It has been over a year since the onset of the pandemic, but there’s no end in sight as various variants — more dangerous than the earlier ones — of the virus are already there infecting and claiming lives.
|| Bhoomika Mohan
As India and the world grapple with the second wave and possibly a third wave of the virus that emanated from Wuhan in China in late 2019, destroying families and economies and taking over three million lives so far, clamour has resurfaced recently on whether the SARS-CoV-2 was indeed a bioweapon in the making that intentionally or otherwise escaped from a low-security biosafety level (BSL) 2 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Two theories on the origins of COVID-19 have been widely circulating in China and the West respectively, one blaming the United States and the other a highest-level biocontainment laboratory in Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the pandemic. Both theories make claims of biological warfare attempts.
According to the available scientific evidence, these claims are groundless. However, like the episodes of biological warfare during the mid-twentieth century, the spread of these present-day conspiracy theories reflects a series of longstanding and damaging trends in the international scene which include deep mistrust, animosities, the power of ideologies such as nationalism, and the sacrifice of truth in propaganda campaigns.
Also, the threats associated with biological warfare, bioterrorism, and the accidental leakage of deadly viruses from labs are real and growing. Thus, developing a better global governance of biosafety and biosecurity than exists at present is an urgent imperative for the international community in the broader context of a looming Cold War II. For such a governance, an ethical framework is proposed based upon the triple ethical values of transparency, trust, and the common good of humanity.
History often haunts the present in both predictable and unexpected ways. The wide spread of the two conspiracy theories presented above reflects a series of longstanding and damaging trends in the international scene which include deep mistrust, mutual animosities, the power of ideologies such as nationalism, and the sacrifice of truth in propaganda campaigns for political purposes. Identical or very similar political themes and ideological forces were manifested in the main episodes of BW in the mid-twentieth century.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus meets the criteria of a bioweapon described by Dr Ruifu Yang of the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, who is funded by the US government’s NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation). He is part of China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and its Bioterrorism Response Group. In 2005, Dr Yang specified the criteria for a pathogen to qualify as a bioweapon:
- It is significantly virulent and can cause a large-scale casualty.
- It is highly contagious and transmits easily, often through respiratory routes in the form of aerosols. The most dangerous scenario is that it allows human-to-human transmission.
- It is relatively resistant to environmental changes, can sustain transportation, and is capable of supporting the targeted release.
Bill Gates warns that after COVID-19, the next disaster to strike will likely be related to either climate change, or bio-terrorism. In an interview with the YouTube channel Veritaserum, Gates talked about what he believes could come next, after the pandemic.
“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war.” These were the words of Bill Gates, the philanthropist, co-founder and former CEO of microsoft. Bill, in his TED talk, explained the world was not prepared for the next epidemic. “The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola,” he had said then. Fast-forward to 2021, the global novel coronavirus pandemic has infected a total of 154 million people and claimed 3.22 million
Australian journalist Anthony Klan has reported that WIV had evolved cooperation with Pakistan on a bioweapons programme. Klan says that several research programmes in this regard are part of China-Pakistan Economic Cooperation since 2015.
In October 2018, a Pakistani delegation from Karachi visited WIV scientists, while the latter paid a reciprocal visit in January 2019. While Pakistan received vaccines from China, it has reported nearly a million infections, and about 20,000 deaths due to Covid.
As the disengagement process between Indian and Chinese troops in Ladakh appears to have stalled, India will have to factor in not just a two-front war, but one with a possibility of use of biological weapons against it.
The WHO in its investigative report ‘ Origins of SARS-CoV-2’ states that the seafood market in Wuhan City was the source of this Coronavirus outbreak or played a role in the initial amplification of the outbreak.
Dr Tedros said, “The team has confirmed that there was widespread contamination with SARS-CoV-2 in the Huanan market in Wuhan but could not determine the source of this contamination.” Interestingly, in a research paper brought out in Feb 2020, two researchers at the South China University of Technology had a different opinion to the theory floated by the Chinese Government and WHO on the Huanan seafood market.
According to these Chinese researchers, “The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both more than 900-km away from the seafood market. Bats are normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely populated district of Wuhan, a city of over 15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 59 people, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market … We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two labs conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC). WHCDC hosted animals in labs for research purposes, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification. In one of their studies, 155 bats … were captured in Hubei province, and the other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province. The expert in the collection was … broadcasted for collecting viruses on nationwide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019. He described that he was once attacked by bats … so he quarantined himself for 14 days. Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were sources of pathogens. They were only 280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital where the first group of doctors was infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked and some of them contaminated the initial patients, though solid proofs are needed in a future study. The second lab was 12-km from the seafood market and belonged to WIV. This lab reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the SARS-CoV which caused the 2002-2003 pandemic. The principal investigator [Dr Zhengli] participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system and reported the potential for human emergence. Direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the lab. In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus … the killer coronavirus probably originated from a lab in Wuhan. Safety levels may need to be reinforced in high-risk biohazardous laboratories.”
The Chinese government censored the research paper of the Chinese researchers Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao. In fact, the research paper has since disappeared from the international scholarly data base Research Gate, not the first such incident for texts from China.
More robust global governance of biosafety and biosecurity is long overdue. Such a governance should include these three key areas:
1) a more effective ban on offensive BW programmes,
2) much improved prevention and preparation for bioterrorism, and
3) more transparent and routine surveillance of biological research labs (particularly P4 and P3 labs) in which scientists investigate the most dangerous pathogens such as the Ebola virus and the coronavirus.
All these criteria have been met by SARS-CoV-2.
Its high rate of asymptomatic transmission makes the process of trying to control the virus extremely challenging. Its range and destructive power is unprecedented. SARS-CoV-2 not only meets but also surpasses the standards of a traditional bioweapon. Therefore, it should be defined as an Unrestricted Bioweapon.
