The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19s Origins – Vanity Fair

Gilles Demaneuf is a data scientist with the Bank of New Zealand in Auckland. He was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome ten years ago, and believes it gives him a professional advantage. Im very good at finding patterns in data, when other people see nothing, he says.

Early last spring, as cities worldwide were shutting down to halt the spread of COVID-19, Demaneuf, 52, began reading up on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. The prevailing theory was that it had jumped from bats to some other species before making the leap to humans at a market in China, where some of the earliest cases appeared in late 2019. The Huanan wholesale market, in the city of Wuhan, is a complex of markets selling seafood, meat, fruit, and vegetables. A handful of vendors sold live wild animalsa possible source of the virus.

That wasnt the only theory, though. Wuhan is also home to Chinas foremost coronavirus research laboratory, housing one of the worlds largest collections of bat samples and bat-virus strains. The Wuhan Institute of Virologys lead coronavirus researcher, Shi Zhengli, was among the first to identify horseshoe bats as the natural reservoirs for SARS-CoV, the virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002, killing 774 people and sickening more than 8,000 globally. After SARS, bats became a major subject of study for virologists around the world, and Shi became known in China as Bat Woman for her fearless exploration of their caves to collect samples. More recently, Shi and her colleagues at the WIV have performed high-profile experiments that made pathogens more infectious. Such research, known as gain-of-function, has generated heated controversy among virologists.

To some people, it seemed natural to ask whether the virus causing the global pandemic had somehow leaked from one of the WIVs labsa possibility Shi has strenuously denied.

On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China and asserted: We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been nailed to the church doors, establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.

The statement struck Demaneuf as totally nonscientific. To him, it seemed to contain no evidence or information. And so he decided to begin his own inquiry in a proper way, with no idea of what he would find.

Demaneuf began searching for patterns in the available data, and it wasnt long before he spotted one. Chinas laboratories were said to be airtight, with safety practices equivalent to those in the U.S. and other developed countries. But Demaneuf soon discovered that there had been four incidents of SARS-related lab breaches since 2004, two occuring at a top laboratory in Beijing. Due to overcrowding there, a live SARS virus that had been improperly deactivated, had been moved to a refrigerator in a corridor. A graduate student then examined it in the electron microscope room and sparked an outbreak.

Demaneuf published his findings in a Medium post, titled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: a review of SARS Lab Escapes. By then, he had begun working with another armchair investigator, Rodolphe de Maistre. A laboratory project director based in Paris who had previously studied and worked in China, de Maistre was busy debunking the notion that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a laboratory at all. In fact, the WIV housed numerous laboratories that worked on coronaviruses. Only one of them has the highest biosafety protocol: BSL-4, in which researchers must wear full-body pressurized suits with independent oxygen. Others are designated BSL-3 and even BSL-2, roughly as secure as an American dentists office.

Having connected online, Demaneuf and de Maistre began assembling a comprehensive list of research laboratories in China. As they posted their findings on Twitter, they were soon joined by others around the world. Some were cutting-edge scientists at prestigious research institutes. Others were science enthusiasts. Together, they formed a group called DRASTIC, short for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19. Their stated objective was to solve the riddle of COVID-19s origin.

State Department investigators say they were repeatedly advised not to open a Pandoras box.

At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trumps former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. As proof, they paraded a Hong Kong scientist around right-wing media outlets until her manifest lack of expertise doomed the charade.

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The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19s Origins - Vanity Fair