COVID 'Lab Leak' Debate Could Damage Science - Updated

Since the beginning of the pandemic there have been rumours and suggestions that a leak at a Chinese biotechnology lab in Wuham was the real source of the pandemic. So far, this theory is unsubstantiated, as much as a theory can be in the current political climate. 

But it persists, and as this a5rticle from Nature points out, it could have damaging effects on how research into COVID and other emerging diseases is conducted.  

Calls to investigate Chinese laboratories have reached a fever pitch in the United States, as Republican leaders allege that the coronavirus causing the pandemic was leaked from one, and as some scientists argue that this ‘lab leak’ hypothesis requires a thorough, independent inquiry. But for many researchers, the tone of the growing demands is unsettling. They say the volatility of the debate could thwart efforts to study the virus’s origins.

Global-health researchers also warn that the growing demands are exacerbating tensions between the United States and China ahead of crucial meetings at which world leaders will make high-level decisions about how to curb the pandemic and prepare for future health emergencies. At the World Health Assembly this week, for example, health officials from nearly 200 countries are discussing strategies including ways to ramp up vaccine manufacturing and to reform the World Health Organization (WHO). But a US–China divide will make consensus on these issues harder to reach, says David Fidler, a global-health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Washington DC. “If there’s some turning down of the geopolitical heat between these two great powers, we could create some space to perhaps do some of the things that we need to do,” he says.

Others worry that the rhetoric around an alleged lab leak has grown so toxic that it’s fuelling online bullying of scientists and anti-Asian harassment in the United States, as well as offending researchers and authorities in China whose cooperation is needed.

Update: Nature just published another article that goes into detail about what scientists know about the origins of COVID-19 and the lab-leak theory. Like the first article, it's well written and solidly researched.