169 - COVID-19 Lab Leak: Examining all sides of the debate & the barriers to a full investigation
- Guest
- Katherine Eban
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 19 Jul 2021
- Duration
- 1:45:46
- Views
- 15.6K
KEYPOINTS
- 01
'Lab leak' covers a range of scenarios, not one theory
Eban, an investigative journalist who wrote about COVID's origins for Vanity Fair, stresses that 'lab leak' spans everything from a natural bat sample brought back by field researchers and accidentally escaping, to an infected lab worker, to a genetically modified strain getting out. 'Leak' usually means airborne exposure, not liquid spilling from a pipe. The episode was recorded on July 6, 2021.
- 02
Lab escapes have happened many times before
Eban cites a Soviet anthrax leak and at least four SARS-1 lab escapes after the 2002 epidemic. The 1977 'Russian flu' was an H1N1 strain from the 1940s and 1950s that reappeared and mostly hit people under 25, who had no natural immunity. They note that much dangerous-pathogen work happens outside top-containment BSL-4 labs, including at Wuhan in BSL-2 settings. Attia adds that BSL-4 is miserable enough to tempt researchers into shortcuts.
- 03
No intermediate animal host has been found
SARS-1 was traced to civets within about six months, and MERS to dromedary camels. For SARS-CoV-2, Eban reports that Chinese authorities tested up to 80,000 animal samples without finding a host. That leaves either an undiscovered intermediate animal or direct jump from bats, for which the 2012 mine case below offers some precedent.
- 04
Gain-of-function research divides virology
This research deliberately gives pathogens abilities they lack in nature, such as greater infectiousness to humans, to gauge risk and possibly help forecast variants or design vaccines. One critic called it 'looking for a gas leak with a lighted match'. Another called bringing cave viruses to crowded cities and making them more infectious 'the definition of insanity'. Asked for proven successes, Eban mostly reports defenders' claims about vaccines and variant forecasting.
- 05
US policy swung from a moratorium to a loophole-filled framework
After Ron Fouchier's 2011 work making a flu virus far more transmissible, which he described as among the most dangerous ever, the Cambridge Working Group pushed back. The US paused funding of gain-of-function research on flu, SARS and MERS. In January 2017 the pause was lifted and replaced by a review framework that Eban says had enough loopholes 'to drive a truck through'.
- 06
US money reached Wuhan indirectly
The NIH funded EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit led by zoologist Peter Daszak with a stated mission of mapping wildlife viruses. EcoHealth passed subgrants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Department of Defense also funded EcoHealth. The NIH had not released EcoHealth's progress reports, and investigations, including by the HHS inspector general, were ongoing. Sources described a 'gain-of-function bureaucracy' in government with a stake in the answer.
- 07
The furin cleavage site is suggestive but not a smoking gun
The site makes the virus better at infecting human cells, and one virologist called it a signature of Wuhan's genetic editing. Nicholas Wade quoted David Baltimore calling it 'the smoking gun', which Baltimore later walked back. Others note such sites occur in nature. Eban says public information on the sequence can't settle the question.
- 08
Politics distorted the debate
In April 2020 President Trump said he was certain it was a lab leak. Eban says this was months before the government's most significant information came in, in late summer and fall 2020. Hours earlier, his own intelligence agencies had said the virus was not genetically modified. Raising the lab hypothesis became tied to xenophobia, and outlets such as Vox later removed 'conspiracy theory' labels.
- 09
A full investigation looks unlikely
Full transparency would require China to restore its database and share sample records, lab notebooks and the medical records of lab staff. There was no public blood-test data on three lab workers reported sick in late summer and early fall 2019. The fallback is for countries to search their own files, as President Biden ordered in a review of less than 90 days, though Eban doubts there is the political will.
EXAMPLES
- 01
The Mojiang mine: six sick miners and a 96.2% match
In 2012, miners clearing bat guano in an abandoned Yunnan mineshaft developed COVID-like pneumonia; three of six died. China never told the WHO. Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers sampled the mine heavily. One sample, later called RaTG13, is 96.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2. It became known only after an unemployed science teacher in eastern India, 'The Seeker' on Twitter, found a Chinese master's thesis about the case.
- 02
A database went offline before the outbreak
The institute, about seven miles from the Huanan seafood market, held hundreds of samples. Its database was taken offline in September 2019, months before the known start of the outbreak, and had not returned.
- 03
The Lancet statement and undisclosed conflicts
In February 2020, 27 scientists published a statement, not a peer-reviewed paper, calling non-natural origin theories conspiracy theories. One source said it was 'nailed to the church door'. Daszak organised it, and several signers worked for him or received his grants, yet they declared no conflicts of interest. Daszak was later the only American on the WHO-led team in China. A US government analysis Eban obtained called that team's 'highly unlikely' verdict baseless.
- 04
Redfield's offer was refused
Former CDC director Robert Redfield told Eban he suspected the Wuhan institute from the start. He offered to send experts to antibody-test its researchers, which he said could have ruled the lab out in a couple of weeks. China declined.
- 05
Competing readings of the virus's stability
Alina Chan of the Broad Institute argues the virus seemed already adapted to humans, without SARS-1's early burst of mutations; Attia links that to research using humanised ACE2 mice. Critics counter that it isn't optimised for human infection. Attia calls that a red herring, likening it to saying the Hiroshima bomb could have been more lethal.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Think in separate probabilities
Attia breaks the question into three: was the virus brought into a lab, was it manipulated there, and could it escape? He treats the last as close to certain given history and the temptation to cut corners.
- 02
Real conspiracies need cover-ups
Attia's test, from his own conclusion that Oswald acted alone in the Kennedy assassination, is how hard a cover-up would be to sustain. Eban went from dismissive to 'even odds'. She would change her mind if a host animal turned up, but too many questions remain. She treats the barriers to investigation as the most troubling part of the story.
- 03
Weigh anonymous sources carefully
Eban interviewed members of DRASTIC, an independent research group, but excluded anonymous members she couldn't speak with, because their agendas can't be assessed.