- THE TELEGRAPH - Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR - March 10, 2023 -
Experts involved in work similar to Wuhan lab wanted to continue with dangerous ‘gain-of-function’ tests, claims Oxford scholar
Scientists dismissed the Covid-19 lab leak theory because they wanted to continue doing dangerous “gain-of-function” experiments to make viruses more deadly, a University of Oxford scholar has claimed.
Anton van der Merwe, a professor of molecular immunology, said that scientists involved in similar work as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the laboratory implicated in the lab leak, were worried that a ban would be reimposed on such testing.
Wuhan researchers were importing bat coronaviruses and had applied for grants to increase their infectiousness, known as gain-of-function research.
Prof van der Merwe believes that scientists had used articles in The Lancet and Nature Medicine to create a “false impression” that a natural spillover origin was scientific consensus.
‘Little justification for such experiments’
Writing in the letters page of the Financial Times, he said: “The conflict arises from the fact the researchers perform, and want to continue to perform, precisely the sorts of experiment that make a laboratory leak much more likely.
“These include gain-of-function experiments, where they investigate whether they can enable, by genetic modification, an animal virus to infect human cells. “It is argued that this could help us identify potentially dangerous organisms in the wild and so prevent a pandemic. This seems unlikely.
“What is more likely is that these organisms will infect those doing the experiments, who could unwittingly spread the virus to the community, and possibly the whole world.”
Prof van der Merwe said there was “little justification for doing such experiments, except scientific curiosity and the desire for prestige”.
He argued that if it was shown that the pandemic started in the Wuhan lab, such research could be banned forever.
A moratorium was imposed on gain-of-function experiments in 2014 by the US, but it was lifted in December 2017.
Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, said in his view that the conduct of some scientists during the pandemic had been “breathtakingly unethical”.
“It’s pathetic,” he told The Telegraph. “You have this unholy and unethical alliance of scientists working together through highly influential publications effectively to kibosh what may be a scientific truth, and get it pushed into the realms of conspiracy theory.
“We need to be asking tough questions about the origins, otherwise who knows what virus will be released next through incompetence and ambition and how many more millions it will be killing.
“This is not some political game. We’ve got to find out where this thing came from. If you had a virus that suddenly emerged a few hundred yards from Porton Down, this country would never be able to get away with it.”
This week, at an origins of Covid hearing in the US Senate, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that he believed the pandemic was probably the result of a laboratory accident.
Dr Robert Redfield, a virologist who led the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic, said: “I still believe today that the data indicates that the outbreak of Covid 19 was more likely the result of a lab leak than as a result of a natural spillover event.”
In recent weeks, it has emerged that the US Department of Energy and the FBI have also said they believe a lab leak is the more likely origin of the pandemic. The Telegraph also revealed this week that Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, believed a natural origin “didn’t fly”, but was told to water down remarks in his memoir by the cabinet office, for fear of upsetting China.
British experts said it was critical to get to the bottom of how the pandemic started, to make sure that, if it was a lab leak, it would not happen again.
Ravindra Gupta, the professor of clinical microbiology, at the University of Cambridge, said: “Although, I think that the market is the most likely source we still need a full thorough and open analysis of all available data sources.
“I do not believe that this has happened yet, and it would require the Chinese to be at the forefront of such an investigation perhaps led by the World Health Organisation in a spirit and legal framework that allows transparency without culpability.”