by Martin Enserink
September 30, 2021
https://www.science.org/content/article ... ic-origins
Introduction:
(Science) The four scientists who participated in a Science-sponsored discussion today about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic differed sharply on several issues, but there was one thing they could agree on: Amid an increasingly politicized media frenzy over the issue—and tons of Twitter vitriol—it’s still possible to have a civilized scientific debate about whether SARS-CoV-2 originated from a “lab leak” or a natural jump from animals to humans that didn’t involve researchers.
Moderated by Science reporter Jon Cohen, the online debate brought together scientists from both sides of the issue. Linfa Wang, a bat coronavirus researcher at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, is convinced the virus originated in nature. Evolutionary virologist Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona said he had kept an open mind from the start. He signed a May letter in Science asking for more serious investigation of the lab-leak theory but now strongly leans toward a natural origin.
On the other side were evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center—who said he considers a lab origin “highly plausible”—and Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute who specializes in genetic engineering. Chan, who has become one of the most visible proponents of the lab-leak idea and has co-authored a book on the origins issue, paraphrased comedian Jon Stewart to explain why she believes it is just too much of a coincidence that the pandemic began so close to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV): “In 2019, a novel SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] coronavirus, with a novel genetic modification, appeared in a city where there’s a lab studying novel SARS coronaviruses with novel genetic modifications.”
The hourlong discussion touched on many issues including China’s lack of transparency, biosafety procedures at WIV, the possible roles of the Chinese wildlife trade and the Huanan seafood market in spreading the virus, and the implications of a new study reporting the discovery of the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2 so far, in bats in a cave in Laos, which Wang argued shows potentially dangerous coronaviruses are common in nature.