Origin Resolved? 'Smoking Gun' Evidence Shows COVID-19 Deliberately Engineered in Chinese Lab, Scientist Says

A British professor who addressed the UN recently and suggested COVID-19 may have originated in a Chinese laboratory claimed to have evidence that has reached “the level of a smoking gun.”

Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist from Rutgers University, raised the possibility that the virus responsible for millions of deaths worldwide could have been artificially created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Ebright pointed to evidence from a 2018 document from the lab, indicating the potential manipulation of a virus to enhance its transmissibility to humans.

“[The document] elevates the evidence provided by the genome sequence from the level of noteworthy to the level of a smoking gun,” Ebright said in the article.

The document, associated with a grant proposal named Project DEFUSE, outlined experiments to engineer bat coronaviruses.

Although the proposal was rejected by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, there are suspicions that similar research might have been conducted in Wuhan with Chinese government support.

Nicholas Wade, a former science editor at The New York Times, suggested that viruses developed according to the DEFUSE protocol could have been available around the time when COVID-19 emerged between August and November 2019.

Wade also highlighted the unique genetic features of the coronavirus, indicating its potential laboratory origin.

Unlike most viruses, which require adaptation to infect humans, SARS-CoV-2 seemed preadapted for human transmission, resembling the conditions outlined in the DEFUSE protocol.

While the debate over the pandemic's origins continues, Ebright pointed to the EcoHealth Alliance's controversial research as potentially contributing to COVID-19's development.

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The release of the 2018 documents through a Freedom of Information Act request shed light on proposals to modify bat coronaviruses for increased transmissibility. Safety concerns at the Wuhan lab were noted, indicating conditions below US standards.

Dr. Filippa Lentzos, an associate professor at King's College London, stressed the need for stricter regulations in pandemic research during a UN session.

Lentzos presented findings from the Independent Task Force on Research with Pandemic Risks, urging global adherence to rigorous safety standards to prevent future outbreaks. Despite uncertainties surrounding COVID-19's origins, Lentzos emphasized the importance of learning from past events to prevent future ambiguous incidents, The Telegraph reported.