A Senate hearing Tuesday into the origins of the COVID-19 virus explored the leading theories, with lawmakers and witnesses trading arguments about which one they believed.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard from four scientific experts about what current information suggests about the onset of SARS-CoV-2.
The natural origins theory, the lab leak theory, and the data supporting them were all heavily discussed, with witnesses sometimes arguing among themselves as they testified.
The experts invited by Democrats were Gregory D. Koblentz, associate professor and director of the biodefense graduate program at George Mason University, and Robert F. Garry, professor and associate dean at Tulane University School of Medicine, as well as an author from an opinion article on the theory of the origins of COVID-19 that generated widespread debate.
The Republican Party’s expert witnesses were Steven C. Quay, CEO of Atossa Therapeutics and former faculty member at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Richard H. Ebright, professor of chemistry and chemical biology on the University’s board of governors. Rutgers.
Here are some takeaways from the hearing:
Lab leak not ruled out
Immediately, committee chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) set the tone for the hearing, giving credence to natural origins and lab leak theories.
“There are theories that COVID-19 began by entering the human population through an all-natural means or possibly through a laboratory incident or accident,” Peters said in his opening remarks.
“Given the likelihood that the Chinese government will never fully disclose all the information it has about the initial COVID-19 outbreak, we want to use available scientific information to better prepare for future potential pandemics.”
The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), expressed a general openness to either theory, although he indicated that his leanings leaned toward the lab leak origins theory.
“Are we sure it came from the lab? No, but there is a preponderance of evidence indicating that it may have come from the laboratory. Do we know that viruses came from animals in the past? Yes, in the past they came from animals, but this time there is no animal reservoir,” said Paul.
Mixed Panel on Origin Beliefs
The witnesses were evenly divided when it came to which theory they favored.
Neither Koblentz nor Garry completely ruled out that the COVID-19 virus could have originated from a laboratory incident, but they said they believed the evidence supported the natural origin theory.
“I believe that the available evidence points most strongly to a natural zoonotic event as the origin of the pandemic. However, at this time an accident related to the investigation cannot be ruled out,” Koblentz told the committee.
“I do not believe that the available scientific evidence, when considered holistically, supports that the virus was created in a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Garry said.
“However, I am first and foremost a scientist and I will adhere to the scientific method. Therefore, I will continue to evaluate new evidence and re-evaluate the validity of my scientific hypotheses about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.”
Quay argued that SARS-CoV-2 has several characteristics that are only found in synthetic viruses and do not occur in natural viruses. “The probability that SARS-CoV-2 came from nature based on these characteristics is one in a billion.”
Ebright said the virus could only have originated in a laboratory, given research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). He argued that it was too much of a coincidence that viruses proposed for research at the Wuhan institute shared certain characteristics with COVID-19.
“A virus with the exact characteristics proposed in the 2018 NIH and DARPA proposals has emerged on the doorstep of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Ebright said. “SARS-CoV-2 is the only one of more than 800 known SARS viruses that possesses a furin cleavage site. Mathematically, this observation alone implies that the probability of finding a natural SARS virus possessing a furin cleavage site is less than one in 800.”
Author of article on the origins of COVID takes a beating
Garry, who co-authored the paper “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” in 2020, faced a disproportionate degree of ire from Republican committee members. The paper did not rule out a lab leak theory, but the authors concluded that a “lab-based scenario” was not considered plausible.
Former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci cited the publication when speaking in support of the natural origins theory. Subsequent reports revealed that Fauci, along with other federal health officials, were in communication with the authors shortly before the article was published.
This led GOP lawmakers to accuse Fauci and the authors of the analysis of collusion to suppress the lab leak theory.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful, Dr. Garry. You are part of this propaganda effort. I mean, you’re right in the middle of it. It’s surprising,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
“I was simply writing an article about our scientific views on the origin of this virus,” replied Garry.
Paul directly asked one of the GOP witnesses, Ebright, what he thought of the “Proximal Origin” article.
Ebright emphasized that this was not a research article, but an opinion piece.
“The authors were expressing their opinion, but that opinion was not well founded. In 2020, there was no basis to state this as a conclusion rather than simply being a hypothesis,” Ebright argued. “You would never, under any circumstances, in a scientific journal, state conclusions that you considered unsound and that amounted to scientific misconduct.”
Garry has spoken to Congress on several occasions since the paper’s publication, speaking to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a closed-door interview last June and testifying publicly in his op-ed the following month.
He stated that his article was not influenced by Fauci or other federal health officials to explicitly favor a natural origins theory.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
