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A small group of scientists and others who believe the novel coronavirus that spawned the pandemic could have come from a lab leak or accident are calling for an independent investigation by the team of independent experts from the World Health Organization sent to China last month.
While many scientists involved in researching the origins of the virus continue to claim that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic almost certainly started with a leap from bats to an intermediate animal to humans, d Other theories persist and have gained new visibility with the WHO-led project. visit of a team of experts to China. WHO officials said in recent interviews that it was “extremely unlikely” but not impossible that the spread of the virus was linked to a laboratory accident.
The open letter, first reported in the Wall Street Journal and in the French publication Le Monde, lists what the signatories see as flaws in the joint WHO-China investigation and says it could not deal in any way the possibility that the virus has leaked from a laboratory. . The letter further asks what type of investigation would be adequate, including full access to records in China.
The WHO’s mission, as with everything to do with China and the coronavirus, has been political from the start, as members of the international team acknowledged.
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and one of the scientists who signed the letter, said it was the result of a series of online discussions between scientists, policy experts and others which have unofficially become known as the Paris Group. Many of those who signed the letter were based in France and Dr Ebright, who has made clear the need to investigate a possible lab leak, said such discussion has been less vigorous in the United States.
He said no one in the group believed the virus was intentionally created as a weapon, but they were all convinced that an origin in a lab through research or accidental infection was as likely as an overflow. occurring in nature from animals to humans. .
Dr Ebright said the letter was released because the Paris group expected to see an interim report from the WHO on Thursday. The letter, he added, “was communicated to high levels of the WHO on Tuesday.”
Asked to respond to the letter, Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesperson, responded in an email that the team of experts that had visited China “are working on their full report as well as a report. accompanying summary, which we believe will be released simultaneously in a few weeks. “
The open letter noted that the WHO study was a joint effort of a team of outside experts, selected by the World Health Organization, who were working with Chinese scientists, and that the team’s report had to be approved by all. The letter pointed out that the team had been denied access to certain records and had not investigated laboratories in China.
According to the letter, the team’s findings “while potentially useful to some extent, do not represent the official WHO position or the result of an unrestricted independent investigation.”
Without naming him, the letter criticized Peter Daszak, an expert in animal diseases and their link to human health, who heads EcoHealth International. The letter was linked to articles on Dr Daszak and said he had previously stated his belief that a natural origin of the virus was very likely.
Dr Daszak said the letter’s willingness to investigate the origin of the virus in the laboratory was a position “backed by political agendas”.
“I urge the global community to wait for the publication of the WHO mission report,” he added.
Filippa Lentzos, Senior Lecturer in Science and International Security, King’s College London, and one of the signatories to the letter, said: that it should be presented to the United Nations General Assembly where all the nations of the world are represented and can vote on whether or not to give a mandate to the UN Secretary General, to conduct this kind of investigation .
Dr. David A. Relman, Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at Stanford University and a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, an advisory body to the federal government said it was “somewhat supportive” of the open letter.
“I totally agree, based on what we know so far, that the WHO survey appears to be biased, biased and insufficient,” he said in an e- mail. “Most importantly, without full transparency and access to primary data and registers, we cannot understand the basis for any of the comments made so far on behalf of the survey or by the WHO”
At the same time, coronavirus scientists continue to unearth and report evidence to support the virus’s natural evolution and fallout in animals.
Robert F. Garry, a virologist at Tulane University Medical Center, recently posted on the Virological website a report that has not yet been peer reviewed, describing new evidence that aspects of the virus that seemed unusual at first had been discovered in new viruses in Japan, Thailand and Cambodia. He and his co-authors concluded: “These observations are consistent with the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 and strongly incompatible with a laboratory origin.”
He said he was aware of some of the views of the signatories to the letter expressed in previous media or social media appearances, involving speculation about how the virus could have come from lab work, and that ‘neither of these views appeared in the letter.
Dr Garry said the possible scenarios described in the letter were that “the Wuhan Institute of Biology had SARS-CoV-2 or something very close before the outbreak. And for some reason, a big conspiracy, they just didn’t want to tell anyone about it.
He said he continued to believe that a laboratory origin was “almost impossible”. He said, “We have to watch the animals.”
This seems to strike at the heart of the Parisian group’s concerns, which is the nature of future research. Dr Ebright said everyone in the group was concerned about both wildlife surveillance and laboratory research on viruses because they could increase, without reducing the likelihood of future pandemics.
If collecting samples in the wild or working with those samples in laboratories were involved in the origin of the pandemic, he said, it would be urgent “to assess whether the benefits outweigh the benefits. risks and otherwise restrict these activities ”.
William J. Broad contributed reporting.
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