THE POLITICS OF THE WUHAN LAB LEAK HYPOTHESIS
By Stephen Gowans.
June 2, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above photo: The P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan,
in China's central Hubei province, on April 17, 2020. Hector Retamal/AFP via
Getty Images.
US president Joe Biden has ordered a "hunt for new intelligence to determine
whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak" [1] at the
Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory in Wuhan, the city in which the
novel coronavirus was first identified. The lab is a biosafety level 4
(BSL4) facility, the highest level.
Twelve months ago, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo also "asked
intelligence agencies to continue looking for any evidence to support" (what
the New York Times at the time) called "an unsubstantiated theory that the
pandemic might be the result of an accidental lab leak." Times' reporters
Edward Wong and Ana Swanson added that the intelligence community had told
Pompeo that "they most likely will not find proof." [2]
At the time, some US "officials were wary of President Donald J. Trump's
motives, arguing that his interest in the origins of the pandemic was either
to deflect blame from his administration's handling of it or to punish
China." The Biden administration says that "the central goal of the new
intelligence push is to improve preparations for future pandemics." [3]
It is widely agreed that the pandemic originated in a zoonotic spillover-the
transmission of the novel coronavirus from another species to humans. The
spillover may have happened in nature, or it may have happened in a
laboratory. A laboratory spillover would involve the accidental infection of
a scientist working with live virus.
Virus hunters have "collected samples from 164,000 animals and humans and
claimed to have found 'almost 1,200 potentially zoonotic viruses, among them
160 novel coronaviruses, including multiple SARS- and MERS-like
coronaviruses.'" These potential pandemic pathogens are "studied and
circulated in laboratories worldwide." [4]
In 2012, there were at least 42 facilities engaged in researching live
potential pandemic pathogens, including 30 labs that were working with live
SARS virus. [5]
Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, Lynn Klotz, Senior Science
Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, warned in 2019
that "Incidents causing potential exposures to pathogens occur frequently in
the high security laboratories often known by their acronyms, BSL3
(Biosafety Level 3) and BSL4. Lab incidents that lead to undetected or
unreported laboratory-acquired infections can lead to the release of a
disease into the community outside the lab; lab workers with such infections
will leave work carrying the pathogen with them. If the agent involved were
a potential pandemic pathogen, such a community release could lead to a
worldwide pandemic with many fatalities." [6]
Nicholson Baker, a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, wrote a
long article in New York Magazine in January exploring the lab-leak
hypothesis. Baker wrote that "In 2015, the Department of Defense discovered
that workers at a germ-warfare testing center in Utah had mistakenly sent
close to 200 shipments of live anthrax to laboratories throughout the United
States and also to Australia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and several other
countries over the past 12 years. In 2019, laboratories at Fort Detrick -
where 'defensive' research involves the creation of potential pathogens to
defend against - were shut down for several months by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention for 'breaches of containment'." They reopened
in December 2019." [7]
According to the New York Times, safety concerns "led the government to shut
down research involving dangerous microbes like the Ebola virus" at the
military lab in the summer of 2019. The newspaper noted that "Missteps have
occurred at other government laboratories, including those at the Centers
for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health." [8]
Research was also suspended at Fort Detrick in 2009 over bio-safety
concerns. [9]
China has demanded an independent inquiry of the Fort Detrick laboratories
as the possible source of the novel coronavirus, [10] a demand the US news
media have ridiculed, arguing there is "not a shred of evidence to support"
a leak at the lab. [11]
But, as lapses at Fort Detrick demonstrate, laboratory accidents do happen,
"even in high containment settings." [12]
According to the scientific journal, Nature Reviews Microbiology, "More than
twice a week in US laboratories, there is a 'possible release event' or a
'possible loss event', even if we look only at select agents - some of the
most dangerous pathogens. For every 1,000 lab-years of work in BSL-3
laboratories in the United States with select agents, there are at least 2
accidental infections. This level of safety may be acceptable if the risk is
to the laboratory workers only, as it is with most pathogens that are not
readily transmissible. However, the same probability of an accident that
could spark a global pandemic cannot be called acceptably safe." [13]
Lynn Klotz, and Edward Sylvester, a professor at the Walter Cronkite School
of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, ask us to
"consider the probability for escape from a single lab in a single year to
be 0.003 (i.e., 0.3 percent).[With] 42 labs carrying out live [potential
pandemic pathogen] research, this basic 0.3 percent probability translates
to an 80 percent likelihood of escape from at least one of the 42 labs every
12.8 years." Klotz and Sylvester argue the "level of risk is clearly
unacceptable." [14]
By 2012, SARS had "escaped from laboratories three times." [15] A
"researcher at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing" was infected,
and "passed it on to others, including her mother, who died from the
infection." [16] If SARS could escape three times from a laboratory, could
SARS-2 have escaped one or more times?
Whether it did or didn't, lab leaks do happen, and questions need to be
raised about whether the risks involved in working with potential pandemic
pathogens in the laboratory are acceptable. Many scientists, including
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, believe the
consequences of a potential pandemic pathogen leaking from a lab are too
great to accept the risk, no matter how small. He compares lab work with
pathogens that could spark a pandemic to "looking for a gas leak with a
lighted match." [17]
Clearly, the possibility that there was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of
Virology cannot be ruled out, any more than leaks at Fort Detrick or the
dozens of other laboratories around the world that are looking for gas leaks
with lighted matches can be ruled out.
And there is a surface plausibility to the Wuhan lab leak claim. As the New
York Times reported, "The coronavirus first came to light in the city of
Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study
dozens of strains of coronaviruses collected in caves in southern China."
[18]
What's more, according to intelligence shared with Washington by an ally,
"three workers in the Wuhan virological laboratory were hospitalized with
serious flulike symptoms in the autumn of 2019. [19]
However, there are also plausible alternative explanations. We don't know
whether the novel coronavirus originated in Wuhan. We only know that Wuhan
is where a new form of SARS was first identified. The virus may have
originated elsewhere, and the first cases misdiagnosed as pneumonia or flu,
and later brought to Wuhan.
As to the lab workers who are alleged to have fallen ill in the autumn of
2019, the New York Times reported that US "intelligence officials do not
know whether the lab workers contracted Covid-19 or some other disease, like
a bad flu. If they did have the coronavirus, the intelligence may suggest
that they could have become sick from the lab, but it also could simply mean
that the virus was circulating in Wuhan" earlier than currently believed.
[20]
And while the lab employees were hospitalized it "isn't unusual for people
in China to go straight to the hospital when they fall sick, either because
they get better care there or lack access to a general practitioner.
Covid-19 and the flu, while very different illnesses, share some of the same
symptoms, such as fever, aches and a cough." [21]
The fact of the matter is that although a lab leak is possible, including
one at the Wuhan lab, there is no evidence that one happened.
"Most of the broader intelligence community, including the C.I.A. and the
Defense Intelligence Agency, believe there is not yet sufficient information
to draw a conclusion, even with low confidence, about the origins,"
according to the New York Times. [22]
"British intelligence services" likewise "are skeptical of the lab leak
theory." [23]
Also, evidence exists that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the
novel coronavirus spilled out of the Wuhan lab. Virologist Robert Garry
"observed that Chinese scientists would have to have collected SARS-CoV-2
and then grown it in a colony of cells, but somehow never publish any
details of it even as they published reports on other coronaviruses for
years. 'It makes no sense to me'," he said. [24]
Biden says that unlike Trump, he is asking the intelligence community to
investigate the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan in order to "improve
preparations for future pandemics," not to discredit China. [25] But his
claim is implausible.
To show this, consider the following sets of questions. Only one of them is
directly relevant to the question of how to reduce the risk of future
pandemics.
Are the risks of a lab accident acceptable given the possible consequences?
If not, can the risks be reduced to acceptable levels by enhancing
laboratory safeguards? Or, is it the case, that the consequences of a leak
could be so catastrophic, that taking any risk is foolhardy?
Did SARS-CoV-2 leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
If we're genuinely interested in reducing the chances of future pandemics,
we ought to answer the first set of questions. The second question is
irrelevant.
Even if a lab leak didn't happen at the Wuhan lab, the question of whether
the risks of a leak from any lab are acceptable still stands. Should we be
looking for gas leaks with a lit match?
And if a leak did happen in Wuhan, the first set of question still remains.
Here are two objectives. Which of these most closely match the questions
above?
How can we reduce the chance of a future pandemic?
How can we blacken China's reputation?
If Biden were genuinely interested in learning how to prevent a future
pandemic he would be exploring how to prevent zoonotic spillovers, both in
nature, and in the lab. On the other hand, if he's interested in tarring the
reputation of a country he has labelled a competitor, as his predecessor
was, he is proceeding along the right path. Unfortunately, that path has
nothing to do with protecting humanity from future pandemics.