A team of scientists from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada were reported to have called for a new investigation into COVID-19's origins in China.
According to CBN News, the team of scientists have questioned the World Health Organization conclusions reached early this year on the cause of the viral outbreak in Wuhan, China. CBN quoted the WHO team in saying that animal to human infection was "very likely" and cleared the Wuhan laboratory in creating the virus by saying "a laboratory origin of the pandemic was very unlikely".
The scientists came out with a letter that was published in the journal Science where they weighed various theories on the virus' origins. The scientists argued that "theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable" and stressed that the WHO report tackled the particular issue in only four pages despite being 313-page long.
The letter, entitled "Investigate The Origins Of COVID-19," was published by the Science journal on May 14. The 18 scientists who wrote the letter were led by Jesse D. Bloom from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. The other scientists came from various universities from the United States and Canada and one from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease in the UK.
"As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general, the United States and 13 other countries, and the European Union that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data," the scientists said.
"A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest," they added.
"Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts."
Last week, information revealed during the Senate hearing showed that the WHO report on the sources of the virus could very well be incorrect. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul accused National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci of being "culpable" to the pandemic since documents show that his office funded the "gain-of-function" research done on it by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Rand's revelations during the Senate hearing echo the findings of an individual investigation conducted by former political adviser Steve Hilton with Fox News' The Next Revolution. The said individual investigation revealed that the experiments were linked to Fauci.
"In 2014 Dr. Fauci commissioned work that led to that kind of manipulation in the lab that is so close to what we saw with this pandemic," Hilton said prior to recommending an investigation on Fauci on the matter.
CBN News said that although Fauci denied such allegations, California Representative Devin Nunes pointed out that NIH documents showed the U.S. gave millions to EcoHealth Alliance which in turn gave a portion of it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said they have no way of preventing anyone who has the intention of deceiving the United States on "how they've used the funds" given to EcoHealth Alliance.
