One of the original lab leak deniers calls for a ‘thorough investigation’ into Covid’s origin

Dr Peter Palese, a professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, has U-turned after previously supporting a letter denying that COVID-19 could’ve leaked from a Wuhan lab

One of the 27 Covid lab leak deniers who signed a letter denouncing the theory that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan has now called for a ‘thorough investigation’ into Covid’s origins, MailOnline can reveal.

Dr Peter Palese, a microbiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, signed the letter in the Lancet in February last year claiming the virus could only have been natural in origin and to suggest otherwise would create ‘fear, rumors, and prejudice’.

The ‘bullying’ letter, orchestrated by Dr Peter Daszak, the head of a non-profit that funnelled U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was criticized by experts for ostracizing anyone offering different opinions on the virus’ origins, dismissing them as conspiracy theorists.

It is only now, nearly 16 months after that letter was published in the world-renowned medical journal, that the theory Covid was accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan is being looked at seriously.

US President Joe Biden last week ordered intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether Covid was man-made after all. But China immediately hit back and called the suggestion a ‘conspiracy’.

And now Professor Palese, 77, has made a significant U-turn, admitting all theories on how Covid came about now need proper investigating.

He told MailOnline: ‘I believe a thorough investigation about the origin of the Covid-19 virus is needed. 

‘A lot of disturbing information has surfaced since the Lancet letter I signed, so I want to see answers covering all questions.’

Asked how he was originally approached to sign the letter and what new information had come to light specifically, Professor Palese declined to comment.

Palese spoke out as America’s leading pandemic expert Dr Anthony Fauci continues to face fevered calls to resign after emails revealed that leading virus experts warned Covid could be man-made even as he downplayed the possibility.

The emails also showed he communicated with Dr Daszak, the head of the non-profit that funnelled U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab.

Biden threw his support behind the embattled expert on Friday, saying: ‘Yes I’m very confident in Dr Fauci.’ 

Another scientist who signed the letter, Dr Jeremy Farrar – director of the Wellcome Trust in London – declined to comment on the Fauci allegations but said it remains ‘most likely’ the virus came from an animal but ‘there are other possibilities which cannot be completely ruled out and retaining an open mind is critical’.

Pictured: Security personnel keep watch outside Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team in February

Dr. Daszak – a key architect of the Lancet letter – runs the New York-based, tax payer-funded non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, which has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

He worked with the lab’s so-called ‘bat woman’ Shi Zhengli as they investigated and modified coronaviruses. 

Shi, 57, proved that horseshoe bats were behind a SARS virus that killed nearly 800 people in 2002 and has collected thousands of samples from bat caves.

Dr Daszak was one four Brits to sign the letter, including SAGE advisor Sir Jeremy Farrar and two other experts working for the Welcome Trust at the time. The letters’ signatories included four others who worked for EcoHealth.

Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing and is a form Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak’s letter was a ‘form of thuggery’.

He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation.

‘By labeling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.’

MailOnline has approached the letters’ other signatories for comment. 

One of them, Dr Jeremy Farrar – who sits on the UK Government’s SAGE scientific advisory panel and who spoke with Fauci and others in early 2020 – said in a statement: ‘The origins of Sars-Cov-2 are not yet certain – it is possible the origin will never be fully established – but nature is a powerful force and, in my view, the most likely scenario is that the virus crossed from animals to humans and then evolved in humans.

‘The best scientific evidence available to date points to this. It is most likely it crossed the species barrier to infect and then adapt to humans at some point in 2019, but there are other possibilities which cannot be completely ruled out and retaining an open mind is critical. There is no place for unsubstantiated rumour, or conspiracy theories often fuelled for political purposes.

‘Understanding the origins of this disease, and any zoonotic infection, is absolutely critical to successfully preventing future outbreaks and protecting lives globally. The answers can only be found in robust scientific evidence, with full transparency from all involved. There has been too much conjecture and theory without data or evidence, although still there is not enough transparency.’  

A Freedom of Information Act request revealed Dr Daszak told his fellow signatories in an email that the letter would not be sent under the EcoHealth logo ‘and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization of person’. 

The emails show he even considered not signing the letter himself, although in the end he did.

The idea, he said was for it to be coming from ‘a community supporting our colleagues’.

The letter — titled ‘Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting Covid-19’ — praised the Chinese ‘who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the Covid-19 outbreak’.

It went on to add: ‘We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.

‘Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors and prejudices that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against the virus.’

It ended with the words: ‘We declare no competing interests.’

The letter proved so influential that it virtually ended debate on the origin of Covid for more than a year.

Anyone who suggested it could have been man-made was shot down amid accusations of anti-Chinese xenophobia.

Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control told Vanity Fair he received death threats after floating the theory that the virus could have been man-made. 

He said: ‘I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis. I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.’

Dr Peter Daszak, 55, from Manchester, orchestrated a behind-the-scenes ‘bullying’ campaign to ensure blame for Covid was directed away from a Chinese lab with which he had worked closely.

Dr Daszack worked with the lab’s so-called ‘bat woman’ Shi Zhengli (pictured left) as they investigated and modified coronaviruses. Shi, 57, proved that horseshoe bats were behind a SARS virus that killed nearly 800 people in 2002 and has collected thousands of samples from bat caves

The theory the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was originally dismissed by left-leaning media outlets last year as a conspiracy theory after it was mentioned by then-President Donald Trump.

But they have now changed course with the launch of the US investigation. 

Liberal US outlets, who slammed Mr Trump when he said a year ago said he had ‘a high degree of confidence’ that the virus escaped from a lab, have finally conceded that he may have been right — after a year ridiculing the suggestion. 

The lab-leak theory was bolstered last week after it was revealed three workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized in November, 2019, months before Covid was first discovered in China. 

China claims the virus was transmitted to humans from an animal host, with bats and pangolins both named as potential sources. Many scientists agree that is the most likely theory.

Professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge Ravi Gupta, a member of Nervtag, said the theory has not yet been investigated with ‘scientific rigor’.

He told The Telegraph: ‘The possibility was not adequately explored due to lack of access to primary records by the WHO group. Lab leak has not been scientifically rejected as a cause using [the] scientific rigor that one would expect.’

A soon to be published report by a team of British and Norwegian experts suggests it is possible to trace the creation of the virus to research in China that began in 2008.

Professor David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, said the theory needs to be investigated by an international consortium of scientists in collaboration with the UN. 

He said: ‘Ideally, an investigation would rely on an international consortium of scientists under the auspices of many national academies of science working in partnership, in collaboration with an international governance entity, the UN Secretary General’s Office, or something of that sort.’ 

And Harvard epidemiologist Professor Marc Lipsitch said a lab escape scenario ‘remains plausible enough that it should be looked into rigorously’.

He told the paper: ‘This is not a fringe position, given that multiple European governments and Dr Tedros have said the same.’

He said that while scientists are not saying a lab origin is more likely than a natural one, a thorough investigation is needed to reveal the cause of the pandemic. 

As Dr Daszak’s links to the Wuhan lab become clearer, more questions are being asked about his influence over the WHO team that went to China in January and stayed for four weeks searching for answers.

The team was met with resistance in China. Authorities there made them quarantine for two weeks in Wuhan and barred two members completely after they tested positive for coronavirus antibodies.

But critics say the WHO researchers were too cozy with Chinese authorities, who are desperate not to shoulder the blame for a worldwide death toll now approaching 3.6 million.

They claim its members may have been influenced by a tour they took round a ‘propaganda museum’ which described Wuhan’s fight against the virus and the leading role taken by President Xi Jinping.

While China has tried to insist the virus originated elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have begun to contemplate the possibility it escaped from the WIV – raising suspicions that Chinese officials simply hid evidence of the early spread

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is about 20 miles from the Huanan Seafood Market where the first coronavirus cases are reported to have occurred

In recent weeks, the lab-escape theory has gained ground. Already British intelligence officials, who are helping the US search for the cause of the pandemic that has cost nearly 600,000 American lives, are said to be leaning towards the man-made scenario.

Last week MailOnline revealed two leading scientists had found ‘unique fingerprints’ in Covid samples that could only have come from lab manipulation.

British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had ‘prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China’ for a year — but were ignored by academics and major journals.

Professor Dalgleish, 71, a vaccine researcher and professor of oncology at St George’s Hospital, last year struggled to find a publisher for his paper suggesting the virus’s spike protein contains artificially inserted sequences.

He said the research was shunned by the scientific community, who did not want to threaten China or be seen to be agreeing with President Donald Trump — who was a big advocate for the theory the virus was leaked from a lab at the time.

The oncologist said: ‘The changes required to infect humans are extremely unlikely to have occurred naturally.’

Professor Dalgleish — who ran for Parliament as a UKIP candidate in 2015 — said the President’s use of the terms ‘Wuhan flu’ and ‘China virus’ damaged scientific debate on the subject. 

He told The Times: ‘I was basically ostracized. I was fearful — really frightened by the way I was being treated. I was told I was not an expert on coronaviruses and I should just shut up. 

‘We couldn’t believe people with whom we’d collaborated and published papers with in the past would shun us — I was warned I was out of my depth and I shouldn’t get into this and I’d make a fool of myself.’

And just last week President Joe Biden ordered another look at the theory as part of a wide-ranging intelligence investigation into the pandemic’s origins. He felt it so urgent that he put a 90-day deadline for a conclusion.

Emails from Dr Anthony Fauci, Mr Biden’s chief medical advisor, show that leading virus experts warned Covid could be man-made even as he downplayed the possibility. 

Fauci says those emails, obtained by Buzzfeed, have been taken out of context.

But he did U-turn about where the virus may have originated this week, saying ‘you never know’. 

One of them was from Dr Daszak, who thanked Dr Fauci for pushing back on the man-made theory. 

In April, Dr Drazak wrote: ‘I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for Covid-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’

Even WHO’s Ethiopian director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the report was not extensive enough and more work needed to be done to discover the cause of Covid.

‘As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table,’ he said. 

‘This report is a very important beginning, but it is not the end.’

America is looking at the theory seriously, leading to China hitting out at the ‘dark history’ of the US intelligence community after President Biden’s probe was announced.

Lijian Zhao, foreign ministry spokesman who has been Beijing’s point-man in trying to pin blame for the pandemic outside the country’s borders, accused the US of trying to shift blame away from its own high Covid case and death counts – and suggested security services may be involved in a cover-up.

Meanwhile Hu Xijin, editor of the state mouthpiece Global Times newspaper, accused Biden of trying to discredit a WHO investigation which concluded that a lab leak is ‘unlikely’ — although critics have previously blasted that report as a China-centric whitewash.

China’s American embassy also hit out, accusing Biden and his security services of being ‘fixated on political manipulation and (the) blame game’ in a statement on its website.

No10 officials have called for investigators to probe all theories as to how the Covid pandemic began.

Dominic Cummings this week revealed the PM held meetings when the crisis first began to discuss whether it had ‘escaped’ from a laboratory and whether the disease had been ‘engineered’.

Sen. Rand Paul says Fauci’s emails paint a ‘disturbing picture’ about what he knew about work inside the Wuhan lab

Sen. Rand Paul continued his blitz on Dr. Anthony Fauci in the wake of Fauci’s email dump, telling Fox that Fauci knew the US was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan even though he continues to deny it.  

The Republican from Kentucky told Fox Thursday night that Fauci’s emails ‘tell me early on that he was very worried’ before the pandemic even started.  

‘There’s a disturbing picture. He gets an email or he gets notification of what’s going on in Wuhan and immediately sends something to his assistant saying, “We must meet immediately.” And in the subject line it says gain of function research in Wuhan.’  

While Paul and other Republicans have come after Fauci, Biden reaffirmed his confidence in Fauci in a Friday morning press conference. 

The president had actually left the room where he gave the speech when DailyMail.com shouted a question to him about the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

President Biden stuck his head back in to answer.

‘Yes I’m very confident in Dr. Fauci,’ he said.  

Paul’s Thursday night interview on Fox – and weeks of public comments that – makes it clear that senator doesn’t share have the same faith in Fauci, and he alluded to a February 1, 2020 email exchange between Fauci and Principal NIAID Director Dr. Hugh Auchincloss.

Sen. Rand Paul (right) was interviewed on Fox Thursday night

Auchincloss wrote to Fauci to discuss a paper Fauci sent him appearing to question if National Institute of Health (NIH) grants funded gain-of-function research relating to coronaviruses. 

In the email to Fauci, Auchincloss said, ‘The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH.’

He also noted that a colleague would ‘try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.’

This was one of the 3,200-plus emails obtained and published by Buzzfeed News on Tuesday. 

The NIH awarded a $ 3.7 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which is based in the United States, to study the risk of coronaviruses emerging from bats in 2014. EcoHealth Alliance in turn distributed nearly $ 600,000 of that funding to its collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

The senator also took a shot Thursday at the embattled chief medical advisor on Twitter after Amazon and Barnes & Noble pulled his book from their sites because it wasn’t supposed to be released until November: ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think they should publish it. I love science fiction.’ 

Paul’s interview came after Fauci dismissed the recent revelations that he was warned that COVID-19 may have been ‘engineered’ and said that the emails are easily misunderstood. 

During a Wednesday interview on the Donlon Report, Fauci said of the emails, ‘The only trouble is they are really ripe to be taken out of context where someone can snip out a sentence in an email without showing the other emails, and say “based on an email from Dr. Fauci, he said such and such” where you don’t really have the full context.’ 

Fauci added that the Wuhan lab ‘is a very large lab to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.’

‘The grant that we’re talking about was $ 600,000 over five years for an average of about $ 125,000 to $ 140,000 a year,’ he said.

Fauci also said on Donlon that he ‘can’t guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab.’

Paul has been on Fox twice since a trove of Fauci’s emails – dating from January to June 2020 – were obtained and published by Buzzfeed on Tuesday. 

Within hours of publication, Paul tweeted ‘#firefauci’ and other Republicans, like Majorie Greene Taylor, followed suit. 

Until recently, the Wuhan lab leak was at best a fringe theory, and it has been mostly laughed off by many scientists. The general consensus on COVID-19’s origin was that it jumped from a bat to a human in the Wuhan market. 

Despite the recent scrutiny, Fauci continues to say that’s what he believes happened. 

During Senate committee hearings in early May, Paul sparred with Fauci over the two origin theories and said the lab leak is a real possibility that’s not being acknowledged. 

Instead of investigating the cause of COVID-19 ‘government authorities – self-interested in continuing gain of function research – say there’s nothing to see here,’ Paul said during the May 11 hearing.

‘To arrive at the truth, the U.S. government should admit that the Wuhan Virology Institute was experimenting to enhance the coronavirus’ ability to infect humans,’ he said.  

The lab leak theory is now one that President Joe Biden wants investigated.  

Last week, Biden ordered a 90-day review to investigate the possibility and several high-profile public health experts have come out in recent months saying they believe that’s how COVID-19 started.

British intelligence also reportedly assessed the theory recently and upgraded its likeliness from ‘remote’ to ‘feasible’.