The Five-Eyes Intelligence Dossier: ‘Groundless Accusations’ or Battle of the Narrative?
Analysis of Australia’s involvement in government-funded Bat Research alongside Chinese scientists in Wuhan
Image Source: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
On one hand, the US government is confident that the coronavirus outbreak was due to an accidental leak from government laboratories. On the other hand, the Australian government upholds their position that the coronavirus outbreak was more likely to have originated from one of Wuhan’s wet markets (where other diseases including the H5N1 avian flu and SARS previously originated) than being the result of a laboratory leak.
Despite differing rhetorics, the two countries have partnered up behind the same motivation - to find out the truth behind the virus origin - and both emphasised that ‘to do better in the future, we need to fully understand what happened in the past.’ Whilst this would not be the first time in history for the two governments to engage in a partnership of the kind, their collaborative efforts may be problematised due to their respective partnerships with China.
Amidst calls for ‘transparency and accountability’, fears mount within the country over its own national security and global biosecurity as Prime Minister Scott Morrison glosses over the nature of the country’s own involvement in bat research as part of a partnership research project conducted between Australia’s Animal Health Laboratory at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Image Source: Shepherd Hou/EPA
Reports revealed that the Australian government trained and funded a team of Chinese scientists who belong to the Wuhan Institute of Virology; the same laboratory which the US claims is responsible for the potential leak. As part of ongoing research into horseshoe bats, Chinese scientist Dr Shi Zheng Li and her team have been working on synthesising a bat-derived coronavirus as part of an attempt to identify the virus’ transmissibility with other species. Past studies discovered a virus 96.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2; the same virus that caused COVID-19. Due to recent theories that the virus origin was an accidental laboratory leak, Shi and her team became subjects of questioning and samples were taken from their laboratory for analysis. Whilst initial results revealed an uncannily high 96% match between the samples and COVID-19, further analysis discovered differences in the genetic sequences between COVID-19 and samples found in Dr Shi’s research. Despite conclusive results, her research remains under close investigation from intelligence agencies.
Controversy remains over the nature of Australia’s involvement in the research. Since the coronavirus outbreak, the US has cut all funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology whilst the CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory is still to confirm whether it was still in partnership with the CAS.
(Report from the Daily Telegraph Australia draws together a summary of Australia’s involvement in Bat Research and provides a timeline of previous cases of involvement. An article highly worth reading. It explores the concerns raised over jointly-funded research projects between China and Australia: the extent of Chinese scientists’ involvement, the lethality of the research and the premise of research being the CSIRO in Queensland, Australia - raising greater fears in national security and global biosecurity)
Virus origins: what we now know (and what we don’t know)?
A statement made 30th April, by Richard Grenell, acting Director of National Intelligence, claimed that information from the intelligence community indicated that the coronavirus was neither ‘man-made’ nor ‘manufactured.’ Backed by scientific consensus, Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reassures that ‘the best evidence shows the virus behind the pandemic was not made in a lab in China’.
‘Fauci on the information deluge and the “virus made in Chinese lab” claim
So, what's your advice to the public at-large for sifting through the headlines and making sense of it all?
Anybody can claim to be an expert even when they have no idea what they're talking about—and it's very difficult for the general public to distinguish. So, make sure the study is coming from a reputable organization that generally gives you the truth—though even with some reputable organizations, you occasionally get an outlier who's out there talking nonsense. If something is published in places like New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, Cell, or JAMA—you know, generally that is quite well peer reviewed because the editors and the editorial staff of those journals really take things very seriously.
One topic in the news lately has been the origins of SAR-CoV-2. Do you believe or is there evidence that the virus was made in the lab in China or accidentally released from a lab in China?
If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what's out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated—the way the mutations have naturally evolved. A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.
Sure, but what if scientists found the virus outside the lab, brought it back, and then it escaped?
But that means it was in the wild to begin with. That's why I don't get what they're talking about [and] why I don't spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.’
Interview segment was taken directly from https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/science/2020/05/anthony-fauci-no-scientific-evidence-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-chinese-lab-cvd?__twitter_impression=true
Despite agreement over the pandemic not having been ‘artificially or deliberately manipulated’, fears over the risk these government-funded researches pose to national security and global biosecurity remain. A sentiment greatly shared by the International community as well as Neil O’Brien, a Conservative MP and secretary of the China Research Group, is that greater transparency would be most preferable: ‘if their government were less secretive and authoritarian they would cooperate more and so potentially put to bed wilder ideas about the origins of the virus.’