Episode Info
- Season2
- Episode4
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
Sir Richard Dearlove tells why. But what’s the latest thinking on this mystery?
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Transcript
COLD OPEN
Kosinski: Coming up on One Decision.
Dearlove: The distance between this research and biological warfare is pretty short. And there are aspects of stuff about the Wuhan Institute which are concerning. But if you get it wrong, it's highly dangerous. Actually, what's scandalous is there hasn't been a proper debate.
INTRODUCTION
Kosinski: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to One Decision. I'm Michelle Kosinski. Today, as we all slog along through the endless COVID pandemic with varying degrees of success, we take on one of the most intriguing and frustrating debates out there, a decision that no one can yet make with certainty. Whether COVID-19 originated in nature or leaked out of a Chinese lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And our cohost, the former head of Britain's MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, is pretty firmly in the camp of the latter. He believes there is compelling evidence that this relentless virus came from that lab, and we will tell you why. Welcome back, Sir Richard.
INTERVIEW
Dearlove: Thank you, Michelle. Very nice to see you again or to be speaking to you again, I should say. So based on what you know and have seen, you've made your own decision on what to believe here about where this coronavirus came from. I'm afraid to say I'm of a pretty strong view, and I've been into this very, very carefully, that the weight of evidence points to an accidental escape from the Wuhan lab, a natural virus subject to what's called gain of function experiments. And although this will never be proved one way or another, I do think that the circumstantial evidence, the scientific evidence, i.e. the biochemistry of the virus and a number of extraordinary facts on the ground point in that direction.
Kosinski: So to understand why someone like Sir Richard believes this argument, let's talk about some of the science involved in layman's terms. Gain of function experiments have been done for years on coronaviruses and other pathogens. The idea is to tweak a virus to make it stronger in order to study it, better understand it, and find out what could be a risk to humans down the road. That's a way to be better prepared for pandemics, to be in a better position to make vaccines against them. However, because of the risks of having these kinds of supercharged viruses around, this kind of work is controversial. In 2014, the Obama administration stopped funding gain of function research so that it could evaluate those risks. And then three years later, the moratorium was lifted. This was the type of work that was being done at the Wuhan lab and, as has since been revealed, was funded by the US National Institutes of Health. But there is debate over whether that particular research fit the bill as gain of function. The NIH insists it didn't fund anything that would make coronaviruses more dangerous to humans. Also debatable, as is almost everything to do with this subject.
Dearlove: I've been pretty heavily actually involved in this debate myself because, not because I know a lot about it, because I was shocked by the lack of transparency within the world scientific community to discuss the issue, and there really was an agreement, and I just do not understand why, amongst a number of leading virologists to suppress any speculation or debate, and that's quite clear.
Kosinski: Do you now think from that that the goal of that would be to just not piss off China for the time being until there's absolute proof? Or why would people be so hesitant when, as you say, there is some circumstantial evidence in that direction?
Dearlove: Well, it's partly the issue of, as it were, how China will react to that. They've clearly tried to control the narrative. And I think to an extent now they have lost, not completely lost control of it, but are losing control of it. I think there's a more profound issue underneath, which is the wish of scientists or virologists to, as it were, protect their privileged position in being able to experiment and work in this area without international control. I think that can be the only explanation. I mean, we now know from Fauci's emails that a meeting was convened very early on in the outbreak of the pandemic, which included a number of eminent scientists, Brits included. And the reason they convened the meeting was because they understood the possibility of a leak from a lab, but they agreed that they would work together not to pursue that option. And it was shortly after that that you got these letters to Lancet, which amounts frankly to academic bullying, which silenced anybody who broke ranks. And I still don't entirely understand, but they literally put out almost an academic order that you were not, if you were a virologist, that you were not to speculate on the origins of the pandemic because we accept that this was a natural occurrence. I mean it was an extraordinary thing to do. Fauci in the United States was partly behind it. Other very eminent people were party to that discussion including the chief scientific officer of the British government, the head of the Wellcome Foundation in the UK, one of the biggest scientific funders. Their behavior is quite extraordinary.
Kosinski: But even now that there's been more open mindedness to possibilities, the majority of virologists say it most likely developed in nature, in animals, then jumped to humans in a perfect crowded place like Wuhan.
Dearlove: Then I think, you know, if one has an inquiry, one's got to answer this question, why on earth was this discussion suppressed? And I mean, I could tell you a lot more. I've been sitting on some scientific papers written by groups of scientists, and there's a huge reluctance to publish them, although they are very respectable, written by very eminent, controversial people, and they are about the case for an escape, but most academic journals will not touch them still. They're afraid to publish them. I think it's partly because a lot of these journals get significant Chinese funding, have close relations with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and then there is this concern amongst virologists that somehow they're going to have massive control slapped on them, and they do not want to be subject to, you know, governmental oversight, I suppose, strict governmental oversight.
Kosinski: When you see these headlines on the news about now going back and looking more closely into whether it could have been a leak, understandably, this is confusing. Chinese opacity, the unwillingness to throw open Wuhan's doors to investigators doesn't help. There are energetic arguments on both sides. No hard evidence, only theories. And plenty of speculation. The headlines change depending on who's talking. Then, of course, the science. None of us here are virologists, so you can only know so much without delving into the technical jargon. NEWS CLIP [8:26] So we can then ask in the case of flu hemagglutinin, which makes a post fusion structure that's also a trimer of hairpins, although as it happens, as you saw, the outer layer isn't a simple alpha helix.
Kosinski: Alright. So let's take a closer look at one of the scientific papers Sir Richard mentioned, one that hasn't been published and he says no one will touch. It examined the structure of the spike protein on COVID-19, the part that makes it so terribly effective at attaching to human cells. The paper, written by scientists from a vaccine developer and from St. George's University of London, makes some pretty stunning claims. It says that there are six inserts on the spike protein that are unique, going so far as to call them fingerprints of deliberate manipulation of the virus. The scientists looked at changes in the past that had been made in labs to coronaviruses and published research from gain of function experiments. And they say those incremental tweaks seem to lead to the kind of virulence we see today in COVID-19. They say the spike protein on this virus is so unique, so completely optimized to infect a human, having multiple options to bind to cells, having the ability to infect the upper respiratory tract so effectively which has been attempted in past tweaks and experiments that quote the likelihood of this being the result of natural processes is very small. They look at the structure of the spike protein, the pattern of electrically charged amino acids that it's composed of, which makes COVID-19 able to bond so effectively. And they say that such a result is typically for tailored gain of function experiments to create viruses of high potency. This is a strong indicator of manipulation.
Dearlove: The scientists that I'm talking to say the chances of the RNA of the virus being a natural sequence are greater than 10,000 to one. It's just so unlikely. Okay, the Chinese will turn around and say you can't prove it, and they're right. I accept that, and a lot of the data is not available, as it were, to substantiate the argument. So you're really forced back on the science or the biochemistry of the virus, the RNA of the virus, and it's how you interpret that. And there are different views among scientists, but the scientists I respect, more and more of them are saying, hang on a moment, the chances of this being a natural occurrence.
Kosinski: It's where these experiments started. You mean in some of the similar coronaviruses to this one?
Dearlove: And what's shocking about the, as it were, coronavirus story, the story that's now, you know, been put out by Zheng-Li Shi, the bat lady, is that the virus was originally collected I think in 2013, but it wasn't properly registered or properly analyzed. So after the outbreak, it's this virus that was collected in 2013, it was only registered and the RNA published, as it were, after the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. So it was done retrospectively and it looks suspiciously as though, as it were, Zheng-Li Shi was told by the Communist Party leadership, quickly, you know, explain how this happened.
Kosinski: And if you look at this logically, it doesn't look good at all. Well, hang on a minute. Something else that doesn't look good at all to some other scientists is that very paper, the unpublished scientific paper that Richard mentioned that we just told you about. When I showed it to two scientists, one in the US and one in the UK, they said the reason no one would publish it is very simple. It's all merely speculation and makes some rather huge jumps in its theory. Neither one of these scientists would go on the record to criticize someone else's theory. But one flat out called it rubbish, saying that its language right off the bat is that of someone with an agenda, not the language of a scientist. He called it painful to read. This person says the credibility of one of the key authors of this paper is undermined from the start for two reasons: that the author ran for political office a few years ago for a parliamentary seat representing Britain's super far right wing populist party, UKIP, and that he's a vaccine developer that touts his past work and raises concerns about current vaccines. This source says, quote, it reads more like a political paper than a scientific one. And such is the nature of the arguments over this today. On the topic of the structure of the virus and the allegedly unusual characteristics of that spike protein, another US scientist who has studied this very question says that there's actually a lack of fingerprints there of deliberate genetic manipulation. What everyone can agree upon is that no one knows for sure where exactly COVID-19 came from. Yes, there's no known animal jump to humans yet, but these links can take a long time to find. Sir Richard Dearlove also doesn't claim to know, but he has suspicions. He's just happy that now people are openly talking about this. Because, of course, the implications of the decisions made in labs and in research all over the world can be enormous.
Dearlove: I mean, thank goodness that some courageous voices, you know, they're not necessarily people who believe it's a lab leak, but they're people who, I mean eminent scientists in the States, who say actually what's scandalous is there hasn't been a proper debate. And there was this group, fortunately, who wrote this letter to Science. I mean, 18 eminent international virologists who said, you know, we really have got to have a transparent debate. Science published that article.
Kosinski: What has convinced you, at least, I mean, if you're not 100% certain based on what you've seen, to put you in that direction? Because it seems like it's very easy to find the words of epidemiologists and virologists who will say things like, well, based on the DNA of the virus, it doesn't look like it was something that was engineered or tweaked on a genetic level. It's just as likely.
Dearlove: It's that particular bit of the RNA of the virus, which is the suspicious bit that adapts it to penetrate so easily human cells. I've been involved with the two people that wrote the paper you've got. What we in effect had was intellectual lockdown of the arguments, and that was, as it were, sponsored by the people who signed that original letter to The Lancet, and actually they should be ashamed of themselves, and I say that strongly. But I think now the dam is breaking and the attitude is changing, and there was an extraordinary article published in the UK in the Daily Telegraph by Sarah Knapton, the science correspondent, and she has been a skeptic about the lab leak theory, but I think she's now changed her mind because she revealed that of the 29 scientists that signed the Lancet letter, all but one had close links with the Wuhan laboratory, either as sort of co-researchers or in terms of funding, or in terms of engagement with their research. So there's some very, very disturbing stuff. What I'm trying to advocate, and actually I think now reasonably successfully, is a proper transparent debate about this issue and a proper understanding of why these very eminent scientists misbehaved at the beginning by closing down any possibility of serious academic discussion.
Kosinski: So lab leak or not, and the world may never know for certain, no one is saying this was a deliberate spread of the virus. Even if it did escape from some lab, that possibility is still seen as accidental. But, Richard, in this gain of function research that does go on, how much does it worry you? Not just for the potential of leaks, but that these things could be weaponized.
Dearlove: Yeah. Well, I mean, of course it worries me, and no one is saying that, you know, we're talking about deliberate release or weaponization. But unfortunately, the distance between this research and biological warfare is pretty short, and there are aspects of stuff about the Institute which are concerning. For example, when this all happened, who was put in to run the institute? They changed the staff of the Wuhan Institute. They put in a major general from the People's Liberation Army who's one of China's experts on biological warfare. Things like that make one desperately uncomfortable and concerned because there are huge national security implications, which is why it's essential that we get to the bottom of the science eventually and understand why this pandemic started. And you know we have the best sort of explanation of the evidence even if it can't totally be proven either way. We have to have a much, much closer oversight over this sort of laboratory work. But the work unquestionably, if you get it wrong, highly dangerous. But there's no question that if it was an accident, boy, did they work hard to cover it up. Yeah. And good luck imposing restrictions ever on China. They put huge resources into controlling the narrative. And then you've got the Chinese, you know, accusing, saying it came from Norwegian salmon or, you know, it was imported into Asia by Americans. I mean, god, that's ridiculous.
Kosinski: Well, everybody's taking a risk here. Those who do the research, the scientists who dismiss the lab leak theory right away, they risk credibility later if they were too quickly to say that. And those who advocated for looking into a lab leak, they also go out on a limb, especially when other scientists and officials dismiss it. I was vilified as a, I was told, you know, I was a conspiracy theorist. But at least the shift in thinking on that came fairly quickly. You know, we're still in the pandemic. This wasn't ten years later a revisiting.
Dearlove: Well, it's a subject which I think is so important in our contemporary moment, and I think it's really important that we discuss it openly and freely and air some of these ideas and views, which will require answers in the coming months, and I hope won't be longer delayed than that.
Kosinski: All right. All right, Richard, it has been a pleasure talking to you about this. Thank you so much. On virtually any point made about COVID-19's origins, there is a counterpoint from a different scientist out there. Even the US intelligence agencies looking into this very question did not all agree. Most virologists today, however, most of them believe that there is enough evidence in nature within other coronaviruses to believe that this thing simply evolved and jumped to humans. But the circumstances, the unknowns, make for a frustrating mystery when there are all kinds of decisions that could have been made in Wuhan that the world may never know about. The head of the lab, Wuhan's so called bat lady, has denied anything went wrong. Still, people see things like the US intelligence report that detailed at least three Wuhan lab workers sick enough with some flu like illness to go to the hospital in November 2019, just before the virus started spreading like wildfire in that city. And China's silence on many details and data and access has been deafening. The point Richard Dearlove wants to make, just don't be so quick to discount anything just yet. Thanks for joining us here at One Decision, where we like to dig into the tough ones. Sometimes a whole mess of decisions rolled into one. Follow us wherever you find your podcasts and on social media. We'd love to hear from you. I'm Michelle Kosinski at One Decision.
