“It simply came to our notice then ten months in one of the most catastrophic global health events in our lives, “wrote David Relman, an immunologist and biological threat expert at Stanford University in November,” and, disturbingly, we still don’t know how it started. ” This persistent uncertainty is of the utmost importance: the precise origins of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, once resolved, will allow us to better prepare for future pandemic threats. But to find out what really happened will require careful and coordinated scientific investigations, which are only now beginning.
In the meantime, we are left to speculate. A long essay by Nicholson Baker, published a few weeks ago in New York Magazine, claimed that the pandemic started with a laboratory accident; and while the article was dragged as a irresponsible, poorly informed and unilateral presentation, even his most ardent critics fire that the possibility of a laboratory leak cannot be ruled out with certainty.
There are now two major efforts to investigate where Covid-19 comes from: one set up by the World Health Organization and the other organized by a leading medical journal, Lancet. Surveys should take months or even years to complete and, given the many challenges involved, they may never provide conclusive answers. However, it is already clear that both are compromised by the lack of clear procedures for managing conflicts of interest and questionable independence. It is now imperative that governments and the scientific community act quickly to improve them.
The problem begins with the nature of the investigations, which must first establish whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus passed directly from wild animals to the population (most likely a scenario, for most experts) or may have escaped from a laboratory. But many of the people who are most qualified to analyze this question – those with the most relevant technical knowledge – also happen to be those who work in those laboratory places or have close professional connections with the people who do it.
In other words, it is exactly the people who could be blamed (either directly or as part of a research community) if the virus had ever been tracked in a laboratory.
This fundamental tension is not at all unusual in the convening of expert committees, by governments or otherwise. Decades ago, scientists who had relationships with tobacco companies were among those with the best understanding of the effects of smoking on public health, but their inclusion in health advisory committees was problematic and helped motivate some. more rigorous approaches in managing conflicts of interest. Fortunately, governments around the world have a long history of implementing these approaches; and it is certainly possible to use the relevant expertise through formal questioning or testimony without including those with conflicts as investigators themselves. Unfortunately, it is not clear that any of the main investigations into the origins of the pandemic follow relevant best practices.
For example, both investigations include Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization with a history of conducting research in SARS-related coronaviruses and their effects on people, including collaborative work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Wuhan Institute happens to be the only laboratory in China that is allowed to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens and is at the apparent zero level of the current outbreak.
If there was a laboratory leak – and again, most experts do not believe that the available evidence points in this direction – then both the Wuhan Institute and its US partner would be on a short list of candidates to investigate. It should be obvious that no one with any connection to any of the organizations can play a formal role in any truly independent investigation into the origins of the pandemic. (Of course, their contribution by experts could and should be sought by other means.)
It is also worth noting that Daszak expressed his certainty, very early in the crisis, that the disease has its origin in the wild. Last winter, right after the WHO first named the virus, he issued an official statement to “strongly condemn conspiracy theories that Covid-19 has no natural origin” and to “stand” with colleagues. from Wuhan and all over China. More than two dozen other scientists would sign that letter, which was published by Lancet on February 19, 2020. The emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggest that Daszak organized the effort from the beginning.