Theoretically, this could include inadvertent or intentional infection with either a natural virus collected in the field or an engineered or otherwise lab-manipulated virus. The basic premise of the lab leak hypothesis is that in the course of doing research, a scientist became infected with SARS-CoV-2 and proceeded to spread it to others, kicking off the pandemic. We’ll run through some of the arguments of the lab leak hypothesis and explain why most scientists still suspect a natural origin. “There are still gaps that have to be filled, but I think the evidence we do have right now points to an animal-to-human scenario,” Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Utah who has studied coronaviruses for most of the last decade, told us. Andersen, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, told the New York Times. “hile both lab and natural scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely - precedence, data and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative hypothesis based on conjecture,” Kristian G. “I don’t think there is sufficient evidence to estimate relative probabilities for these scenarios,” he said.īut to many others, the existing data tilts strongly toward a natural spillover. Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist who studies viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the lead author of the letter in Science calling for a more rigorous investigation, told us in an email that he found natural zoonosis and lab accident scenarios involving a researcher being infected with a “natural collected virus” or “experimenting on and possibly growing or modestly modifying a naturally collected virus” all plausible. To some scientists, the lack of evidence about how SARS-CoV-2 emerged has meant little can be concluded either way. At the same time, a natural spillover from an animal to a human - the scenario widely viewed as most likely - has not yet been proven. There still is no credible evidence that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began. intelligence to issue a new report on the subject by late August.ĭespite the increased media attention, little has changed on the ground. President Joe Biden also announced that he was asking U.S. The same month, two former New York Times science journalists penned influential stories backing the lab escape idea, and much of the press has embraced the possibility. Get DFW local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. In May, a group of 18 scientists wrote a letter in the journal Science criticizing the World Health Organization’s investigation into the virus’ origins, which had ruled lab release “extremely unlikely.” “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” the group wrote. In recent months, consideration of the so-called lab leak hypothesis has seemingly gained momentum. Stepping into that void is speculation that a naturally occurring or lab-manipulated virus may have inadvertently infected a researcher, who then spread it to others. That’s what happened with the coronaviruses responsible for SARS and MERS, and such zoonotic events are standard fare for emerging pathogens.īut without identification of a near-identical virus in a bat or other animal, scientists cannot be completely certain. The default answer for most scientists has been that the virus, SARS-CoV-2, probably made the jump to humans from bats, if it was a direct spillover - or, more likely, through one or more intermediate mammals. Was it the result of a spillover from an animal to a human, as has happened repeatedly in the past? Or did the virus accidentally escape from a nearby lab in Wuhan? A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic - and with a death toll approaching 4 million lives - how the coronavirus came to spark a global scourge remains unknown.
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