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Opponents of the lab-leak theory have comprehensively lost the argument. What was the worst industrial accident in history? Bhopal in India, where in 1984, at least 25,000 people died as a result of a leak of methyl isocyanate from a pesticide plant? No, if – as most people who have examined the evidence now believe […]

Under questioning from Congress, two key figures have unwittingly strengthened the lab-leak theory. Two of the key figures in the story of Covid’s origins gave away vital new information last week before the US Congress. One of these figures is Ralph Baric, the University of North Carolina professor who invented ingenious techniques for genetically altering […]

As a US Senate committee’s full, 300-page report on the origin of covid now makes clear, a whole string of clues now points towards a laboratory accident as the probable cause of the covid pandemic.   For example, there is: evidence of a biosafety crisis at the lab in the autumn of 2019; the Chinese […]

The Lancet Commission is the latest to highlight how seeking the truth has come second to other considerations   The Lancet Commission into “lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic”, written by 40 scientists and public health experts, and chaired by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, has concluded that “the origin of the virus remains […]

There doesn’t seem to be a smoking gun in the latest ‘evidence’ The BBC carried a story this week with the headline ‘Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market’. Bizarrely the paper in Sciencethey are referring to, by Michael Worobey and colleagues, says no such thing. It says: ‘the observation that the preponderance of early cases […]

The revised and expanded paperback edition of my newest book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, co-authored with the brilliant scientist Alina Chan, is now available to purchase in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. It was a privilege to help Alina write Viral, and a privilege to create this […]

Lessons have still not been learned, so why should we trust the WHO in a future pandemic? My article for Telegraph: On 22 May, the World Health Organisation meets for the World Health Assembly, an annual summit to which all the world’s countries are invited – except Taiwan, which is excluded at China’s behest. On […]

Will Dr Tedros use the Beijing Games to deliver some home truths to China? Probably not My article for the Telegraph: The news that Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organisation, is to attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing is baffling on a number of levels. Has he not got a day […]

That senior scientists saw evidence for theories that they trashed in public has shattered trust in science My article for the Telegraph: Inch by painful inch, the truth is being dragged out about how this pandemic started. It is just about understandable, if not forgivable, that Chinese scientists have obfuscated vital information about early cases […]

In private, they said it was plausible. In public, they called it a conspiracy theory. My article for Spiked: In August 2007 there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth virus on a farm in Surrey. It was a few miles from the world’s leading reference laboratory for identifying outbreaks of foot and mouth. Nobody thought this […]