China's Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk

The world has known for a long time that WIV poses a huge risk to global health.

Yuan Zhiming, then director of WIV's biosafety level 4 lab, warned, "The biosafety laboratory is a double-edge sword: It can be used for the benefit of humanity, but can also lead to a disaster." He listed the shortfalls prevalent among China's biology labs, including a lack of "Operational technical support, professional instructions" and "Feasible standards for the safety requirements of different protection zones and for the inoculation of microbiological animals and equipment."

Beijing has a moral and legal obligation to take biosafety seriously, especially given the kind of research going on at WIV. In 2015, WIV's Dr. Shi Zhengli co-wrote an article titled "A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence" in which she admitted that her team had engineered "Chimeric" and "Hybrid" viruses from horseshoe bats.

China resisted international monitoring at WIV. The lab was built with French assistance, but China abrogated its promise to allow French scientists to participate in essential research there.

China then accredited WIV through its own agency as its only level 4 facility, and the country's National Health Commission quickly approved it to handle some of the world's most dangerous viruses.

The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology completed a comprehensive safety and management survey of China's 75 bioresearch labs in 2016, finding that WIV didn't even make the top 20 in terms of quality.

In January 2021, the State Department confirmed that people had fallen mysteriously ill at WIV in fall 2019, and that WIV conducts secret bioweapons research with the PLA. The negligence at China's biolabs, especially WIV, was so dangerous that the PLA dispatched a general to take over the facility soon after the outbreak in Wuhan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-reckless-labs-put-the-world-at-risk-11614102828?mod=hp_opin_pos_1