Part I - Man made?!!
Well as many of us suspected; someone of some credibility is also claiming that it escaped from a lab in wuhan....
However, it's time for an about face for me, as the first set of Scientists in the World to find evidence that it was manipulated from animals is about to be published (previously there was complete unanimity that this wasn't the case)....
If this gets subsequently proved as accurate by other scientific studies (as they will have to do for this report to be credible) - this will have an absolute bombshell impact......
A former head of MI6 has said he believes the coronavirus pandemic "started as an accident" when the virus escaped from a laboratory in China.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Sir Richard Dearlove said he had seen an "important" new scientific report suggesting the virus did not emerge naturally but was man-made by Chinese scientists.
The apparent discovery will raise the prospect of China
paying "reparations" for the death and economic catastrophe wreaked upon the world, the former intelligence chief said. It comes as Beijing faces growing pressure to explain precisely how coronavirus first
began to spread late last year.
International scientists have reached a near-unanimous consensus, however, that the virus emerged in animals –
most likely bats or pangolins – before jumping to the human population.
But Sir Richard, 75, pointed to a scientific paper published this week by a Norwegian-British research team who claim to have discovered clues within Covid-19's genetic sequence suggesting key elements were "inserted" and may not have evolved naturally.
From the outset, the Chinese government has endeavoured to "lock down" any debate about the origins of the virus and Beijing's handling of the crisis, he claimed.
"I do think that this started as an accident," Sir Richard told
The Telegraph's new Planet Normal podcast (
listen through the player at the top of this story). "It raises the issue, if China ever were to admit responsibility, does it
pay reparations? I think it will make every country in the world rethink how it treats its relationship with China and how the international community behaves towards the Chinese leadership."
Sir Richard, who was the head of MI6 between 1999 and 2004, cited startling new peer-reviewed research produced by Professor Angus Dalgleish, of St George's Hospital at the University of London, and the Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen.
In their paper, the scientists claim to have identified "inserted sections placed on the SARS-CoV-2 Spike surface" that explain how the virus binds itself to human cells.
"The SARS-CoV-2 spike is significantly different from any other Sars that we have studied," the paper says.
It warns that current efforts to
develop a vaccine are destined for failure because the true aetiology of the virus has been misunderstood. To remedy the problem, the researchers are developing their own vaccine, produced by Immunor AS, a Norwegian pharmaceutical company led by Mr Sorensen.
Sir Richard described the study as "a very important contribution to a debate which is now starting about how the virus evolved and how it got out and broke out as a pandemic", adding: "I think this particular article is very important, and I think it will shift the debate."
He revealed that the Dalgleish/Sorensen paper had been rewritten several times. An earlier version, seen by The Telegraph, concluded that coronavirus should correctly be called "Wuhan virus" and claimed to have proven "beyond reasonable doubt that the Covid-19 virus is engineered".
"We are aware that these findings could have political significance and raise troubling questions," the authors originally wrote. The paper was widely circulated behind the scenes after being distributed for peer review, while intelligence officials reportedly examined its findings.
However, one of the authors, John Fredrik Moxnes, the chief scientific adviser to the Norwegian military, asked for his name to be withdrawn from the research, throwing its credibility into doubt. Scientists from the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London also dismissed its conclusions, it is understood.
Correspondence seen by The Telegraph shows that, in April, the initial paper was rejected by leading academic journals including Nature and the Journal of Virology, which deemed the research "unsuitable for publication".
Much of the paper was watered down to remove explicit accusations against China, and the rewritten study was then judged to be of sufficient scientific merit to be accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, a journal chaired by leading scientists from Stanford University and the University of Dundee.
A further analysis produced by Prof Dalgleish and his colleagues, due for release in the coming days, claims the Covid-19 virus has "unique fingerprints" that cannot have evolved naturally and are instead "indicative of purposive manipulation".
Entitled "A Reconstructed Historical Aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike", the new study, seen by The Telegraph, suggests the virus is "remarkably well-adapted virus for human co-existence" and is likely to be the result of a Wuhan lab experiment to produce "chimeric viruses of high potency".
The paper concludes: "Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive, most especially when, as we also show, there are puzzling errors in their use of evidence."
The paper has not yet been accepted for publication in any scientific journal.
"This [the first] article was submitted to a… journal, which refused it within a week of receiving it, and in the same period accepted for publication two or three Chinese articles that relate to the virus, within 48 hours," Sir Richard said.
"So I mean, as this debate about the virus develops, I think all this material is going to be in print and is going to embarrass a number of people, I think. Let's suggest that the Chinese maybe have too much say in their journals, in what appears and what doesn't."