As China tries to contain the Corona virus, rumors and misinformation spread among the stampede for answers. Some speculation centered on the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began. A marginal theory says that the disaster could be an accidental result of biological weapons research.
But experts rejected the idea that the virus could be man-made. "Based on the virus's genome and characteristics, there is absolutely no indication that it is an engineered virus," said Richard Ebright, a chemical biology professor at Rutgers University. After years of work, she proved useless, explaining that "the vast majority of new bad diseases come from nature."
The Daily Mail was among the first to suggest a possible link between the newly spread virus and the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, which opened in 2014 and is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has been a safety concern in the past.
The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper in Washington, dealt with theories differently, saying: “The Corona virus may have originated in a laboratory associated with the biological warfare program in China.” It referred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the article cited research by an Israeli military intelligence officer Previously, it was named Danny Schoham, who declined to comment further.
Despite the lack of evidence, the theory spread widely on social media, to conspiracy theory websites, and in some international news outlets.
Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory has a high level of operational security, and is authorized to work on serious pathogens, including Ebola. Those entering into a Level 4 laboratory use special equipment and protective suits, and the waste and air are carefully filtered and cleaned, before leaving the facility.
The University of Maryland chemical weapons expert, Milton Lettenberg, said he and other analysts around the world discussed the possibility that weapons development in Wuhan had caused an outbreak of the Corona virus, in e-mail, but no one had convincing evidence to support the theory.
"Of course, if they are developing biological weapons, this is a secret," Lettenberg said in a phone call to the Washington Post, but added that it was unlikely that the Chinese government would use this facility to produce or even research and develop in the field of biological weapons.
The Wuhan laboratory is relatively famous and open compared to other Chinese institutes. It has strong ties to the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and was developed with the help of French engineers. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a world-class research institution that conducts world-class research in virology and immunology.
In 2017, he said, he was concerned about how to "manage risks in these complex systems when you cannot predict all the ways the system can fail." A former British diplomat and political adviser to the United Nations said he had not been following affairs at the facility since 2017, and he was not aware of any specific problems there, but he doubted that an outbreak of the Corona virus could come from a weapons program. An annual report of the Foreign Ministry released last year said that China had participated in "biological activities with potential dual-use applications".
While the Chinese officials expressed public interest in the possible armament of biotechnology, the Corona virus would not be a useful weapon, he said. “In theory, a biological weapon is designed to be a precisely targeted, While Corona has become widespread from the beginning in China and all over the world ».
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, Vipping Naring, wrote on Twitter that a good biological weapon "in theory has a high lethality" and that spreading such ideas would be incredibly irresponsible. After the Ebola outbreak in 2014, news platforms falsely claimed that the US Department of Defense had manufactured the virus.
Initially, some scientists suspected that the seafood market in Wuhan might have been the starting point, but a study by Chinese researchers and published in The Lancet recently disputed this analysis.
Late on Tuesday, Hu Shijin, an editor of the national "Global Times", wrote that a conspiracy theory had emerged in China stating that the United States was responsible for the outbreak, and the editor wrote on Twitter: "Their logic: Why is China always?" "But most Chinese don't believe that."
Wuhan Laboratory is famous and relatively open compared to other Chinese institutes; it has strong ties to the National Galveston Laboratory, at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and was developed with the help of French engineers.