The Wuhan Lab Leak Question: A Disused Chinese Mine Takes Center Stage

They say a World Health Organization-led team had insufficient access in Wuhan earlier this year to reach its conclusion that a lab leak was "Extremely unlikely."

A growing number including the director-general of the WHO and a prominent U.S. researcher who has worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, agree that the WIV needs to provide more information about its work to categorically rule out a lab spill.

"This fully shows that some people in the U.S. don't care about facts and truth." It cited the WHO-led team's verdict on the implausibility of a lab leak and urged Washington to invite the WHO to investigate early U.S. cases.

On May 13, a group of 18 scientists from universities including Harvard, Stanford and Yale published an open letter in the academic journal Science calling for serious consideration of the lab hypothesis and urging research laboratories to open their records.

While the WIV has said RaTG13 is the closest relative it had to the pandemic virus, scientists calling for a lab investigation want access to the lab's records to verify that.

Ian Lipkin, an infectious-disease specialist at Columbia University who has worked closely with Chinese research partners, was among five scientists who last year co-wrote a paper dismissing the idea that the virus was manipulated in a lab.

A small band of scientists, connecting over Twitter, began to trade open-source research pointing to the lab.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-wuhan-lab-leak-question-a-disused-chinese-mine-takes-center-stage/ar-AAKkBwZ?ocid=msnews