Scientists refuse to discount theory that coronavirus started in Wuhan lab

It remains plausible that the pandemic started after the coronavirus escaped from a laboratory, a group of leading scientists has said.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province. Picture: AFP

It remains plausible that the pandemic started after the coronavirus escaped from a laboratory, a group of leading scientists has said.

In a letter in the journal Science, researchers from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Cambridge criticised the World Health Organisation and other scientists for dismissing such an explanation.

They said that despite vociferous opposition from some colleagues there was not enough data to exclude the possibility the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Theories of accidental release from a lab … remain viable,” they wrote.

The idea of a laboratory escape has polarised the community. A WHO investigation concluded it was “extremely unlikely”, arguing it was far more possible that it came naturally as “zoonotic spillover” from animals.

In February last year, a group of scientists also backed this view. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” they wrote in a letter to The Lancet.

Virologists said on Thursday that there was a “toxic” atmosphere around the subject, and that few who argued for the possibility of laboratory origins were willing to speak openly.

The 18 scientists of the latest letter include Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch and Ravindra Gupta, the Cambridge geneticist who has played a key role in Britain’s response to variants. Stanford microbiologist David Relman, who organised the letter, said it was in part a plea for more people to stand up.

“Many of us who signed this letter feel the same way, which is that we simply just don’t have enough information. Anyone who asserts a strong opinion one way or another can’t really be basing it on a whole lot of good data, because we just don’t have any,” he said.

He added that he was not surprised that the topic had become so fraught. “The fact is that this pandemic has caused so much pain, people feel angry, and they need to direct it at something,” he said. “It’s sad that scientists have also joined this mode of engagement and seem to have forgotten why we are all in science.”

It was crucial for scientists to find ways to investigate the origins of the pandemic with an open mind, he said, as many hypotheses remain credible.

“We know that laboratory accidents happen far more often than anyone would like to admit,” Professor Relman said. “And that includes the very best labs, including those here in the United States.”

Equally, though, scientists have long feared that China had the perfect conditions for a virus to jump species from bats.

The Times