Origins of COVID-19 & SARS-CoV-2 Virus: Lab Leak or Wildlife Spillover? | Nicholas Wade | 39

Full episode transcripts & show notes at Nick's website:  https://www.nickjikomes.com/

Nick Jikomes 
Nicholas Wade, thank you for joining me. My pleasure. Can you start out by just explaining for people who you are and what your background is and what you've been doing recently,

Nicholas Wade  5:21  
I'm a science journalist, I worked on Nature and Science through two scientific journals, which have new sections. And then for many years, I worked on the New York Times, where as an editorial writer and sounds reapportioned science editor. And I retired from that a few years ago and have been writing books and as a distraction, an article on the origin of COVID to COVID-19. I'm sorry, and says to me, it's cause difference.

Nick Jikomes  5:52  
Yeah, that's that's largely what we're going to talk about today. And for those that don't know, I'll link to this stuff in the episode description. But Nicholas has written two articles relatively recently about the origins of Cypress Cove, too. And those are wonderfully well written articles that are very detailed, and they sort of cover the story, the evolving story of how we've been thinking about where this pandemic, how this pandemic got started, and where this virus actually came from. And so before we get into the present pandemic, and SARS, too, I thought it would be nice to talk about some previous outbreaks that have happened. So can you start by describing what the SARS one virus was and what actually happened in terms of how that virus broke out into human populations.

Nicholas Wade  6:40  
So the SOS or one virus caused an epidemic in 2003. And it turned out that it came from bats. It was part of a large group of viruses called coronaviruses that bats are carrying many different varieties of it seems to spread first from bats to animal consolidates that is sold for me it's in Chinese wet rockets and from the civets, it jumped to people, and eventually caused a serious epidemic.

Nick Jikomes  7:17  
And so why are you know, bats seem to come up a lot when we when we talk about viral outbreaks that eventually get to humans? Is there something special about bats in terms of why there's such a seemingly common common reservoir for viruses?

Nicholas Wade  7:31  
Um, yes, there's a biological reason. And I'm, I'm sorry, I forget what he says I think he's probably just doing that they live in these close communities. So sacred viruses and bacteria among themselves a lot. So that gives them quite a strong immunity enables them to carry these viruses without it hurting them much. But the virus is certainly hurt us when they've managed to spit over.

Nick Jikomes  7:56  
I see. And so you mentioned that with SARS one and went from bats into this other creature called the civet, and then into humans who are in close contact with those creatures in wet markets. It seems like it's common when something spills over to human that it hops from something like a bat into some other animal first, before going to humans. Is that is that a common pattern? And why does it sort of jump from one species to another before getting to humans?

Nicholas Wade  8:23  
I think it may be a matter of opportunity cost, if it's if it sees the other animal first, especially if it's in the wild, it may not sort of come in contact with humans very much sure it'll seize the opportunity to to get to an intermediate animal, and then to humans, of course, some many viruses to infect humans directly. the Ebola virus, for example, which we think come from comes from bats, that seems to be a direct transmission. There's some thought that says to may be able to infect humans directly, but there's no proof of that. It's just conjecture.

Nick Jikomes  8:59  
I see. So in the case of SARS, one it got to humans from civets at these wet markets. Is that why this has been sort of a candidate favorite hypothesis for SARS to originating in some of these wet markets?

Nicholas Wade  9:14  
Yes, exactly. And there was a second epidemic called MERS in 2012. And they're the intermediary animals, candles or geometries. So when the COVID-19 broke out, and it was clearly a bat type virus, the natural thought was that what is it is come by a similar route the two previous outbreaks via some intermediary animal to humans.

Nick Jikomes  9:41  
I see. And so in the case of SARS, and MERS, you've got two viruses that went from bats to another animal to humans. But we then identified that they actually made that progression by identifying the animals that they that they came from, how long did it take in the case of SARS and MERS for scientists to figure out what the Intermediate animal hosts were

Nicholas Wade  10:02  
well, it was pretty quick he was about four months in the case of of sauce, one and Anika It was about seven months in the case of MERS so that intermediate animals were identified very quickly it took it took quite a lot longer to identify the original source one bar virus in the sort of bat in the particular cave where the bats harboring it lived. And the MERS virus alerts a bat type virus, we haven't linked that to its source, it is not very clear how it got from bats to geometries.

Nick Jikomes  10:38  
I see but they found the intermediate species within a matter of months. That's true. Okay, so in the when this happens when the virus goes from a bat, to another animal to a human, does it leave any sort of signatures in its genome that scientists can see that allow us to piece together sort of what that progression was at the level of its genetics?

Nicholas Wade  11:01  
Yes, it certainly does. I mean, that viruses are sort of specialized, or to attack their host animals, and it's quite difficult for them to attack another host. And they depend on a sort of series of mutations, or to adapt themselves. So when you look at the progression of cells, one to 77, to humans, you see it making a lot, so six or six or says critical mutations, before it establish itself in sibbett. So another six or so before it begins to be able to attack humans just as a sort of weak pathogen and another dozen before, it's a really strong pathogen in humans. So you can track all these mutational changes. And, of course, that's what people expected to find with SARS, but they didn't.

Nick Jikomes  11:49  
So the idea is, when it's when a virus is happening from bat to another animal, it's going to take a number of mutations, usually before it figures out how to get into that other animal and then basically adapt to that other animals, so becomes more contagious. And then another set of mutations again, to go from that animal to a human to be able to get inside the human population, and then to spread more quickly and become a pandemic type virus is that that's what we're talking about.

Nicholas Wade  12:14  
Yeah, that's exactly true. I mean, it seems easy when we for the virus when we look at it, but in fact, it's immensely difficult for the various millions or billions of tries before picking up each successful mutation. So it's very, so it's very difficult process.

Nick Jikomes  12:32  
Yeah, so the basic idea is when the virus first like the very first virus gets into humans, at the initial stage, have some kind of spillover. It's actually not it can get into humans, obviously. But it's actually not that good at spreading. And it has to get some of those new mutations over some time period to become very contagious, basically. And have we seen that kind of signature with SARS, to know that's

Nicholas Wade  12:57  
one of the most surprising features about SARS to us, especially when the natural emergence perspective, you'd think maybe would take a long time to become a very, very own human pathogen. And yet, right out of the box, it was very good at infecting humans. So that's much easier to explain on the lab leak hypothesis because when you're working with these viruses, you grow them in, in, in human like surroundings, either in, in cultures of human airway cells, or in in humanized mice. These are mice genetic engineer to have the healing AC to receptor expressed on that ourselves, that's the target for, for these type viruses. Now, obviously, if you if you grow mice in if you live a virus in humanized mice, or in cultures of humanized of human airway cells, if it escapes, is going to be very good at infecting humans because that's exactly what it's being trained to do.

Nick Jikomes  14:05  
So at the early stages of this pandemic, with SARS to the virus was already really good at being virulent at going from person to person relatively easily, which is not what you typically see at the beginning of a viral pandemic. That's due to a wildlife spillover, as we saw with SARS one. Now, if we go back to earlier into this pandemic, so around February 2020, if people recall, what they were hearing and what they were doing at that time. At this time, it was considered by most people at least what you know what I was seeing in the media and in journals and elsewhere, that the lab like hypothesis was not likely. In fact, many people were calling it a conspiracy theory. And it was stated publicly by many people, many prominent people that the wildlife origin hypothesis was overwhelmingly likely and in one of your medium articles, you talk about this in particular You quote a Lancet article from February 2020. That says, quote, we stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. So who was writing that article? And what was the basis for those claims at the time?

Nicholas Wade  15:20  
Well, the article it turned out was organized by Peter Dasa, who is the president of the Eco Health Alliance, a nonprofit in New York, which funds was funding research at the Wilson Institute of virology on bad viruses. So this money comes ultimately from the National Institutes of Health, and particularly the NIH ID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases. It goes from there to the Gulf Alliance, and from that to Wuhan in China. So Dr. Dasa had an enormous conflict of interest. And published things this last year in The Lancet saying this couldn't possibly be lab lab Lee because if indeed, it had leaked from the experiments he was supporting, and was responsible for, then he would stand to be be held responsible in in in one or many ways. So not only did he have this undeclared conflict of interest, but to add insult to injury, the lashing the launch, it concludes by saying, we declare no conflict of interest. And this pertain not just to Dr. Bassett, most of the signatures had ties to the calphalon. So also the will have an institution in various ways. And hello signatory who's worth mentioning, because he comes into the story later, is a medical Jeremy Farah who is the president of the Wellcome Foundation, the Wellcome Trust in London, which is a big medical research philanthropy and is the source of, of much funding for biology and other kinds of research. I'm Dr. Farah has close ties with Chinese medical officials, which he describes in a book he wrote recently called spike. And he certainly seems to have been following the wishes of the Chinese medical authorities in various actions, he took not only in signing the launch letter, but in various others, other things will show we can discuss later.

Nick Jikomes  17:42  
So there's a lot to dig into here. Let's before before we go go more into the personalities and some of the details of how things progressed from this time. In back in February to the present, let's talk a little bit more about who are excuse me about gain of function research itself? Because that comes up a lot. And I'm sure people have heard about it, what exactly is gain of function research? And also, what exactly is the lab hypothesis, as opposed to say, the conjecture that it was that was purposely engineered.

Nicholas Wade  18:16  
So again, function is subject to many, several different definitions. And that's part of the reason why there's such controversy about it, in its most basic sense, is anything you do to enhance the infectivity or transmissibility of a virus. So you have to be careful here because even the slightest handling of a virus in a lab, for example, if you grow a virus in a culture of cells, you're increasing its capacity because you're so training it to infect this culture of cells. So if you define gain the function to severely you could sort of cripple all firearms research, which no one wants to do. What it means in its more serious sense is if you take a dangerous, a dangerous human pathogen, and you suit bass up in the lab, that sort of wheel that's really dangerous game function. And that is what people are concerned about.

Nick Jikomes  19:21  
What would be some examples in recent history of gain of function research? And what are the what are the basic arguments for and against doing this kind of research in general?

Nicholas Wade  19:32  
Well, the experiment that started off about 10 years ago was when Dutch researchers learned how to enhance the infectivity of the influenza virus in ferrets. They learned how to make it what in fact, Farish is more easy than we did before. So the virus had had a gain of function. So the purpose of this research was to see how you know similar event might In biases and taking humans and how to try and prevent that happening, so that was the legitimate research practice, but it set up all kinds of alarm bells. Because if you do such an experiment in humans, you've created a dangerous virus that did not exist before. And then there's the rescue, you could set up for human epidemic if the virus escapes. And there's a long long history of viruses escaping from labs, and people seriously did not mean them to, and they're just very hard to contain. So that sets off a debate within the biological community about gain of function. And it kind of sufficient into two camps in cycle two groups are fighting under a tent, you can't really tell what's happening. But the the group that was in in favor of restraining gain function, managed to get a moratorium on federal funding, a regulation or put into law in 2014. So the moratorium said you can't fund any new gain of function research. But that victory was short lived, because the proponents of gain and function managed to get the moratorium ended in 2017. And it was replaced by as a reporting requirement we shouldn't, doesn't have very many teeth in it. But basically, I said, if you're doing gait and function, you have to tell this governing committee while you plan to do and they can veto it if they wish to. So it's a very loose regulatory system, it's turned down very few requests. And gain functional research essentially has gone on without really very much in impediment, I think it's fair to say certainly, far less impediment than many critics would like to see.

Nick Jikomes  21:53  
I see. So basically, you've got two schools of thought in the virology community. One is basically saying something like, we need to understand the paths that viruses might take throughout the natural course of evolution to become more infectious. And if we can actually sort of recreate what could happen naturally, then we'll sort of be one step ahead of a pandemic. And then you've got another camp saying, well, that may be true, but you're literally creating such a virus in doing that kind of research. And it's really about sort of a risk benefit analysis of some kind with the risks of creating a virus that is going to be deadly or more contagious, or whatever, versus having that kind of that picture of what could emerge naturally, that might allow you to take a more defensive approach. Yeah, that's exactly so. And so who are some who who have been some of the chief, I know that there's been some important people that have argued in favor of doing this kind of gain of function research, at least in the US, who have been some of those people.

Nicholas Wade  22:58  
Well, the two most prominent have been Francis Collins and Anthony fashi. So far, she is the director of the NIH ID and his immediate responsible for theological research in the US, and to some extent abroad. And Collins is his nominal boss, Collins is the director of the National Institutes of Health in which the ni rd is part is part. So they wrote a well known letter in the Washington Post, I think it was 10 years ago, advocating the importance of data function research. Now, the principal critic is Richard ebright at Rutgers University, who has been very eloquent in In saying that, experiments like this being can being supported by an ID act will ensue Institute of archaeology should never have been undertaken.

Nick Jikomes  24:00  
I see. So there's these two camps, there's arguments for and against doing this type of research. We can be agnostic for the moment about, you know, which which camp makes better arguments, but you can make arguments in both directions, and very prominent scientists have have done that so far, in the past few years. And then just to sort of round this out, when we talk about a lab leak. We're not talking about someone engineering, a nasty bug, and then purposefully letting it out. We're talking literally about an accident. You know, some people are working with viruses in the lab. Viruses are very tiny creatures, obviously in the very hard to contain. You're saying that these accidents commonly Can you talk about how common such a leak is and maybe what some of the containment procedures typically are?

Nicholas Wade  24:46  
Well, I think it's fair to say that on average, there's about one serious leak a year reported and probably many more that do not get reported. It sort of goes in in a In waves and the smallpox virus, which is one of the things you would most want to contain various security as escaped three times from labs in England, in the 1970s, getting, I think, 30 people. And coming from our recent times the SARS one virus is a real escape artist that's escaped six times already in its short laboratory life four times alone from the Beijing Institute of virology. So the way these these viruses contain the safety system, it has sort of four levels called BSL 123 and four. BSL one is sort of nothing. BSL two is sort of, you know, hang a safety hazard on the door and then to the mouth passing. And level three is well used containment boxes for some of the more aerosol spreading organization. So all these all these sort of pretty low level, you know, I'm not sure to above common sense, then you there's a big jump when you go to BSL level four. So that that is where you have to add some space and some have mega power flow and special, especially mill buildings. And the problem here is that viraj is still not like to work in BSL four level conditions. It's very expensive, it's a headache takes 10 times as long to any experiment. It's just um, you'd really rather avoid and and it's hard not to think that that distaste is written into the the safety regulations that govern what level is appropriate for each kind of virus. So it may surprise us to know certainly surprised me that you can work with that if you when it comes to the SARS viruses. If you're working with either of the known causes of the epidemic, and SARS one virus or MERS, you'd have to use BSL level three. If you're working with any size related virus, even if it's the closest known cousin of size one or most, you can do that in BSL level two, which as we should he Brighton's famously pointed out, it's about the safety level you find in the average dentist's office.

Nick Jikomes  27:20  
So you can work with some of these bugs at that level of security. And I can understand the mindset too. I mean, I used to do academic research with mice. And I used to work in a building where you know, to go get the mice or to where the mice were housed, there was a special room and an upper level and you had to, you know, put on a hairnet and like a safety suit and you had to go through like an air shower. And all of this was purely precautionary, there was no no serious risk of anything like an outbreak of a bacterial or a virus that could infect humans, it was all just precautionary, for working with these mammalian critters. And you know, it was just a huge pain in the ass people complained all the time about having to go all the way upstairs and putting on the hairnet and putting on this. So there's this this natural sort of human tendency to want to put in as little effort as possible to get the job done correctly. It says it's not hard to imagine why why that mindset wouldn't apply in a morality lab as well. So, okay, what you're saying is if we transcend so if I go back again to early 2020, when Peter yaczik was making these statements about how ludicrous it was to consider a lab, like what you're saying is already at that time, we knew that a the SARS to virus didn't have the kind of mutational signatures one would expect if it had come from wildlife similar to SARS one. And we also knew at the time that you know, viruses leaking from Labs is something that's not a freak occurrence, it actually happens fairly often.

Nicholas Wade  28:53  
Well, not only did he know that, he knew in detail the experiments that he had been supporting at blue hat Institute of neurology, and these experiments consisted of, of taking the spike proteins from one source type virus and sticking them into the backbone of another type, SAS type virus. And these experiments were very successful and they're in terms in the the new hybrid gain of function. viruses that he created, were all more virulent and infected from their parents. So he knew these experiments were underway and and what is more, if I can show jump ahead to an astounding piece of information that that came available just last week, which was the leak of a research proposal the Dasa made up of the defense, Advanced Research Projects Agency. He the Wuhan Institute research is worth thinking of, of what they were looking for. Appropriate human related cleavage sites, including the fearing cleavage site to insert into bear viruses. So we may be jumping ahead a little bit the crucial part of, of, of sauce to and the sort of the whole riddle to way comes from is an element called the Furin cleavage site. And we now know that even the DOP actually turned down this proposal. We now know that that's the the experiment of inserting fewer increased shape into viruses was actively being considered by the Wuhan Institute researchers in 2018. So that's I knew the the exact recipe for creating a sauce the sauce to like virus had already been at least contemplated, and maybe had been put into practice as well. So in light of this knowledge, it's very hard not to interpret his his protests as as, as being because he feared the very opposite of that new process is the library was a ridiculous possibility because he knew it was not.

Nick Jikomes  31:22  
Let's let's unpack some of this biology a little bit to help people think about this better. So you mentioned this thing called the Furin cleavage site. So can you can you explain briefly how this virus actually infects and get into heat gets inside of human cells and what that cleavage site has to do with it.

Nicholas Wade  31:42  
So the virus is made of attacks is is is to punch one foot. Firstly, it latches on to its target, which is the protein called the AC e two receptor. Then the second, the second half of the virus's swipe spikes to some jet out from the surface, although it has to be cut away from the first part. So it can then merge its membrane with that of the cells and inject its RNA into the cell and hijack the cells or protein making machinery. So to make that cut between the the two parts of the virus about biologists call an SBS one and s two parts of the spike protein. To make the cut between s one and s two, the virus relies on on enzymes that are naturally present on its target cell. And the bat virus relies on on various other sort of bat type proteins. But But verjus are known for some time that you can really soup up a virus and make it a super human pathogen if you if you provide it with a way of recognizing a protein very, very commonly expressed on human airway cells called fearing so fear is sitting there to cleave various proteins that are circulating in the in the human media. But if you insert if you insert into your viruses, Spike protein gene, the specific sequence of amino acids that is recognized by serum then your virus is going to have a much easier task of infecting human cells because they'll be fearing proteins all around to help cleave it spike protein, cutting off the s one part allowing the SU bot to deploy so low when you look at the SAS to virus the most distinctive feature of it but not down to any virologist is that right at the s one S T junction just rate needs to have one is a few increase shy. That's a sequence of amino acids is recognized by a theory. And the other remarkable feature is that SOS two is the only member of its family that has this site. It's found family school Bissau backyards, and SARS. One virus MERS virus belong to it and many other SAS type viruses that the EU and researchers have found. So this is sort of quite a large family. And sounds to is the only one so far unknown that has a few increase.

Nick Jikomes  34:34  
So if you look at all of the sort of coronaviruses related to SARS, to search tos, the only one that has any trace of this site, and the site is basically the perfect sequence one would need if you were a virus who wanted to be infecting human cells because you're taking advantage of a human protein that's actually necessary to clip that spike protein in order for it to get inside

Nicholas Wade  34:57  
it so I should just say that the Coronavirus is the sort of great big family of viruses. And the solid back of viruses are a little sub family within the Coronavirus. So there are fewer and cleavage sites in in other coronaviruses. It's just that, as far as the sorbetto viruses are concerned, it's only size two that has the hearing fee which so

Nick Jikomes  35:22  
so is it fair to say that it's conceivable that such a site could have gotten right, right at that particular spot for this virus through natural evolution, but it would have been quite a remarkable mutation or recombination event that would have happened to get it right there. But with the lab leak sort of hypothesis view of this, it's quite trivial because molecular biologists can can just use standard lab techniques to put it right right there.

Nicholas Wade  35:52  
Yes, that that's right on the national emergency cases. And then the only way a virus could acquire a long string of, of new genetic material, like this would not be if the mutation was just just sort of one base at a time, but it will be through recombination, that's when two viruses, two very similar viruses infect the same cell, and they reassemble their parts each with, with with parts that belong to the other virus. So that that's how viruses acquire new genetic properties. recombination happens all the time. But the one thing you cannot acquire through recombination is a genetic element. But your family of viruses does not presents. So since this omega viruses, so far, as we know, do not possess the fairing cleavage shape, it's hard to see ourselves COVID, you could have got it that way. It's much easier, as you say, to suppose that it was inserted there in the lab, by people who, who wanted to save up the virus, and now that we have this grand proposal to to Java from the Gulf Alliance, you know that this is exactly the procedure that the researchers had in mind.

Nick Jikomes  37:15  
So, you know, DARPA is going to approve funding, approved grants that go to this thing called the Eco Health Alliance, run by Peter Daz AK, and then you're saying that that group can then sort of subcontract or send portions of those grants out to places like the Wuhan Institute of virality. How does how does that chain of command work? Exactly?

Nicholas Wade  37:39  
Oh, well, the visa US government grants so the principal ones go from NIH ID to the Eco Health Alliance and the other for investigators. The guy who's responsible for the research and the grant is Peter das AK and he then subcontracts people at the Wuhan Institute erosion, particularly Xi Zhang Li who is the chief Chinese Coronavirus expert.

Nick Jikomes  38:08  
Now, so So why is there so eco Health Alliance? I understand that peace equal Health Alliance is based in New York City is Peter Dasa himself running a lab in New York. And only a subset of the research goes out to places like Wuhan and pseudo biology or how does that work?

Nicholas Wade  38:28  
Well, it's a very natural question because my having said he's a principal investigator used to assume these assignments for the lab, but he's not in this ever lab. He's just grant, a grant raise and administrate. He's a sort of research entrepreneur. So all the all the scientific work is done. I should say almost all the scientific work is done at the woodland Institute of virology. I just love jumping back in a second, your question about the grants that the main the main grant from NIH ID equal health to an institute lasted for it was a five year grant and it lasted from 2014 to 2019. There was an a second grant from MIT, which was quickly rescinded after the epidemic broke out. Now the proposal to DARPA was made in 2018. And DARPA did not fund it. It was a bit too risky, even for DARPA, but it's important says in his image, firstly, in showing what experiments were being contemplated on the web, and it doesn't necessarily follow that the experiments were not done just because they weren't funded because it's routine, in research to use use your money at the end of your, the end of one grant to perform experiments that will support replication for a second block. So these experiments may well have been done even though darboe did not fund the grant.

Nick Jikomes  39:59  
Yeah, that makes sense. So Peter dedsec is not actually running a lab himself. He's he's sort of a professional grant writer. Is he is this all by Routledge biology research that the Eco Health Alliance is funding and see virologist is that his specialty

Nicholas Wade  40:14  
is not logical research. But he's not a biologist. He has a PhD in parasitology, from the University of East London.

Nick Jikomes  40:24  
Interesting. So his job is basically a professional grant writer to fund biology research, but he's not a biologist himself. Yes, that's great. Wonder, I wonder how he got that job. So let's move to Well, let's move a little bit forward in time now. So so time has gone by. Some of these statements from Peter Dasa and others have come out. There was another one that I thought was interesting that you mentioned in your article, so there was another opinion piece. So this was not a scientific experiment, or a scientific paper, it was an opinion piece, but it appeared in a scientific journal in March of 2020. So So about a month after the Lancet article that we referenced previously, and this was from someone named Christian Anderson. And so what were the main arguments of that piece? And can you also talk a little bit about whether or not there was any sort of public dissection or criticism of this from other scientists?

Nicholas Wade  41:18  
What the the Christian Andersen article is very important, because this was the sort of principal scientific statement that persuaded the media in general and everyone else that labrie was impossible and, and the ridiculous conspiracy theory and the second thing I would say in background is that Jeremy Farrow, who we've mentioned earlier, has, has said that he put together the authors of this nature medicine article, so he was he, he claims he suggested to Christian Andersen, that, that he should write this piece. So the article starts out by saying that it's impossible for the, for the sauce tubers to be manipulated and allow. So this is a totally irresponsible thing for a scientist to say. I mean, it's really bad when scientists present themselves to public speaking in a professional capacity and assure the public of things that they cannot know are true. So Dr. Anderson could not have known what he said that it was impossible to neglect the virus, because there are many ways of manipulating viruses that leave no trace, I mean, the obvious one is you just grow them in cell culture you but passage them from one cell culture to another, and under this sort of fears, selective process makes a new function. So natural selection has done all the heavy lifting, but you cannot tell from the virus that comes out at the other end. And it's been subject to, to this selective process. Also, you can, you can now insert genetic elements in device or in devices without leaving a trace. The old methods did leave sort of fingerprints were the restriction enzymes that come with and our new very neat methods were not that new, called the Newseum metals, seamless method, you and you can insert, you can insert elements without leaving any trace at all. So what Anders and his colleagues was was saying was pure propaganda and completely untrue.

Nick Jikomes  43:29  
Okay, so you're saying it's not like he there was a subtle Miss, speaking of something he was saying things that were quite clearly not true. And I would imagine, if that was the case, it was in a place like nature medicine, that certainly other scientists, with the relevant expertise would have seen this and said something about it.

Nicholas Wade  43:47  
Well, that's a very good supposition. So the question is, why didn't they speak out? And I'm afraid there was you this, this goes to the structure of our current academic communities and in scientists, academics have tenure, and the public thinks, well, they've got tenure. They're totally independent. They can say what they like without without fear. But in fact, the opposite is the case because scientists especially rate dependent on their colleagues for getting grants for finding jobs for their students writing recommendations. So you hesitate strongly to say something that is unpopular or that maybe frowned on by the authorities. So here is a sort of emin Research Fund like Jeremy Feroz, you know, almost the equivalent of Francis Collins, anti fascist in the US. Your public saying this is a ridiculous conspiracy theory and he also undermining though enterprise if you say otherwise and no known in that circumstance is going to sort of stand out and say this paper by Andersen his colleagues is born. No one said a word the media was was slowed by it it despite the fact that major media outlets newspapers and television enterprise no have science journalists are supposed to be able to see through seed sheets through statements like this and treat that sources skeptically. In fact, they also lapped it up. And, and just repeated the the dogma that well, the consensus of the scientific community is this must certainly emerge naturally and snow, chances are rapidly then this, this view prevailed for a full year and a half.

Nick Jikomes  45:44  
Yeah, I actually remember when that article came out, and I just remember people pointing to it and saying, Hey, this is a piece from nature medicine, it says it says things are quite clear. You mentioned Peter datsik had a conflict of interest that he did not cite in that Lancet article, this Christian Anderson have any such conflict here?

Nicholas Wade  46:03  
Well, Anderson has a problem of much deeper kind, it seems to me, and this comes from rubber leads email on January 31, of, of, of 2020. Just after about two weeks after this sequence of songs, Kirby two first came to light. Amazon been vigorously studying it with the help of several colleagues. I didn't know at whose behest he done this probably he just don't know museum back maybe. But anyway, he was an email to Anthony Fauci saying that he and his colleagues had you download this he decided the virus was not natural. He I forget the exact phrase, but he said we it does not follow each week. It does not there's no, there's no evolutionary explanation for it. And he referred indirectly to the fearing cleavage site. So on January 31, Anderson was convinced, pretty much convinced the virus was manmade. Now another leaked email from Amazon. Four days later, he has changed his view 180 degrees. He is saying, lab leak is a ridiculous conspiracy theory. So you have to ask what made him change his mind. And know no one really knows. All we do know again from an emails is that there was a conference call, held the following day, organized by Farah and Fauci were present. And so was Anderson and Edie Holmes, who is one an English virologist who works in Australia and various other biologists. Now it's important to note that Fauci and Farah between them control a big part of all of our origin research funds available in the Western world. So if you're a research biologist, you're going to be very careful to listen to what they say and what they might want you to say. And it seems that we have no proof of this. But at this teleconference under seven homes that had unanimously they and two other people, they heard you guys he decided about his man made the evening before will tell. Sorry, guys, you've got the wrong answer, please think again. And learn how two days later, we have this email from Amazon saying this ridiculous thing. This is a conspiracy theory. So was there any new evidence that came to light? It seems there was not. And both Anderson and Farah in his book, make out that this process of deliberation was sort of Long's until the process weighing all the facts and analysis, many sleepless nights we spent on this Ferris. This does not square with the February 4 email from Anderson that says already, just two days after the conference, he changed his mind on race degrees. So this is the guy along with Holmes and two others who go off of the nature medicine article. They give the reader not the slightest hint that they had began began by thinking this forest was was man made, they do not do that. We'd have the courtesy of explaining that even though it looks manmade, and this is what we thought originally nonetheless, for reasons X, Y and Z in it comes to a conclusion that we'll be playing straight with the reader. They did not play straight.

Nick Jikomes  49:49  
The other question that comes up, is, you know, when you've got us agencies that are responsible for funding research why Why is it that the money's ending up at the Wuhan incident biology in China naively one might think that we're only going to be funding the US research. So what exactly are the dots that we can connect there? How does that work?

Nicholas Wade  50:12  
Well, I think there's some explanation for that, I mean, Fauci you you regards himself as responsible for a nightly search for protecting the US populace at least analysis to maybe from from outbreaks of new epidemics, but for the risk perspective, just not aware of the epidemic is concerned he wants to know about and try to prevent it. So we've already had so two epidemics coming out of these backpacks is so it seems to be a very natural a reasonable for research proposition for a factory to fund money into so trying to study these these bad populations and see what what else is in store for us and further, it was perfectly reasonable frame sir. Sponsor collaboration with Xi Zhang Li who's leading Chinese a Coronavirus, expert on all that seems perfectly reasonable. It's just that when you get down into the details, and you see that she was doing highly dangerous standard function experiments in memory safe conditions and oversee I was was Peter das and does not have a degree in virology. And and who knows whether or not he was competent to assess the risks, it's there that you'll begin to see a rather questionably executed research program. But there's a general framework, which takes graces every reasonable, it seems to me,

Nick Jikomes  51:40  
I see. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So if we're interested in preventing outbreaks that can occur anywhere in the world, and often start outside the US. We those agencies have the authority to fund research that's not happening in the US because, because we might just want to know about it, where it's gonna start elsewhere. Right. So talk to us more about Dr. Shi. So what's her background? And how did she sort of get into this position and, and what's sort of the general umbrella of research going on at the Wuhan Institute of Neurology

Nicholas Wade  52:10  
when she, she is a very, very capable of virologist, she trained with the French. And then she worked with Ralph barrack, at the University of North Carolina, and he's the leading American experts on coronaviruses. And then having run a lot of, of techniques from direction, she went back to the Wuhan Institute, where she's had her own lab and she's started working on on these bad viruses. She, she identified the the cave where viruses existed almost certainly were the source of the SARS one virus that was a big, big achievement. And since then, she's been back many times to caves to collect viruses. And in particular, she went back to a cave in Murcia, where there was an incident in 2012, where six miners who are some digging out backwater, and heavily exposed to to bat viruses became very seriously ill and three of them died, and the other three raised seriously sick. So this is a very important incident which she has tried to cover up. But nonetheless was ascertained by about by other means. So she was she was working with these potentially lethal viruses that had killed the mind as though these viruses were not transmitted by them minus to anyone else. So they lacked transmissibility, but they were lethal. And this seems to have been what has occupied she ever since.

Nick Jikomes  53:59  
I want to paint a better picture for people to about some of the research that happens here. We've touched on some things before, we've talked about things like humanized mice. So the idea is, you know, people are going around the world, they're going into these bat caves and scooping up, you know, bat viruses and other things. They're bringing all of these things back to the lab, then they want to do various experiments that help teach us about how these how these viruses work, how they might naturally hop from one species to another. And all of this is done in good faith, right? It's all done with the idea of of actually preventing a kind of outbreak from happening. But when they get back to the lab, and they're infecting human cells in a dish with viruses or they're using humanized mice, what exactly does that mean what is a humanized mouse?

Nicholas Wade  54:45  
What is a mouse some a genetically engineered to carry the AC two receptor, the human version of it in his mind, the mice were I'm developed I believe by Ralph barrack. And he gave some to she and that's what she's been working with say in effect, they're like, the like the little humans, as far as, as far as a virus infectivity experiment is concerned.

Nick Jikomes  55:23  
I see so we can genetically engineer mice. So that part of their body, some of their cells, basically look or act just like human cells. And I would imagine if you are working with viruses that become adapted to such an animal, they're now sort of pre adapted to infecting humans, and therefore, they can more easily spill over into humans.

Nicholas Wade  55:43  
Oh, yes, that's exactly true.

Nick Jikomes  55:46  
So at this point, at this point in time today, is it fair to say we don't there's no smoking gun? We don't actually know if this was a wildlife spillover for certain and we don't actually know if it was a lab like for certain, we actually are lacking some of that that key evidence that would tell us with certainty whether it was one or the other?

Nicholas Wade  56:04  
Yes, I agree with the way that we've got two hypotheses on the table, both very plausible. We've got no direct evidence for either so. So we should keep both in, in mind. Um, but we do have quite a lot of circumstantial evidence in favor of lab leak, and in particular, this DARPA proposal, establishing the rule, and researchers were thinking of inserting fearing cleavage sites into mad viruses.

Nick Jikomes  56:31  
Yeah, so they were at the very least contemplating that they could make a virus just like this, they could insert that Furin cleavage site exactly as we see it in the viral genome at exactly the right place. And this is not right. This was not like a new technique or new proposal, right? This is something that has been done in other circumstances.

Nicholas Wade  56:50  
Right, right. vouchers name some time that this is a good way to soup up viruses. So there are at least 10 or 11 experiments in the literature, including I believe, one by Dr. Shi enrich fearing claimants rights have been inserted into viruses.

Nick Jikomes  57:05  
So what would what would a smoking gun look like? What what kind of evidence are we looking for? And where might we find it?

Nicholas Wade  57:13  
Well, I suppose the real smoking gun would be the vowel backbone into which this spike protein and the fear in cleavage shine, we're in search. So let's assume that the sound was generated in the lab or one of these experiments you described, which you're trying to sort of trace or predict the possible spirit parts of spillover from bats to humans. So you would take a particular virus as your as your so background virus, and the will is it has, we know that they have at least 100 of these viruses that they have not published that are that are in their databank, so that they could have used, and then they take a spike protein from some other virus and insert it into this background. a smoking gun will be the records of such an experiment, and in particular, particular, the virus which they used as the as the backbone, I think, along with lab records. Of course, it's not very likely the Chinese authorities ever going to allow that to happen. So I think if you're, if we're looking for proof, we're going to at some stage have to be satisfied with something a notch short of proof.

Nick Jikomes  58:35  
And what would what would prove of a natural wildlife spillover scenario look like?

Nicholas Wade  58:41  
Well, that would be very easy to obtain. In the case of, of South one, for example, we have we have the intermediary host we're carrying the virus we have a human or human epidemiologist showing the virus of gathering mutations. So one by one, we have we can see that the virus made the jump to human several times. And this is something that doesn't necessarily happen just once if it's gonna happen rhetorical happened several times. So in both the size one and merge epidemics, we can see these several jumps been being making being made. Whereas it sounds to you know, there was only a single episode that gave rise to the whole epidemic. So there's all kinds of proof that we have financial can be obtained for natural emergence.

Nick Jikomes  59:37  
And I would imagine so when you're looking for like that intermediate host, I think you mentioned before that was SARS one and MERS It took months less than a year but months to find that intermediate host species. We have not found such a species for SARS to yet that doesn't mean we won't find one but I imagine people have been looking quite hard because there's so many people motivated to find such a population. Is that accurate?

Nicholas Wade  59:59  
I exactly seven Chinese authorities have every incentive to produce the evidence for the intermediary species, we can be sure that they have been looking hard, but they've come up with nothing so far.

Nick Jikomes  1:00:11  
So how do we think about how to, there seems like a huge problem that's probably intrinsic to the very structure of a lot of the institutions that we've mentioned, that has to do with responsibility? And who, how we can allocate responsibility for things like this. So you know, whether or not it's a natural origin or a lab, like what groups or institutions should be held responsible, at least in part for this pandemic, in your view?

Nicholas Wade  1:00:40  
Well, I think one should probably start with, with the virology community as a whole. You know, I think they've let us down with respect to the general standards in the scientific community for coping with this kind of thing. And if I didn't, if I remember the Asilomar conference in 1975, that was when the recombinant DNA technique at first we invented. So the scientists who invented that were very open and upfront, they publicly declared this is a new technique it has made, it has potentially a serious consequences, we're going to hold a big meeting to discuss what should be done about it, which which they did the meeting was public, they then set very high safety standards, the idea they could be relaxed in future if the danger proved less serious than thought. And that's indeed what happened. This is a race, sensible and responsible way of dealing with a new technique. And I think sometimes you can point to other incidents where scientists have done the same thing and more so same thing is happening with Gene drives right now. But the biologists would they again, have fun function problem, it seems to me can be much more covert, they've handled it behind doors, the whole regulatory procedure is totally opaque. No one knows who makes the decisions or experiments can be done and what cannot be done. They've simply gone a different route. And I think professionals that fail to regulate themselves deserve to get regulated by others. And I think I think we should look at how the biologic community has handled this, I think we're going to see that there was this split, as he mentioned, the split was not resolved. And things are carried on very uncomfortably, since in a way that has allowed this lab leak if such it was to occur, I think that's the first place we should look for responsibility. And other places as an obscure committee of the CDC, as I understand it, that assigns each pathogen to its appropriate safety level. So it's on the basis of that committee that that you saw as one must be handled in safety level three, but any SARS related virus only in level two, it seems to me that that committee should have someone overseeing it and saying, Look, guys, any virus related to SARS should be handled in level four, no matter the inconvenience caused your members.

Nick Jikomes  1:03:19  
I see. So So you've stated that, you know, when, if the scientists themselves are, are going to be granted the right to come up with the way that they themselves are going to handle research, that how the rules, the rules, and the procedures and the precautionary measures they come up with should be done transparently in a way that's publicly visible. And that has been done in the past in other fields, but it has not been done more recently with Ghana function research by the virology community.

Nicholas Wade  1:03:46  
Yeah, that's my opinion. It may be misinformed. But just from following this issue, it seems the biologists have not handled this, this issue with the transparency that you that you rightly says is necessary to keep the public's trust.

Nick Jikomes  1:04:01  
Yeah, another thing that occurs to me that that applies here, but it's not specific to virology is just just the general the the way that one goes about getting and justifying getting a grant to do scientific research, you know, generally speaking, when you're writing a grant, it's a very labor intensive process. In fact, most lab had spent a majority of their time writing grants and doing things related to raising that money, because that's what keeps all of the research going. And it's actually also how universities generate a lot of revenue, because so much of that money just goes right to the university. But the way that you basically get a grant, the way that you write a good grant, is you have to make it very clear that your research is very important. And the way that you typically justify that your research is very important, is that you're either going to prevent something very bad from happening, or that you're working with something very deadly. That could lead to something very bad if the grant doesn't get funded. And you know, it's been sort of easy to see as you've unpacked the story for us how the virology community itself is almost incentivized to try and you know, come as close as they can to creating the very bugs that we're now dealing with in this pandemic. And it seems to me that the incentives are aligned in that way. And that if the structure of that system doesn't change at all, this is sort of bound to happen.

Nicholas Wade  1:05:21  
Well, that's a very subtle point, the right identify. And indeed, it's the is the contention of many of the critics of this research that this, this is the main reason why it's done. It's not to save the world from epidemics. It's a wonderful excuse for raising money and doing dangerous experiments, which can be assured of publication in Science or nature.

Nick Jikomes  1:05:42  
Interesting. One of the last things I'll simply ask you about is, you know, what can be done on the US side by the authorities here? If we really wanted to get to the bottom of this, there was a quote I picked out from one of your articles and medium and it said, If Congress were at all interested in the origins of the virus, why would it not subpoena Dr. Dow sec to turn over all of his records and explain under oath, everything he knows about the research he funded at the Wuhan Institute of neurology, so that is presumably something that could easily easily be done? Do you think it's likely that that that will happen?

Nicholas Wade  1:06:16  
I think it's quite possible that it will happen. And the reason that it's being prevented from rise, though, is that this is bizarre, it becomes such a partisan issue. I mean, for you and me, it's just a scientific issue. And an all we want is the scientific facts to come out. But because the origin question became polarized, is starting with Trump's statement. So if Trump's in it came from the World Health lab, therefore it couldn't have done this was his own school by logic that seems to prevail in in our major museums and in Congress. Therefore, there's has been a sort of political split on this issue. So it's because the way the cookie has crumbled, the left is against lab leak, and the writers for it, I mean, it couldn't have been the other way around. But that's the way it's come out totally arbitrary. So a present that the left in Congress is blocking the rights attempt to find out what that second NIH knows, but in fact, in in das act records, and after he was the principal investigator, he must have had copious information and progress reports streaming back to him from the wilhem Institute of virology. He has, he has the the topper proposal, goodness knows what else earnings records, and since it's all public money, presumably, it's in subject to congressional subpoenas. So it just beats the heck out of me Why? Congress is not interested enough to do that. And similarly, the NIH must have lots of information it hasn't shared with us and so NIH and Ico have been the largest to so sit tight and and stone more responsible inquiry into the origins of the virus, I can't think this will be allowed to continue for much longer. I hope he does.

Nick Jikomes  1:08:20  
Well, what would you say? You know, some people have articulated the view that it doesn't really matter how this pandemic got started. The fact is, it's here. And we have to deal with it. What does it matter one way or the other? If it was a wildlife spillover or a lab leak? What would be your response to that?

Nicholas Wade  1:08:37  
I think obviously, it matters a great deal, because our response depends on the on on the origin. And if it originated to lab Lee as one large set of things you have to do and emerge naturally them as a totally different set of remedies.

Nick Jikomes  1:08:57  
So what are you going to be looking for in the coming weeks and months? that's related to resolving this issue? Is there anything on the horizon in terms of, you know, documents that we might gain access to? or other things? Or is it possible that no new information will come out? And this will never be fully resolved? How are you thinking about the way this plays out?

Nicholas Wade  1:09:20  
Well, I started off with that with a pessimistic assumption, your version, there's only so much we'll get we'll never get any more information. But so each month, it seems there's some new revelation, I mean, enormously good work has been done by these little press, organizations that put in freedom of information, requests and after so long battles, so extract the information from the government. So we read at least three lots of emails extracted in this way all over she provides important information that the the dhaba proposal from data which is Late last week, that went to another enormously important group is a little collective of, of scientists who call themselves drastic. And, and they have done amazing work at traveling the internet delving into some shiny, obscure Chinese Master's theses to see what experiments were done when and by by whom they've been enormously fruitful source of information, and put out intelligence communities to shame, it seems to me, haven't been able to make up their mind whether it's what was not happened at the beginning of the epidemic. So since since birth, both of these sources have been very fruitful, I continue to hope that more information will continue to come out.

Nick Jikomes  1:10:56  
Well, Nicholas, Wade, thank you for your time, I want to make sure that we get you out of here in short order, any final thoughts you want to leave people with about everything that we've discussed? Anything that you want to say about the stuff that you've written about this or any new work that you might have coming out?

Nicholas Wade  1:11:13  
I think my principal observation is is how strange it has been that our institutions summation institutions have failed us in exploring the origins of this virus, and after what could be a more important story than others virus came about. And yet, our media has been asleep with the switch. They didn't. They hardly mentioned blackberry until about a year and a half after the epidemic broke up. I think our intelligence agencies, as far as I can see, have been similar and neglectful. I've been similar sort of persuaded by the propaganda campaign, presumably Chinese in origin, that we don't know that that library was a ridiculous conspiracy theory. I think scientific community has failed us by failing to come forward for the reasons we discussed, their biology community in particular, has failed to blow the whistle on the false information that they've allowed and sinners to give the public so in one place after another people have, have not behaved as they should have done that. Our society sort of depends on the health of its institutions on each institution, performing its assigned function. If they don't do that, then as is at the fabric of society, just sort of tasos I didn't know what was I didn't really understand why this has happened. But I just hope it doesn't happen again.

Nick Jikomes  1:12:48  
Because Wait, thank you for your time.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:50  
Thanks.