leaks.
“The Western philosophy… is that you are innocent until proven guilty,” he said, arguing that Zhengli had received the opposite treatment. “As a scientist, I feel pretty sad that just because of the geophysical location, you are guilty.”
Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and another co-signer of the March 14 letter, said that while an animal-to-human overflow event was possible, the nature of the WIV research makes it a viable culprit.
“Wuhan Institute of Virology had large-scale programs to collect and study SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] related coronaviruses that were at high risk of being able to infect humans, ”he said in his opening statement. “It is possible that there was an accident during this process which led to the emergence of the virus. “
The coincidence suggested by Bloom was taken even further by Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute and co-author of a book titled “Viral: Search for the Origin of Covid-19”. Chan, who spent much of the debate criticizing the Chinese government’s reluctance to cooperate with researchers and investigators, described his position by paraphrasing a quote from comedian Jon Stewart.
“In 2019, a new SARS coronavirus, with a new genetic modification, appeared in a city where there is a laboratory studying the new SARS coronaviruses with new genetic modifications,” she said.
The debate intensified during a discussion of COVID-19’s ‘furin cleavage site’ – a section on the surface of the virus’s spike protein that can be cut with an enzyme, which some scientists are taking as proof of bioengineering. While many in the scientific community have dismissed this as a conspiracy theory, a research proposal disclosed in 2018, which lists Wang as a co-investigator, sought to apply a furin cleavage site to a bald coronavirus. mouse linked to SARS, which would have made the virus more contagious to humans.
Although the grant was never funded, Bloom insisted on Wang and his colleagues’ silence as the debate within the scientific community unfolded.
“For the sake of what we’re talking about here, needing to be transparent… why hasn’t anyone come forward and disseminate this information?” he asked Wang. “The fact that this was leaked after all this discussion, to me, it’s just not transparent and honest.”
In response, Wang asked why anyone should publish information in a dead grant, adding that bringing such information into the public sphere was “not [his] Region.”
Based on the information currently available, most panelists agreed that a definitive conclusion regarding the origins of COVID-19 is unlikely to be reached. But in her closing statement, Alina succinctly described why she thinks the search for an answer must continue.
“We just want to know how it happened so that we can prevent it from happening again,” she said.
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