Who calls for a real investigation into Wuhan for the virus
Scientists in the journal Nature are calling for a more in-depth investigation into the origin of Covid-19. The Wall Street Journal article
Leading scientists are calling for a more in-depth investigation into the origin of Covid-19, including the possibility that a laboratory accident spread the novel coronavirus that caused the pandemic.
In a letter published Thursday in the journal Science, an international group of 18 biologists, immunologists and other scientists criticized the findings of a report released in March by a team led by the World Health Organization on the origin of the pandemic and called for an assessment. broader of the two main hypotheses: that the pandemic virus entered the human population and began to spread after escaping from a laboratory or after being jumped to humans by infected animals.
The WHO-led team, which included scientists from China and several other countries, did not report any definitive evidence for either hypothesis. Yet, the scientists wrote, the team nonetheless concluded that an animal origin of the pandemic was the most likely scenario and devoted only four of the report's 313 pages to the possibility of a laboratory accident.
"We must take the hypotheses on both natural and laboratory fallout seriously until we have enough data," the scientists wrote in the letter – reports the WSJ.
Signatories include highly respected scientists who are actively involved in studying SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the pandemic, such as Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle; Ralph Baric, a coronavirus researcher who collaborated with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the institution at the center of the debate on the laboratory hypothesis; and David Relman, a microbiologist and immunologist at Stanford University School of Medicine.
The letter is the latest and one of the most visible pushes for a more rigorous investigation into the origin of the pandemic following the report from the WHO-led team. The report was criticized for deeming a laboratory accident "extremely unlikely", despite the lack of access to logs or data to reach that conclusion.
Scientists also expressed concern that the team was unable to obtain raw epidemiological data on the first confirmed cases in China or possible previous ones.
Following the publication of the report, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for further investigation into the hypothesis of the escape from the laboratory. The United States, the United Kingdom and many other governments have lobbied for a more robust and transparent investigation with greater access to data, although they have not pushed directly for a full investigation of the laboratory hypothesis. The United States has drawn up recommendations to be submitted to WHO for a second phase of studies on the origin of the pandemic.
On Wednesday, an independent panel set up by WHO to review how Covid-19 could spread concluded that the virus spread from animals and did not recommend any updates to current laboratory safety protocols.
WHO is reviewing the March report's recommendations and will prepare a proposal for the next round of studies, which will be presented to the director general for his consideration, a spokesperson said.
In Thursday's letter, the scientists called for a "transparent, objective and data-driven" investigation, "subject to independent oversight and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest."
"Public health agencies and research laboratories must open their documents to the public," the authors wrote. "Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of the data from which the analyzes are conducted and the conclusions drawn, so that the analyzes are reproducible by independent experts."
The authors of the letter said their goal is not to support one hypothesis or another, but to push for greater scientific rigor, supporting the appeals made by Dr. Tedros as well as the United States and other governments. Relman, one of the lead authors of the letter, said the researchers chose a scientific journal for publication to make this point.
Scientific journals evaluate the content they publish using an extensive review process known as peer review, in which independent experts evaluate the data and evidence provided by researchers. By publishing the letter in such a journal, the authors aimed to keep the debate on the origin of the pandemic in the world of scientific data.
"I wanted this letter to be addressed to my colleagues, the working scientists, and to use a venue that they respect and see as a place where scientists talk about science and the importance of science," said Dr. Relman of debate on the origin of the pandemic. "Our message here is wherever the data takes us, you will go, and only to the extent that the data allows it."
Dr. Baric did not respond to a request for comment.
Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University School of Medicine who was not involved in the letter, said it "distracts from the important work needed to identify the source of SARS-CoV-2" including the escape hypothesis from the laboratory. "The letter in Science completely misrepresents the findings of the WHO report," he said. "The WHO report adds significantly to the large volume of epidemiological and genomic data supporting the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 from a zoonotic reservoir."
The idea for the letter grew out of informal conversations and emails among scientists about how the search for the origin of the pandemic has become a "controversial and heated topic," said Dr. Bloom, one of the authors of the letter.
Based on the scientific data, both theories of origin are plausible, he said, adding, "In many science questions, it turns out that the right answer is that we don't know the right answer and need to investigate more."
(Extract from the Epr review)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/indagine-origine-coronavirus-wuhan/ on Sat, 15 May 2021 06:00:11 +0000.