Coronavirus Lab-Leak Theory Gets Another Look

[WaveHunter]

3 hours ago, xylophone said:

So taking that point of yours, let's just say for argument sake that virus is proven to have escaped from a lab..............now what?

 

The virus is out there and we have to deal with it, and pointing the finger at one lab or another source is not going to help one iota, and it's worth bearing in mind that there have been more than 40 leaks of various viruses and diseases from laboratories around the world in the last century (that we know of), including, plague, smallpox, Ebola, H1N1, anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, Marburg virus, West Nile virus, SARS, Dengue, Zika virus, brucellosis and others, some many times over, and perhaps many more which have never been discovered.

 

These laboratories are out there trying to determine from whence various diseases originated, how they spread and how they might be dealt with/cured, so even if it is established that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, then it won't stop hundreds of other laboratories around the world carrying out similar work.

 

So other than tightening up on the security of these laboratories, there's not much else we can do, because research work on these diseases/viruses will surely continue.

 

And on that note, researchers have found 24 new coronaviruses in bats, including one which is the second closest genetically to Covid 19.

Any virologist or epidemiologist will tell you that the most important thing to know about a virus in order to prevent a similar event from happening again is knowing it's actual origin.  There is nothing more important than that.

 

If it were from a lab leak, then serious measure need to be taken not only in lab security protocols, but more importantly in curtailing the type of gain-of-function research that may have led to this. 

 

There are many beneficial forms of gain-of-function research, but those with such dire consequences should a lab leak occur should just be totally unacceptable and banned by the world community. 

 

I mean, if this actually came from the Wuhan lab, just thing of the almost 4 million people who have died as a direct result of this, and the untold trillions of dollars it has costs the world economy.  Preventing this from happening again is of paramount importance, and so knowing the true origin is essential to that.

[WaveHunter]

5 hours ago, candide said:

So the question which is usually left unanswered: what are these sources from which you get your information because they are unbiased?

You can't always know if a source is truly unbiased, but it's often easy to know when it is.  Almost all mainstream media in the US is truly biased and hardly a source of the truth.  I speak of media giants like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for instance.

 

On the other hand, sources that you can expect to be much less biased are those like peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals such as The Lancet for instance.

 

Often though you just have to take in all kinds of information from dubious sources, some that you may agree with, and just as importantly some that you do not agree with, and then use your own common sense to decide what to trust and what not to trust.

 

The most important thing though is not to accept what anyone else tells you is the truth.  That's something you need to decide ENTIRELY on your own, after you've really done due diligence at exploring all different perspectives, becuase until you've really taken the time and energy to do that, you can never really decide what is true and what is not.

 

Most people just don't have the time or patience to do that and merely rely on their favorite news source to do that for them. 

 

Well, maybe there was a time you could trust the media to do that, like back in the days of legitimate journalists like Walter Cronkite, but these days when news anchors are only commentators and not legitimate journalists; people like Anderson Cooper of CNN, Sean Hannity of Fox, or Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, all you're getting is sensationalism and heavily biased opinion, nothing more, and certainly nothing that resembles the truth.

 

At least that's how it see it, and the way I try to form my own opinions on things in general.

Edited June 17, 2021 by WaveHunter

[xylophone]

25 minutes ago, WaveHunter said:

Any virologist or epidemiologist will tell you that the most important thing to know about a virus in order to prevent a similar event from happening again is knowing it's actual origin.  There is nothing more important than that.

 

If it were from a lab leak, then serious measure need to be taken not only in lab security protocols, but more importantly in curtailing the type of gain-of-function research that may have led to this. 

 

There are many beneficial forms of gain-of-function research, but those with such dire consequences should a lab leak occur should just be totally unacceptable and banned by the world community. 

 

I mean, if this actually came from the Wuhan lab, just thing of the almost 4 million people who have died as a direct result of this, and the untold trillions of dollars it has costs the world economy.  Preventing this from happening again is of paramount importance, and so knowing the true origin is essential to that.

It is part of the research that goes on in labs worldwide..."This research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics". So it is designed to help protect us in the future.

[atpeace]

10 hours ago, xylophone said:

It is part of the research that goes on in labs worldwide..."This research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics". So it is designed to help protect us in the future.

Most, not only you, are well aware of the supposed objectives of the lab.  If your feeling are hurt because the "conspiracy" is quite possibly true, get over it as I did.   Your earlier post supports sticking your head in the sand and march happily on until the next accident.   Accidents happen even with the best of intentions. 

 

I for one, support gain of function research but maybe not after learning more.  In the end, doesn't matter if I support it or not, IMO it is going to happen for good and bad reasons.  If it is confirmed that it was the cause of millions of deaths, don't you think the facilities doing it might dramatically decrease the possibilities of a future accident of this magnitude?

Edited June 17, 2021 by atpeace

[placeholder]

13 hours ago, WaveHunter said:

You can't always know if a source is truly unbiased, but it's often easy to know when it is.  Almost all mainstream media in the US is truly biased and hardly a source of the truth.  I speak of media giants like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for instance.

 

On the other hand, sources that you can expect to be much less biased are those like peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals such as The Lancet for instance.

 

Often though you just have to take in all kinds of information from dubious sources, some that you may agree with, and just as importantly some that you do not agree with, and then use your own common sense to decide what to trust and what not to trust.

 

The most important thing though is not to accept what anyone else tells you is the truth.  That's something you need to decide ENTIRELY on your own, after you've really done due diligence at exploring all different perspectives, becuase until you've really taken the time and energy to do that, you can never really decide what is true and what is not.

 

Most people just don't have the time or patience to do that and merely rely on their favorite news source to do that for them. 

 

Well, maybe there was a time you could trust the media to do that, like back in the days of legitimate journalists like Walter Cronkite, but these days when news anchors are only commentators and not legitimate journalists; people like Anderson Cooper of CNN, Sean Hannity of Fox, or Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, all you're getting is sensationalism and heavily biased opinion, nothing more, and certainly nothing that resembles the truth.

 

At least that's how it see it, and the way I try to form my own opinions on things in general.

The thing is. lots of people who claim to be interested in the truth, are using the VAERS as a source of evidence. Without highly sophisticated statistical techiques followed by actual physical follow through, it's useless. It's just being used as fuel for motivated reasoning.

[xylophone]

3 hours ago, atpeace said:

Most, not only you, are well aware of the supposed objectives of the lab.  If your feeling are hurt because the "conspiracy" is quite possibly true, get over it as I did.   Your earlier post supports sticking your head in the sand and march happily on until the next accident.   Accidents happen even with the best of intentions. 

 

I for one, support gain of function research but maybe not after learning more.  In the end, doesn't matter if I support it or not, IMO it is going to happen for good and bad reasons.  If it is confirmed that it was the cause of millions of deaths, don't you think the facilities doing it might dramatically decrease the possibilities of a future accident of this magnitude?

Strange post, because you support everything that I have said previously, and yes accidents do happen and they have since time immemorial, and hopefully processes and procedures are put in place to prevent further accidents/leaks, but because humans are involved, it's possible that there will be another episode like this especially where gain of function processes are involved.

 

It's a risky business on the cutting edge of technology, so hopefully it will benefit mankind in the future.

 

And I really don't know where you're coming from with your sentence, "if you're feeling hurt because the conspiracy is quite possibly true, get over it as I did". I feel no hurt and was merely stating what I believe and what may prove to be factual!
 

[atpeace]

3 minutes ago, xylophone said:

Strange post, because you support everything that I have said previously, and yes accidents do happen and they have since time immemorial, and hopefully processes and procedures are put in place to prevent further accidents/leaks, but because humans are involved, it's possible that there will be another episode like this especially where gain of function processes are involved.

 

It's a risky business on the cutting edge of technology, so hopefully it will benefit mankind in the future.

 

And I really don't know where you're coming from with your sentence, "if you're feeling hurt because the conspiracy is quite possibly true, get over it as I did". I feel no hurt and was merely stating what I believe and what may prove to be factual!
 

I might have mistook you as a person that posted that finding the source of this pandemic( finger pointing I think is what was stated ) is pointless.  I can't find the post and if I'm wrong I sincerely apologize.  

[xylophone]

Just now, atpeace said:

I might have mistook you as a person that posted that finding the source of this pandemic( finger pointing I think is what was stated ) is pointless.  I can't find the post and if I'm wrong I sincerely apologize.  

Thank you for your apology, although I have to admit that in one of my posts I did allude to the fact that "finger-pointing" was going to do nothing to alleviate the situation, however I also did infer that a tightening of processes and procedures could ensue.

 

I also included over 40 instances of incidents where viruses and bacteria had "escaped" from laboratories around the world, so despite the fact that we all try to make these things as safe as possible, human error is always a possibility, although in this case, if indeed it was the case, it has been disastrous.

 

Way off track I know, but I consider this along the lines of nuclear power, something which I don't wholeheartedly agree with, but the powers that be have decided that this is the way of the future, despite the fact that the nuclear waste generated will most probably cause damage to future generations. Despite safety measures, and double safety measures and just about everything else you can think of, we have had nuclear leaks, so nothing is failsafe I'm afraid.
 

[WaveHunter]

4 hours ago, atpeace said:

Most, not only you, are well aware of the supposed objectives of the lab.  If your feeling are hurt because the "conspiracy" is quite possibly true, get over it as I did.   Your earlier post supports sticking your head in the sand and march happily on until the next accident.   Accidents happen even with the best of intentions. 

 

I for one, support gain of function research but maybe not after learning more.  In the end, doesn't matter if I support it or not, IMO it is going to happen for good and bad reasons.  If it is confirmed that it was the cause of millions of deaths, don't you think the facilities doing it might dramatically decrease the possibilities of a future accident of this magnitude?

It's not at all unreasonable to support gain-of -function research.  It obviously serves an important purpose.  However, since the whole goal of such research is to intentionally alter a virus to be highly virulent and transmissible specifically to to humans, extraordinary safety measures need to be taken to prevent an accidental release.  The present measures have not proved sufficient in many biolabs all around the world, and China has a particularly poor record.

 

In the case of Chinese labs, those measures have proven to be very poor, with a history of a number of serious security breaches in their Bio Level-3 labs.  For instance, the SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times over the years (see https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21487)

 

The Wuhan lab is the first bio-level 4 lab in China and was designed to study the world’s most dangerous pathogens.  Given the safety history of Chinese Bio level 3 labs in China, it's a valid question to consider whether it has been held to a higher standard or not.

 

Considering that over 5 million deaths have occured and untold trillions of dollars have been lost to the worldwide economy as a result of Covid-19, it only makes sense that bio-level 4 labs, designed to study the world’s most dangerous pathogens, there needs to be:

 

•  incredibly high safety standards far beyond the current standards for bio-level 4 labs

 

•  The research at such labs should be overseen by a worldwide organization with the power to ban or at least heavily sanction research that is simply too dangerous to conduct, similar to the WHO but absolutely not the present WHO (for reasons that should be obvious to any objective thinking person)

 

If these matters are not addressed, then it's probably only a matter of time before we have a truly horrendous pandemic that will make Covid-19 seem like a walk in the park by comparison.

 

Edited June 18, 2021 by WaveHunter

[poskat]

14 hours ago, xylophone said:

It is part of the research that goes on in labs worldwide..."This research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics". So it is designed to help protect us in the future.

It seems that the only emerging diseases in recent years are those that have been conferred infectiousness in the lab. It could be argued that virology had a pretty good handle on the viruses that affected humans, and GoF experiments began because the other research roads were now dead ends, i.e. a solution in search of a problem.

 

the results from viruses escaping these labs and causing widespread infections are well known.

would you enlighten us on the benefits that have emerged from the GoF experiments?

 

you can start with those associated with the GoF experiments done in the Wuhan lab, especially regarding vaccines and therapeutics.

[xylophone]

28 minutes ago, poskat said:

It seems that the only emerging diseases in recent years are those that have been conferred infectiousness in the lab. It could be argued that virology had a pretty good handle on the viruses that affected humans, and GoF experiments began because the other research roads were now dead ends, i.e. a solution in search of a problem.

 

the results from viruses escaping these labs and causing widespread infections are well known.

would you enlighten us on the benefits that have emerged from the GoF experiments?

 

you can start with those associated with the GoF experiments done in the Wuhan lab, especially regarding vaccines and therapeutics.

There you go......fill your boots.

 

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21666/potential-risks-and-benefits-of-gain-of-function-research-summary

 

Research using Gain-of-Function (GoF) techniques is no different with respect to what it can achieve in the long term, at least according to many of the symposium participants. Atlas noted that, although there was no attempt to achieve a consensus, no disagreement was voiced to the repeated claims of various presenters that in the short term GoF research is helpful for adapting viruses to growth in culture and for developing essential animal models for emerging pathogens, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and escape mutations.

 

https://www.nap.edu/read/21666/chapter/5

 

Gain-of-function (GOF) research typically involves mutations that confer altered functionality of a protein or other molecule. These types of mutations have been used as powerful tools to understand basic bacterial and viral biology and pathogen-host interactions. Despite the recency of a public debate, GOF research has constituted a common, long-standing practice in the discipline of microbiology. In recent years, a public discussion has surfaced, centering on the application of GOF research to highly pathogenic and potentially lethal viruses [1]. Despite the emergence of this public dialogue, much of it has been steered by members of the microbiology and policy communities. There remains room for additional input from clinical and public health practitioners, who are often the end users of the products GOF research yields. As the results from GOF research are salient to both the improved understanding of disease pathogenesis and the development of medical countermeasures to infectious diseases, the debate over its safety and value is of direct relevance to medical and public health practitioners. This review article will provide a historical context for the current debate, describe the potential risks and benefits of this type of experimental study, and present some examples of how GOF research translates into tangible products of use to practicing clinicians.

 

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/213/9/1364/2459266

 

 

[xylophone]

PS. To my last post................

 

Another thing worth remembering about the laboratories like this one, and others out there which are owned by companies, or not as the case may be, is that they are there primarily for research and if something becomes of their research, then great it has been money well spent.

 

Drug companies and governments spend billions of dollars every year on disease and drug research, and many times after many years of trial and error, some drugs just never make it to the finished state and are abandoned, in fact the greater percentage of drugs never make it to market, and those that do can be expensive because of the many years of work that have gone into them. It is therefore quite possible that this lab has produced very little of anything that can be of use now, but the work still goes on, and as @atpeace has said, work must be done to safeguard against other events like this.

 

I don't know much about the laboratory in Wuhan apart from the fact it has been blamed for the Covid 19 leak, but suffice it to say that a few organisations and governments have pumped millions of dollars into this lab over the years to further the work that they are doing, so it must be considered important.

 

[Meat Pie 47]

Covid-19 lab leak evidence ‘overwhelming’, experts say

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/covid19-lab-leak-evidence-overwhelming-experts-say/news-story/d8fa0dd0b3469efa3bfb5788b0459e3a

make up your own mind

[tgw]

Quote

“At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn’t want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins,” Alina Chan, who was one of 18 scientists who published a letter in the journal Science last month calling for more in-depth investigation into the virus’ origin, told NBC.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/covid19-lab-leak-evidence-overwhelming-experts-say/news-story/d8fa0dd0b3469efa3bfb5788b0459e3a

 

how stupid is that? putting politics above the truth!

 

but the article nicely explains that the virus probably comes from a lab.

 

Quote

But Professor Dominic Dwyer, director of public health pathology in NSW, who was part of the 17-strong international team of experts on the WHO team in January, remains sceptical of the lab leak theory.

“The lab leak sits there, but you need some sort of evidence to take it further,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald this month.

Prof Dwyer said the key flaw in the hypothesis was that there was no evidence the Wuhan Institute of Virology had the SARS-CoV-2 virus before the pandemic – and that it was unlikely they would have had the virus and not published a paper about it.

 

well, how long does it take to write, peer-review and publish an article? what would happen to such article and research materials when infected people get noticed in November 2019? wouldn't everything be halted and then deleted a few months later

 

Edited June 18, 2021 by tgw

[Susco]

10 minutes ago, tgw said:

how stupid is that? putting politics above the truth!

 

Is that news to you?

[tgw]

1 minute ago, Susco said:

Is that news to you?

 

sadly no, but I had hoped scientists were different.

[Susco]

5 hours ago, xylophone said:

Drug companies and governments spend billions of dollars every year on disease and drug research, and many times after many years of trial and error, some drugs just never make it to the finished state and are abandoned, in fact the greater percentage of drugs never make it to market, and those that do can be expensive because of the many years of work that have gone into them.

 

You just brought a tear to my glass eye.

 

Those poor Pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable in the corporate world.

 

Add to that, the billions the governments spent on research, is our money.

Edited June 18, 2021 by Susco

[Jeffr2]

9 hours ago, Meat Pie 47 said:

Covid-19 lab leak evidence ‘overwhelming’, experts say

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/covid19-lab-leak-evidence-overwhelming-experts-say/news-story/d8fa0dd0b3469efa3bfb5788b0459e3a

make up your own mind

This is from a few journalists and an opinion piece in the media.  A vast majority of scientists say it did not come from a lab.  Go figure.

[Jeffr2]

8 hours ago, Susco said:

 

You just brought a tear to my glass eye.

 

Those poor Pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable in the corporate world.

 

Add to that, the billions the governments spent on research, is our money.

But a few have lost big bucks with their failed jabs.  Ya win some and ya lose some.

[WaveHunter]

21 hours ago, xylophone said:

There you go......fill your boots.

 

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21666/potential-risks-and-benefits-of-gain-of-function-research-summary

 

Research using Gain-of-Function (GoF) techniques is no different with respect to what it can achieve in the long term, at least according to many of the symposium participants. Atlas noted that, although there was no attempt to achieve a consensus, no disagreement was voiced to the repeated claims of various presenters that in the short term GoF research is helpful for adapting viruses to growth in culture and for developing essential animal models for emerging pathogens, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and escape mutations.

 

https://www.nap.edu/read/21666/chapter/5

 

Gain-of-function (GOF) research typically involves mutations that confer altered functionality of a protein or other molecule. These types of mutations have been used as powerful tools to understand basic bacterial and viral biology and pathogen-host interactions. Despite the recency of a public debate, GOF research has constituted a common, long-standing practice in the discipline of microbiology. In recent years, a public discussion has surfaced, centering on the application of GOF research to highly pathogenic and potentially lethal viruses [1]. Despite the emergence of this public dialogue, much of it has been steered by members of the microbiology and policy communities. There remains room for additional input from clinical and public health practitioners, who are often the end users of the products GOF research yields. As the results from GOF research are salient to both the improved understanding of disease pathogenesis and the development of medical countermeasures to infectious diseases, the debate over its safety and value is of direct relevance to medical and public health practitioners. This review article will provide a historical context for the current debate, describe the potential risks and benefits of this type of experimental study, and present some examples of how GOF research translates into tangible products of use to practicing clinicians.

 

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/213/9/1364/2459266

 

 

I'm not sure what point you are making since you are only reciting what Gain of Function Research (GoFR) is intended to accomplish, but there are huge ethical questions that people should be aware of, and that really need to be addressed much better than they currently are.

 

These ethical questions are not just academic becuase they have unimaginable real world consequences.  I mean, if this pandemic turns out to be the result of a lab leak, we're talking about close to 5 million deaths and untold trillions of dollars lost to the world economy. 

 

Future lab manipulation of the most deadly pathogens could have far greater consequences, and make the present pandemic seem like just a walk in the park.

 

Most people were not even aware of Gain of Function research until it started being discussed with regard to the Wuhan Lab, but this controlversity about it in the scientific community has been a major topic of concern for a long time before Wuhan.

 

There is an excellent discussion of the ethical side of such research in great detail, and it's worth a read by anyone who really wants to form an objective opinion of whether or not such research is valid in its' present form.  It was published in 2016 in Science and Engineering Ethics Journal, and can be read fully on PubMed:

 

Gain-of-Function Research: Ethical Analysis    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4996883/

Edited June 19, 2021 by WaveHunter

[Harry Om]

"Why all the dismissals?

 

It appears to be a classic example of groupthink, exacerbated by partisan polarization.

 

The result, as Yglesias called it, was a bubble of fake consensus. Scientists who thought a lab leak was plausible, like Chan, received little attention. Scientists who thought the theory was wacky received widespread attention. It’s a good reminder: The world is a complicated place, where almost nobody is always right or always wrong."

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/briefing/lab-leak-theory-covid-origins.html

[Harry Om]

Many people that refer to "scientists debunked it" are relying on the much publicised Lancet letter.

 

"It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted  by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”"

 

https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038

 

That's the same Peter Daszak who was on the WHO investigations team, who didn't bother to ask the Wuhan lab about bats..... funny about that.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 6/17/2021 at 3:28 PM, WaveHunter said:

Journalism is no longer the "Fourth Estate" that traditionally served the vital function of holding governments and other powerful interests accountable to the public.  Instead, news media outlets have become a purely commercial enterprise and often a propaganda tool for powerful interests.

Exactly. Which is why I no longer trust any tv so called news. IMO it's more about ratings ( ie ad revenue ) than reporting facts.

I used to listen a lot to talk back radio, but since they started having a man and a woman hosting it's become more about chat and BS than exploring what is going on, so I gave that up too.

 

The only tv news that I give any credence to now is Al Jazira, but even they had overt bias during the Trump years. I look at Fox for the entertainment ( some of them still have a sense of humour ) and CNN to remind myself how bad media can be.

Actually, despite the obvious bias, RT can come up with some interesting documentaries.

[thaibeachlovers]

2 hours ago, Jeffr2 said:

This is from a few journalists and an opinion piece in the media.  A vast majority of scientists say it did not come from a lab.  Go figure.

They'd rather believe it came from eating a bat?

The lab theory has more credibility and we ( mostly ) know why it was debunked, but as that's political can't be discussed on here.

[WaveHunter]

2 hours ago, Jeffr2 said:

This is from a few journalists and an opinion piece in the media.  A vast majority of scientists say it did not come from a lab.  Go figure.

That's not true at all.  There is growing consensus among many well regarded scientists that the virus has been engineered in certain ways by humans, and not the result of a natural zoonotic crossover from animals to humans. 

 

The article that was linked is not merely an "an opinion piece" as you put it, and the people cited in the article, like Steven Quay and Richard Muller are hardly what one would call "conspiracy theorists"! 

 

Their contention that the Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus is pretty compelling argument supporting the idea of a lab leak, all by itself, but there is far more evidence coming to light that supports the lab leak hypothesis.

 

Nobody can definitely prove the origin yet, but the truth will eventually be known.  To write off the lab leak hypothesis as nothing more than a unfounded conspiracy theory is about as logical as sticking your head in the sand to avoid reality.

[placeholder]

18 hours ago, xylophone said:

PS. To my last post................

 

Another thing worth remembering about the laboratories like this one, and others out there which are owned by companies, or not as the case may be, is that they are there primarily for research and if something becomes of their research, then great it has been money well spent.

 

Drug companies and governments spend billions of dollars every year on disease and drug research, and many times after many years of trial and error, some drugs just never make it to the finished state and are abandoned, in fact the greater percentage of drugs never make it to market, and those that do can be expensive because of the many years of work that have gone into them. It is therefore quite possible that this lab has produced very little of anything that can be of use now, but the work still goes on, and as @atpeace has said, work must be done to safeguard against other events like this.

 

I don't know much about the laboratory in Wuhan apart from the fact it has been blamed for the Covid 19 leak, but suffice it to say that a few organisations and governments have pumped millions of dollars into this lab over the years to further the work that they are doing, so it must be considered important.

 

Actually, Big Pharma in the USA spends more on marketing than it does on research:

 A report from the California-based Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy stated that in 2015 out of the top 100 pharmaceutical companies by sales, 64 spent twice as much on marketing and sales than on R&D, 58 spent three times, 43 spent five times as much and 27 spent 10 times the amount [3].

https://nurses.3cdn.net/e74ab9a3e937fe5646_afm6bh0u9.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5848527/#:~:text=A report from the California,times the amount [3].

 

[tgw]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

They'd rather believe it came from eating a bat?

The lab theory has more credibility and we ( mostly ) know why it was debunked, but as that's political can't be discussed on here.

 

it was not debunked, it was denied.

 

the lab leak theory has huge implications:
- a lab leak could mean Chinese responsibility for damages

- virologists could possibly see themselves banned from "gain of function" research

- Trump wanted to "stick it" to the Chinese, but many people don't want to prove him right

- research at the Wuhan lab was US-funded
...

 

someone opened the first Pandora's box in a lab.

 

and then the lab leak scenario itself will be a second Pandora's box.

[xylophone]

28 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Actually, Big Pharma in the USA spends more on marketing than it does on research:

 A report from the California-based Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy stated that in 2015 out of the top 100 pharmaceutical companies by sales, 64 spent twice as much on marketing and sales than on R&D, 58 spent three times, 43 spent five times as much and 27 spent 10 times the amount [3].

https://nurses.3cdn.net/e74ab9a3e937fe5646_afm6bh0u9.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5848527/#:~:text=A report from the California,times the amount [3].

 

And to add balance, from the same report.......

Conclusion

Based on the available data, individual pharmaceutical companies in Canada, on average, are spending more on R&D than on promotion; however, the reverse is true for a minority of companies. For the industry as a whole, more may be spent on promotion versus R&D although a definite conclusion would require access to more complete data.

[Jeffr2]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

They'd rather believe it came from eating a bat?

The lab theory has more credibility and we ( mostly ) know why it was debunked, but as that's political can't be discussed on here.

According to credible scientists, it came from nature. This is a field day for conspiracy theorists.

[Jeffr2]

2 hours ago, WaveHunter said:

That's not true at all.  There is growing consensus among many well regarded scientists that the virus has been engineered in certain ways by humans, and not the result of a natural zoonotic crossover from animals to humans. 

 

The article that was linked is not merely an "an opinion piece" as you put it, and the people cited in the article, like Steven Quay and Richard Muller are hardly what one would call "conspiracy theorists"! 

 

Their contention that the Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus is pretty compelling argument supporting the idea of a lab leak, all by itself, but there is far more evidence coming to light that supports the lab leak hypothesis.

 

Nobody can definitely prove the origin yet, but the truth will eventually be known.  To write off the lab leak hypothesis as nothing more than a unfounded conspiracy theory is about as logical as sticking your head in the sand to avoid reality.

I've yet to read about this. Except in click bait articles. Sure, they can't rule out the lab leak option. But a vast majority of credible scientists say it came from nature.