Deborah Haynes, Skynews, Foreign affairs editor @haynesdeborah, Monday 6 July 202
A former British spy chief says he wants a more open debate on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic and warns against dismissing as conspiracy the idea that it might have come from a laboratory.
Sir Richard Dearlove doubled down on his belief the virus that causes COVID-19 was engineered and escaped by accident from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first victims were identified.
His opinion contrasts with a prevailing view among scientific experts as well as the US and British intelligence communities that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was not man-made.
The intervention comes as a team of scientists from the World Health Organisation (WHO) prepares to fly to China this week to investigate the origin of a disease that has killed more than half a million people globally.
“I subscribe to the theory… that it’s an engineered escapee from the Wuhan Institute (of Virology),” said Sir Richard, who served as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, between 1999 and 2004.
“I am not saying anything other than it was the result of an accident and that the virus is the consequence of gain-of-function experiments that were being conducted in Wuhan, which I don’t think are particularly sinister.”
Sir Richard was referring to a type of scientific research that can be carried out to modify viruses.
“There is an accumulation of evidence that this is something that has to be openly discussed in the scientific community,” the former spy chief said.
“If we are going to have an inquiry in the UK – which I’m sure will happen – about the pandemic and government policy, it will have to start with the science. Where did this virus actually come from?”
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But the widely held view among scientists is that the novel coronavirus most likely occurred naturally.
They believe it probably passed from an animal – the prime suspect is a bat – to a human, possibly via an intermediary species, but without any genetic engineering or man-made modifications.
“There is no doubt that this was a natural event,” said Dr Rachael Tarlinton, an associate professor of veterinary virology at the University of Nottingham.
“The artificial release theories seem to be a form of ‘magical thinking’ – a simplistic solution to a complex problem where if someone can be blamed then that someone can be removed and the problem go away,” she said in an email exchange.
“Unfortunately real life just doesn’t work this way – manipulating viruses in the lab to change their pathogenicity is actually quite difficult and unpredictable and any group that had the ability to work on something like this would be well aware of how hard this is,” she said.
“We knew spillover from animals was a risk… The virus may have passed through an intermediate species on its way into the human population from bats but we may never know which animal this was – candidates include pangolins and small carnivores like palm civets or mongooses. Unfortunately we can’t go back in time and start monitoring from before the outbreak so we only have very patchy samples to try and work this out from.”
This lack of a clear evidence trail is viewed with suspicion by some.
So too is the fact that the virus was so well adapted to transmitting among people and throughout different parts of the body from the moment it was first identified late last year.
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The existence in Wuhan of two laboratories that have conducted research into coronaviruses in bats is also seen by those supportive of the lab theory to be more than just a coincidence.
A top official at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has drawn the most suspicion, has said there is “no way the virus came from us”.
Yuan Zhiming, a vice director at the institute, was quoted by a Chinese state broadcaster in April as saying: “We have a strict regulatory regimen. We have a code of conduct for research so we are confident of that.
“Why are there rumours?” he asked. “Because the Institute of Virology … [is] in Wuhan people can’t help but make associations, which I think is understandable. But it is bad when some are deliberately trying to mislead people. This is entirely based on speculation.”
He also denied that the virus was man-made.