US intelligence agencies have not ruled out a lab manipulated virus

Setting the record straight on scientists’ semantic sorcery.

6 minute read

Today’s guest essay comes from David Robertson who looks at scientists’ latest attempt to misdirect the public about a possible lab leak, by attacking intelligence reports and drowning discussions in techno-speak.

A handful of scientists and pundits have created an online racket, alleging that US intelligence agencies unanimously agree that if the pandemic started from a lab leak, it was nonetheless a virus found in nature that researchers did not genetically manipulate. But these claims are false—semantic sorcery deployed to distract over the origins of the pandemic, and build off claims by Anthony Fauci who, as I explained in the Boston Globe, attempted to redefine a lab accident as a “natural occurrence.”

Virologists began proposing that the intelligence community agreed that a leaked virus was not genetically manipulated after the Department of Energy announced, with low probability—and the FBI with moderate probability—that the pandemic began with a lab leak. Virologists’ false claim built on the prior false definition that a natural virus leaking from a lab was a “natural occurrence.”

“All of the intelligence groups agree that this was not an engineered virus,” Anthony Fauci told  journalist David Wallace-Wells, in a recent interview with the Fauci-friendly New York Times. “If it wasn’t an engineered virus,” Fauci continued, “somebody went out into the field, got infected, came back to the lab and then spread it out to other people. That ain’t a lab leak, strictly speaking. That’s a natural occurrence.”

To his credit, Wallace-Wells pushed back, pointing out that it is not true that all agencies have dismissed the possibility that scientists engineered the virus. While agencies have ruled out the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 being a bioweapon, the reporter noted, they have not “ruled out other forms of engineering—direct genetic interventions or serial passage of viruses.”

Indeed, why would federal agencies make claims that contradicted their own intelligence? In January 2021, the State Department released a fact sheet of declassified material on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that stated that the WIV “has a published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses” and “has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military.”

Fauci was not the first to claim that all intelligence agencies have ruled out genetic modification of the virus. After the Department of Energy first endorsed a lab origin back in February, the Washington Post ran two pieces making the unsubstantiated claim that the virus was definitely not altered. On February 27, the Post published a news article that quoted an anonymous source stating, “the agencies are united, the official said, in the view that the virus was not man-made or developed as a bioweapon.”

Without noting a correction, the Post stealth-edited the piece a day or two later, with an update that deleted the “man-made” part of the claim. Here’s how the passage reads today.

A few days later, arch proponents of natural origins, virologist Angela Rasmussen and epidemiologist Saskia Popescu, doubled down on the unfounded claim that there could not have been genetic manipulation. In a Post opinion piece the pair wrote, “One thing everyone involved in studying the origins of SARS-CoV-2 seems to agree on — FBI and Energy Department included: No laboratory modification of a virus was involved.”

To support their allegation of “no laboratory modification” Rasmussen and Popescu linked to a Wall Street Journal article which doesn’t actually support their false statement.

Nearly a week later, The Post stealth-edited the piece—again, without issuing a correction. When you now click on the “no laboratory modification” phrase, the link takes you to a report by the National Intelligence Council, released in August 2021.

By linking to an old August 2021 intelligence report, Rasmussen and Popescu ignored the intelligence community’s statement the month prior that favored a laboratory accident. But if we examine what the 2021 report says, we find again that they linked to something that doesn’t support their allegation.

Here’s what the 2021 report says: “Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way.”

In short, this report also fails to support the false “no laboratory modification” allegation by Rasmussen and Popescu. Not all of the agencies stated there was no possibility of genetic modification to the virus, because two agencies were uncertain. Moreover, the report notes that one agency “assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Again, since the National Intelligence Council issued this 2021 report, the Department of Energy switched positions in February of this year and determined that a lab leak is the more likely origin scenario.

Because the intelligence community contradicts false claims made by Fauci, Rasmussen, Popescu, and a handful of science writers, that group’s semantic gymnastics have gotten ever more wild and fanciful. When Wallace-Wells questioned whether the intelligence community had indeed dismissed any type of engineering, Fauci redefined a process for genetically modifying viruses through serial passaging. This lab technique involves accelerating the evolution of a virus by growing the virus multiple times in cell culture or live animals.

“David,” Fauci responded to Wallace-Wells, “you could have taken a virus and serially passaged it in 1920. I could do that tomorrow in your kitchen. You don’t need to do engineering.”

Fauci’s statement implies that serial passaging does not constitute “engineering.” But what if that serial passaging took place in the “humanized” mice that we know were used in experiments in Wuhan and elsewhere? Humanized mice are genetically altered to express human cells in their lungs, enabling researchers to passage the virus through human-like lungs, modifying a virus to be capable of infecting humans.

Such complex genetic experiments were impossible in 1920, and it’s risible to even consider that Anthony Fauci could pull it off at the drop of a hat in a journalist’s kitchen. Perhaps Fauci will next tell us that inserting a furin cleavage site into a bat virus using gene insertion technology—something that at the very least was proposed by researchers in Wuhan and their American colleagues—does not constitute “genetic engineering” because the genome of the virus itself mostly remains “natural”?

These semantic tricks muddy research waters that investigators are trying to clean up, by redefining what constitutes a lab leak and hiding past virus studies behind technical language with shifting definitions—all to confuse the public. It’s the same as if the Catholic church were to hide its child abuse sins by claiming it could only be considered during Latin mass, knowing that few speak the language, thus allowing priests to scrutinize themselves.

Following this logic, investigating the origin of Covid-19 should be left up to a retired immunologist and the handful of virologists he funded, some of whom are directly implicated in a potential laboratory accident and have been caught orchestrating studies in the Lancet, EMI, and Nature Medicine to shutdown discussion of the origin of Covid-19.

The President signed a law recently that promises the release of more classified intelligence. What do the various intelligence agencies know? Will they tell the public? Unfortunately, given their track record, it seems unlikely that they will give us much new information. But claims that all agencies agree there was “no laboratory modification of a virus” mislead and are designed to cast a spell that silences questions over how this pandemic started.

David Robertson recently obtained a PhD in the History of Science Program at Princeton University. He has previously written about Covid-19 for The Washington Post, The BMJ, The Boston Globe, Stat, and The American Journal of Public Health.