As readers may know, I began by thinking a lab leak was unlikely, even impossible, as the source of the virus that emerged suddenly in Wuhan at the end of 2019. But during the late spring of 2020 I saw evidence that this hypothesis was in fact quite plausible and needed investigating at the very least. I teamed up with the molecular biologist Alina Chan to write Viral, our book about the search for evidence on both sides of that question. I remained unsure what happened at that stage. Then in the autumn of 2021 more startling evidence emerged to support the lab leak. I now think that is by far the most likely explanation.
Yet still the scientific establishment refused to take the hypothesis seriously, let alone investigate it. There are over 20 million people dead, and you don’t want to know why? Imagine if this were their reaction to a chemical spill that killed thousands of people, or a nuclear accident that killed tens of thousands. This killed millions. I tried to get the Royal Society and The Academy of Medical Sciences to debate it, but they refused: too controversial, they said!
Journals like Nature and Science barely touched the topic and even then only to dismiss the lab leak in condescending tones without bothering to engage with the evidence. Science journalists steered clear of the biggest story of their careers lest it annoy their sources. Yet the public, the world’s governments, and the intelligence community all soon came to the conclusion that a lab leak probably did cause the Wuhan outbreak. I found this institutional ostrich act by Big Science deeply disturbing.
In 2024 I was approached by a single member of the editorial board of a respected biological journal with a request that I team up with a British biologist with relevant expertise and compose an academic paper setting out the case for the lab leak hypothesis: he hoped the journal would consider it. With the help of Anton van der Merwe of Oxford University, and advice from Alina Chan, I drafted such a paper. The paper was rejected; I suspect that it was another case of not wanting to rock the scientific boat.
