In a letter published Thursday in the journal Science, they argue that there is not yet enough evidence to rule out the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a lab in China, and they call for a "proper investigation" into the matter.
"We believe this question deserves a fair and thorough science-based investigation, and that any subsequent judgment should be made on the data available," said Dr. David Relman, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University who helped pen the letter.
[...]
But Relman said that, as a scientist, he needed more than this thirdhand account to rule out the chance of an accidental laboratory leak. (He and his colleagues did not suggest any potential leak was intentional.)
"Show us the test you used: What was the method? What were the results and the names of the people tested? Did you test a control population?" Relman said. "On all accounts, it was not an adequate, detailed kind of presentation of data that would allow an outside scientist to arrive at an independent conclusion."
[...]
Michael Worobey, who studies viruses at the University of Arizona to understand the origin, emergence and control of pandemics, also signed the letter. Since the start of the pandemic, he had entertained two possibilities for how it might have begun—either as an escape from a lab or natural transmission from animal to human.
Fifteen months later, he's still open to both possibilities.
"There just hasn't been enough definitive evidence either way," he said, "so both of those remain on the table for me."
In his own lab, Worobey works with a grad student who collects viruses from bats in the wild, and he's thought a lot about how this research could create an ecological avenue to introduce a new pathogen to humans.
"As someone who does this, I'm very aware of the opening that creates for new viruses to get close to humans, and so I think that's another reason I take this seriously," he said. "I'm concerned about it in my own work."
[...]
David Robertson, the head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow, was not among the letter's signatories. He said he didn't understand the point.
"Nobody is saying that a lab accident isn't possible—there's just no evidence for this beyond the Wuhan Institute of Virology being in Wuhan," he said.
Robertson said viruses naturally migrate from animals to humans all the time, and SARS-CoV-2 could have been one of them.
Although he agreed with the authors of the letter that it was essential to find the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to prepare for the next pandemic, "wasting time investigating labs is a distraction from this," he said.
8a2) See 051721_1a
8a3) Unknown unknowns are risks that come from situations that are so unexpected that they would not be considered. Contemporary usage is largely consistent with the earliest known usages. For example, the term was used in evidence given to the British Columbia Royal Commission of Inquiry into Uranium Mining in 1979:
Site conditions always pose unknowns, or uncertainties, which may become known during construction or operation to the detriment of the facility and possibly lead to damage of the environment or endanger public health and safety. The risk posed by unknowns is somewhat dependent on the nature of the unknown relative to past experience. This has led me classify unknowns into one of the following two types: 1. known unknowns (expected or foreseeable conditions), which can be reasonably anticipated but not quantified based on past experience as exemplified by case histories (in Appendix A) and 2. Unknown unknowns (unexpected or unforeseeable conditions), which pose a potentially greater risk simply because they cannot be anticipated based on past experience or investigation. Known unknowns result from recognized but poorly understood phenomena. On the other hand, unknown unknowns are phenomena which cannot be expected because there has been no prior experience or theoretical basis for expecting the phenomena.
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