Washington 'lab leak' theory lacks basis in fact

Some US politicians are again calling for an investigation into the Wuhan "lab leak" conspiracy theory after The Wall Street Journal published a report in May. However, a closer look at the report reveals that the hypothesis has no basis in fact, according to investigators and experts.

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US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence officials to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including the possibility that it originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Hubei province. The order followed a Wall Street Journal report published on May 23 that claimed three staff members at the institute become ill in November 2019. The report said the claim added weight to suspicions that the virus may have leaked from the lab.

At a news briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian questioned why the United States had not produced evidence to back up the claim.

"If they tested positive for COVID-19, I'm asking the US to provide test reports. I'm sure the US doesn't have any evidence, because what's been said is a total lie. It's using the origin tracing process to stigmatize China," Zhao said.

One of the authors of The Wall Street Journal report is Michael R. Gordon, who in the past has written reports based on undisclosed sources.

He co-authored a controversial article for The New York Times with Judith Miller in September 2002. Titled "Threats and Responses: The Iraqis; US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts", the report asserted that "Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb".

The report influenced the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. It turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, yet Gordon avoided censure. Anonymous "American officials" and "intelligence experts" were the only sources for Gordon's report.

For the Wuhan report, Gordon once again cited "anonymous US officials" and claimed it was based on an undisclosed intelligence report.

Earlier this year, Chinese experts said the rumor that three institute staff members had fallen ill with COVID-19 was the result of another incident being misreported.

"The COVID-19 positive test samples were actually from a hospital that were submitted to the WIV lab for research," Tong Yigang, dean of the College of Life Science and Technology at Beijing University of Chemical Technology, said at a news briefing on March 31 when the Chinese team of experts reviewed the meeting record of the WHO-China origin tracing team at the institute.

WHO investigation

Tong, who was a member of the WHO mission to China that looked at the origin of COVID-19, said the WHO team investigated the rumor and found no institute employees had been sick.

An Australian virologist who worked at the institute before the COVID-19 outbreak said that distorted information has obscured accurate accounting of the lab's functions and activities. Danielle Anderson said no one she knew at the institute was ill toward the end of 2019. There is a procedure for reporting symptoms when handling high-risk pathogens in a containment lab, she said.

"If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick－and I wasn't," she told Bloomberg. "I was tested for coronavirus in Singapore before I was vaccinated, and had never had it."

The Wuhan Institute of Virology hasn't registered any infections among its staff members and graduate students.

Early this year, a group of WHO-appointed scientists flew to Wuhan and spent 12 days there, which included a visit to the institute. Ultimately, the team concluded that a virus leak from the lab was "extremely unlikely".

Reporter: Minlu Zhang

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