High-profile scientists caught up in the controversy over the origins of Covid have admitted that the decision to play down the lab leak theory was political.
Internal Slack communications obtained by a House subcommittee investigating the early days of the pandemic showed how scientists who wrote a paper dismissing the idea of a lab accident feared retaliation from the Chinese government.
Dr. Andrew Rambaut, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh, co-authored the March 2020 Nature Medicine research paper titled ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ which degenerated believers of the leak theory. laboratory as conspiracy theorists and racists. .
The private messages show that Dr. Rambaut was afraid blaming China for “even the accidental release” of the virus would cause a geopolitical “shit show”, so he was “happy to chalk it up to a natural process.”
One of those who responded to that message was Danish biologist Dr. Kristian Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist and co-author of the paper, who said in response to Dr. Rambaut that he “fully agrees[s] that’s a very reasonable conclusion’, adding: ‘Although I hate it when politics is injected into science, but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.’
The private messages show that Dr. Rambaut was afraid blaming China for “even the accidental release” of the virus would cause a geopolitical “shit show”, so he was “happy to chalk it up to a natural process.”
Dr. Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research testifies during a hearing with the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill on July 11, 2023 in Washington, DC
Also present was Dr. Robert Garry (left), a professor at Tulane University School of Medicine. Committee members gathered to hear testimony from medical researchers about the origins of Covid-19
The notorious proximal-sourced paper was commissioned in part by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was then head of the US national research agency that had been funding risky virus research at the Wuhan lab.
House Republicans questioned two doctors at the center of the fighting about whether the coronavirus arose today from nature or from a laboratory in Wuhan.
They cited newly revealed communications between scientists in early 2020 as evidence of a cover-up, something the scientists strongly refuted.
in a report released Earlier Tuesday before the hearing, House Republicans pointed to the myriad efforts of scientists investigating the origins of Covid and what they said amounted to blatantly crushing voices advocating more serious research into the theory that the virus leaked from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The witnesses, Dr. Kristian Andersen and Dr. Robert Garry, co-authored the February 2020 report ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’, which was released just days after a conference call involving scientists. Notables including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins. he sent desperate messages from virologists about the possibility that aspects of the virus appeared to be man-made.
Internal messages show that even Dr. Andersen considered the argument that the genomic makeup of the virus suggested human manipulation, though he changed his tune just four days later, on February 4, as evidenced by an email that Dr. Andersen he sent a different group of recovered scientists. by the Right to Know research group.
In the message, Dr. Andersen wrote: “The main wacko theories circulating right now relate to this virus being designed in some way with intent and that can be shown not to be the case.”
Dr. Andersen also said in a series of now-public responses highlighted by the House Republican Party: “Although I hate it when politics is injected into science, but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances. We should be sensitive to that.
Dr. Andersen was chastised by Dr. Wenstrup for smiling while being questioned about his participation.
Dr. Wenstrup said, “Smile however you can, Dr. Andersen, smile however you can.”
Around the same time that scientists pointed out that pinning the origins of Covid in China would provoke a ‘shit show’, Dutch scientist Dr. Ron Fouchier added his concern that it would deepen the debate over a possible laboratory leak from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, whether intentional or accidental, “would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.”
House Republican lawmakers, typically aggressive toward China, pounced on what they perceived as too considerate and conciliatory to the ruling communist party there. One of those legislators, New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, focused her gaze on Dr. Rambaut’s incriminating message and said, “His concern was that he would anger China, that was his concern.”
‘Something happened here [in the brief time between Dr Fauci’s first contact with Dr Andersen in early 2020]. Politicians can change their minds. Scientists don’t turn around in a matter of 72 hours.’
While China has insisted that the virus originated elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have entertained the possibility that it leaked from a high-level biochemical laboratory in Wuhan, raising suspicions that Chinese officials they simply concealed evidence of early spread.
Shi Zhengli, nicknamed the ‘Bat Lady’ or ‘Bat Woman’ for her work with bat coronaviruses, investigated the possibility that covid might have emerged from her laboratory in 2020, according to her colleagues. She is pictured here as working with other researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017.
Dr. Andersen and Dr. Garry rebutted that claim by saying that they did not change their minds, but instead learned new information about the virus and altered their hypothesis, a textbook application of the scientific method.
Efforts by Republicans to determine where exactly the virus came from, whether from a Wuhan wet market that sells animals contaminated with the virus or from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, have focused on exposing the inner workings of scientific authorities like the Dr. Fauci. and Dr. Collins, colloquially nicknamed by Republicans as ‘the Bethesda Boys’.
The issue has become largely political after years of labeling certain scientists, including Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins at the center of the debate, as openly biased in favor of theories espoused by many Democrats and entrenched scientists. government.
This includes the theory that covid-19 probably jumped from an animal intermediate host before infecting humans.
