Coronavirus laboratory escape theory focuses on a controversial area of ​​research

The search for answers about the origins of Covid-19 has shifted global attention to a controversial corner of science that operated far from public attention.

Known as the “function gain” of research, it is the manipulation of pathogens with the goal of understanding how viruses often become more lethal and how they can be resistant to vaccines. Critics say the risk of viruses escaping and the pandemic erupting is too high, and in 2014 U.S. President Barack Obama stopped funding to investigate the functions while officials made stricter acceptance guidelines.

But the research continued after it was banned in laboratories around the world, often including U.S. funding, at facilities now at the center of the debate over the origin of coronavirus: the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A multinational team of 15 scientists working at the Wuhan Institute received $ 600,000 in U.S. public funds between 2015 and 2020 to investigate the risk of bat coronaviruses for humans, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a U.S. Senate this week. listening.

Within the work, the team – including the renowned Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli, Known as the Chinese “batwoman” – brought together two different coronaviruses, creating a more dangerous version that was found to have the potential to infect humans. The role of 2015 scientists published it in the journal Nature.

Fauci on Tuesday denied that the experiment was a gain in function research. However, the 2015 article received a strong warning: “Scientific research panels are too dangerous to conduct similar research based on circulatory strains that allegedly construct chimeric viruses.”

“These data and restrictions are the crossroads of GOF [gain of function] research concerns, “the scientists wrote in the paper.” The potential for preparing and mitigating future outbreaks must be measured against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens. “

Their warning has been echoed by some scientists, who have yet to prove that the Sars-Cov-2 bats or a host animal naturally jumped into humans through a host, are exploring the possibility of escaping from the Wuhan Institute.

“We need to take hypotheses that have been leaked both naturally and in the laboratory until we have enough data,” wrote Ralph Baric, one of the authors of the 2015 article, a group of scientists. open letter This month.

A World Health Organization study, facilitated by China, found earlier this year that it was “very difficult” to escape from the Sars-Cov-2 research facility. But the conclusion was questioned in March by countries like the US and the UK, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the investigation was not “broad enough”.

As we classify this work, it should not be carried out at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan

U.S. President Joe Biden promised his intelligence agencies this week review the evidence to obtain the laboratory escape hypothesis and conclude within 90 days. The Chinese state media has done it again and again he denied that laboratory escape was possible and described the theory as a “conspiracy”.

The renewed focus has raised difficult questions for U.S. National Institutes of Health about their relationship with the Wuhan Institute and research. Baric and the EcoHealth Alliance (the NIH channeled its funding to a non-governmental group), like Fauci, denied before He said the work done in Wuhan was a benefit of research into the function because it was not intended to increase infectivity in humans.

Baric, NIH, EcoHealthAlliance and Wuhan Institute have not responded to the requests for response.

But nonetheless, the work was classified as funded by the Wuhan NIH, with some experts, including Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, a professor of chemical biology, saying it should not be done.

“Regardless of whether Covid-19 was the result of a laboratory pandemic spill, the fact that this result is credible means that it is a category of research that we should not be funding or helping to do,” Ebright said.

Ebright also questioned the safety rules at the Wuhan facility. In 2016, among others, Shi and Peter Daszak, directors of EcoHealth, used NIH funding to conduct experiments with live coronaviruses at the 2nd level biosafety laboratory in Wuhan. has published details of the work. BSL-2 facilities are often used for medium-risk work, where researchers can experiment in open benches with only lab coats and gloves.

“If this work was happening, it certainly wasn’t happening in BSL-2,” Ebright said. “That’s roughly the equivalent of a standard dentist’s office.”

The first 4th level biosafety laboratory in China, where the largest biological hazard work is done, was opened in Wuhan in 2018. Daszak did not respond to the request for a response.

Ebright is not alone in his concern. In 2018, American diplomacy in China depending on the cables sent Washington warning: “New laboratory [at Wuhan] this high-capacity laboratory has a severe shortage of technicians and researchers needed to operate safely. “

Scientists say the world never knows for sure whether Covid-19 originated in nature or in the laboratory in Wuhan, many believe the pandemic revealed why this research should not have been done.

Milton Leitenberg, an expert in biological weapons at the University of Maryland, said: “Whatever we classify this work, it wasn’t happening at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Additional report by Yuan Yang and Nian Liu in Beijing