The lab-leak theory that Covid-19 came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – instead of a nearby wet market – was thrashed about in public recently, with the US Senate Homeland Security Committee holding a hearing into Covid-19.
Origins of Covid-19: An Examination Of Available Evidence, was held on June 18, and is publicly available on Youtube.
As many would know, the idea that Sars-Cov-2 was human-made in a lab was originally labelled a conspiracy. Discussion was censored from mainstream social media platforms and traditional media.
Gain of function
As such, there’s probably not a lot who know what ‘gain of function’ research is.
Gain of function is genetically altering organisms in a lab, and in the case of virology, it’s been described as ‘juicing up’ deadly viruses in a controlled environment.
A good outcome from that might be to better predict emerging infectious diseases, and to develop vaccines and therapeutics.
A bad outcome might be a military biological weapon.
From the outset of the Covid-19 hearing, Senator Rand Paul launched into accusations that top US scientists said different things in private to what they said in public.
‘At every step, there’s been resistance’, he said.
‘The hearing today is to try to find out whether or not we can get to the truth. Do we know for certain it came from the lab? No, but there’s a preponderance of evidence indicating that it may have come from the lab.
They’ve come from animals in the past
‘Do we know viruses have come from animals in the past? Yes, they’ve come from animals in the past. But this time, there’s no animal reservoir, there’s no animal handlers with antibiotics. There’s a lot of reasons why there are indications that this could well have come from the lab’.
Muddying the waters over the years was the conspiracy theory that Dr Anthony Fauci was involved, or directed funds to the lab for gain of function research experiments.
Dr Fauci has repeatedly refuted the claims, and told The Late Show host, Stephen Colbert, on June 18 that the virus wouldn’t have originated from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant that the Wuhan lab received.
He said, ‘The nature of those viruses were evolutionary so far distant from what turned out to be Sars-Cov-2, that no matter what you did with those viruses, you would not be able to do that’.
‘That doesn’t mean that somewhere in China, it is inconceivable that someone may have been working on something and brought it out into the environment’.
Unlikely we will ever know
He added it’s unlikely we will ever know of the origins because of the hostilities that exist between the US and China prevent transparency.
And what about the next virus? Dr Fauci suggests improved constraints on those kinds of experiments, and improved facilities and training.
‘And do something about the animal-human interface – it is 75 to 80 per cent of the new viruses and infections that come out. They are what is called zoonotic – they jump from an animal reservoir to a human’.
So, given China’s reluctance to provide honesty around its own gain of function research, should we expect another pandemic at some point?
Apart from trade advantages, it’s perhaps another reason the US restricts China’s knowledge of semiconductor technology.
Hans Lovejoy, editor
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