A recent article by The Telegraph revealed documents on grant applications by US and Wuhan scientists to conduct coronavirus research in 2018. However, it is important to note that these grants were not funded, and are not direct evidence of a ‘lab leak’ or research-related origin for the coronavirus.
The documents, obtained by a scientist-activist group calling itself DRASTIC and confirmed as authentic by a member of the Trump administration, detail grant requests for antigen-bearing nanoparticles and aerosols to be released into bat caves to immunise bat populations. Note that “coronavirus particles” as The Telegraph describes them would be immunising nanoparticles which could describe coronavirus vaccines. Another proposal involved adding “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses to facilitate entry into human cells. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) however, refused to fund the work, saying it would have “put local communities at risk.”
What is perhaps more concerning were details of an effort for gain of function research in MERS-CoV, which has a 30% fatality rate, something which an anonymous World Health Organization COVID researcher suggests could have resulted in a pandemic that was “nearly apocalyptic.”
Scientists, however, urge continued impartiality and examining all possibilities, even controversial ones. In an article published on Friday, 24 September in The Lancet, authors point out that there is neither solid evidence for either a natural origin or a for a research origin. In the nineteen months since the beginning of the pandemic, no natural origin has been found despite extensive searching, and independent international researchers do not have access to the investigation sites in China, raw data or samples. However, it took several years for the natural origins of SARS-CoV-1 to be discovered.
They also point out that a research origin for the virus cannot be excluded. Optimisation of the receptor binding domain for human ACE2 could occur through selection or cell cultures, without requiring knowledge of it in advance. Although certain genetic engineering techniques leave signatures in the genome, so-called ‘seamless’ techniques exist.
“On the basis of the current scientific literature, complemented by our own analyses of coronavirus genomes and proteins, we hold that there is currently no compelling evidence to choose between a natural origin (ie, a virus that has evolved and been transmitted to humans solely via contact with wild or farmed animals) and a research-related origin (which might have occurred at sampling sites, during transportation or within the laboratory, and might have involved natural, selected, or engineered viruses).”
Sources: The Telegraph (paywall), The Lancet
