Home » World » Covid escaped from the laboratory? The hypothesis on the origins of the virus, the new doubts- Corriere.it

Covid escaped from the laboratory? The hypothesis on the origins of the virus, the new doubts- Corriere.it

from Cristina Marrone

What are the origins of Covid? In an essay I took up the elements in favor of a possible origin from a laboratory: from the genetic anomalies of the new coronavirus to the absence of an «intermediate host. The virologist Palù: “All the hypotheses must be investigated, science is not a dogma”

Where does it really come from Sars-CoV-2? It is a virus born in nature and passed from animals to humans – as the majority of the scientific community claims – or we are facing a coronavirus collected in nature, genetically manipulated in the laboratory Did it get out of hand in an accident as a limited but growing number of scientists assume?

The discussion about the origin of the virus it has killed so far over 4 and a half million people devastating global economies is more vibrant than ever.

Scientists from various quarters are calling for an objective, open and transparent scientific debate on the origin of SARS CoV-2.

It is from a few days ago a letter published on
The Lancet
signed by 16 scientists who underline that “there is no scientifically consolidated evidence that directly supports a natural origin of the virus”: after 19 months of investigations, the progenitor of Sars-CoV-2 is still missing, the famous intermediate host, you do not knowand the path that carried the virus from the Yunnan caves in China to Wuhan, the epicenter of the world epidemic and “some unusual features in the genome sequence suggest that they could come from genetic engineering.”

Hypotheses still open

Even earlier, in June, Professor Giorgio Palù, professor of Virology at the University of Padua and president of the Italian Medicines Agency, had sent one together with 30 other colleagues open letter to the international press, underlining the same critical issues and inviting world leaders, with practical suggestions, to fully investigate the origins of the pandemic with the aim of securing future generations.

“Science is not a dogma”, explains Palù, “and the scientist must ask himself what can make a coronavirus pandemic, without prejudice. All the assumptions on the origin of the virus, from zoonosis to the laboratory accident must be investigated, possibly with the cooperation of China which has not been there so far. At the moment there is no certain evidence that hangs on one side or the other but there is no doubt that this virus presents a
normal compared to a natural virus“. Even the WHO director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the end of his investigation he stated that all the hypotheses remained on the table, including that of a laboratory escape.

The new book


The latter thesis supported by an essay in the bookstore from Thursday, “The origin of the virus “ (Chiarelettere edition), investigation signed by Paul Barnard, co founder of Report, with the collaboration of Steven Quay, founder of Atossa Therapeutics in Seattle and former professor of Medicine at Stanford University e Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at the Research Institute of Infectious and Immune Diseases at St George’s University of London. The perpetrators proceed as if they were working on a murder investigation where, however, the body is missing: it is not known whether the crime was really committed but a series of clues lead to believe that the characteristics of abnormal and extremely pathogenic aggressiveness of the new virus were obtained through ttechniques of genetic manipulation in the laboratory.

Gain of Function changes

They conclude that this 99.8% virus is by no means the result of a species leap from animal to man but of an out-of-control escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory of maximum safety Biosafety Level 4.

Here, as happens in many other laboratories around the world (the essay lists some cases), research is also carried out on Gain of Function «critica».

It means that, through certain techniques, they are anticipated in laboratory experimentsand more aggressive mutations of a virus that could occur in nature and then infect us with greater virulence.

This way we hope to learn how to fight them sooner to avoid any pandemics.

One to three characteristics of the virus are changed to make it more effective, for example, so that it takes a lower viral load to infect, or more transmissible, or more pathogenic and lethal.

Genetic anomalies

Just the Gain of Function could explain – according to the authors of the book – at least a couple of genetic anomalies of Sars-Cov-2, never seen in other cousin coronaviruses.

The first concerns the proteina spike, activated by an enzyme called furina: Such an effective interaction between furin and coronavirus in transmission has never been seen before.

Furthermore, Sars-CoV-2 demonstrated aunusual ability to pass from man to man very easily. I animal viruses are not immediately able to make the leap of species and infecting humans and such a thing has never been recorded at the beginning of a pandemic: usually nature leaves time to understand how the virus evolves. This was not the case with Sars Cov-2.

“When he found his first victim, without training, he already owned a spike harpoon with 95.5% perfect amino acids to infect humans»Write the authors. As if the new virus had been trained in the laboratory to infect the so-called “humanized mice”, that is, mice modified to develop lung tissues like those of humans. And the hypothesis of accidental contamination in the laboratory is almost a certainty for the authors.

The laboratory accidents

After all, accidents in the laboratory are rare, but possible.

The essay mentions numerous negligence in handling bats in the Wuhan institute discovered by national inspectors. Even a researcher from the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention was attacked by bats in the laboratory and ended up getting dirty with their blood.

“Mistakes have happened in all the laboratories in the world, even in the United States or Europe. As the authors of the book also indicate, you don’t necessarily have to think about cases of fraud or willful misconduct »says Palù.

“Let’s remember the six vials with smallpox virus forgotten in 2014 in a box at the FDA, or when the H5N1 (avian) was left in an unprotected laboratory, or the botulinum spores forgotten on a table ».

The absence of the intermediate animal

But there are other anomalies, the scientists point out, that make Sars-CoV-2 different from the two previous coronaviruses, Sars 1 that emerged in China in 2003 and MERS in the Middle East in 2015.

In Sars and Mers the pathogen jumped from the bat to an intermediate animal, civet or camel, and spent months if not years in the intermediate animal prior to spillover, the leap from animal to man.

With Sars-Cov-2 there is no evidence of an intermediate host: for forty years it has been known that the coronavirus lives in bats but how did it come to humans? Incidentally, when the pandemic was born in December 2019, the bats were hibernating.

There was talk of the pangolin as an intermediate animal, but the study published in Nature it was later found to be incomplete.

Of the more than 60,000 animals analyzed in China, none were infected with the new coronavirus. There is no trace of the virus passing to a bridging animal: the new coronavirus suddenly appeared in humans, among other things with a high infectious capacity and a predisposition to infect humans.

“When Sars 1 went from civets to humans it only had 25% of the variants needed to trigger the epidemic and it took a year to go to 100% infectious capacity. With Sars-Cov-2 the infectious capacity on humans was 99.5% already in DecemberThe authors say.

Another suggestive element is that the coronavirus no longer re-infects the bat, and therefore has mutated in such a way that it is no longer able to return to its original host.

Finally, it was found that Sars-CoV2 did not simmer in the Chinese community before the outbreak of the Wuhan epidemic. “None of the ten thousand blood samples stored in the fridge and analyzed a posteriori to understand when the virus really appeared had been infected with the new coronavirus, while in the case of Sars 1 about 400 pre-pandemic infections had emerged »he explains Steven Quay.

Trace-free engineering changes

Possible that an artificially modified virus leaves no traces? “There are new biotechnologies that leave no footprints,” the authors write.

Giorgio Palù confirms: With the Crispr Cas 9 technique are actually possible Gain of Function changes without leaving any marks.

“The Gain of Function practices are discussed but I believe that if the engineering manipulations were always carried out in high-security laboratories, Biosafety 4, in total transparency, with periodic checks, informing the population residing in the vicinity would be very useful to humanity “.

More drastic measures

Assuming that a modified virus had really escaped from the laboratory, what would have changed if everything had been disclosed right away?

“If all these truths had been revealed immediately – the authors conclude – far more drastic measures would have been taken when the pandemic numbers were still contained and would have been save countless lives».

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September 23, 2021 (change September 23, 2021 | 13:58)


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