Even if we were to accept all the accusations against the WIV regarding their alleged subpar safety standards, none of it has any relevance to the Covid-19 pandemic unless it can be shown the WIV possessed SARS-CoV-2 in its lab before the outbreak, and there is no evidence of that.
by Joshua Cho
Part 7 - Judgments of scientists directly familiar with the WIV
Arguably, the opinions of scientists and biosecurity experts directly familiar with the WIV’s safety protocols should count more than others. And they paint a very different picture from the one painted by the critics, and argue that reports insinuating that the laboratory was operating under subpar safety conditions are misrepresentations.
French biosecurity expert Gabriel Gras — who oversaw safety standards at the WIV from 2012 to 2017, since the WIV’s BSL-4 laboratory is a joint collaboration between China and France — dismissed the lab-leak theory and vouched for the WIV’s professionalism and safety standards. He also stated that a BSL-3 laboratory is usually used to study a coronavirus, as it made little sense to use BSL-4 facilities owing to the time and cost considerations. Dr. Danielle Anderson testified that the WIV was being misrepresented by critics and the media:
French biosecurity expert Gabriel Gras — who oversaw safety standards at the WIV from 2012 to 2017, since the WIV’s BSL-4 laboratory is a joint collaboration between China and France — dismissed the lab-leak theory and vouched for the WIV’s professionalism and safety standards. He also stated that a BSL-3 laboratory is usually used to study a coronavirus, as it made little sense to use BSL-4 facilities owing to the time and cost considerations. Dr. Danielle Anderson testified that the WIV was being misrepresented by critics and the media:
Half-truths and distorted information have obscured an accurate accounting of the lab’s functions and activities, which were more routine than how they’ve been portrayed in the media. …It’s not that it was boring, but it was a regular lab that worked in the same way as any other high-containment lab. What people are saying is just not how it is.
American scientists who trained WIV staff attested that the safety protocols at the WIV are not only practiced by scientists all over the world, but that those safety protocols and practices were partly shaped by WIV scientists themselves, owing to their excellence. Some of the safety protocols include wearing safety equipment to prevent themselves from getting infected while doing field work, and making sure that the samples they handle in the lab are “inactivated,” and aren’t actually infectious, by using a chemical process that breaks apart the virus itself, while preserving its genetic material for study.
But even if we were to accept all the accusations against the WIV regarding their alleged subpar safety standards, none of it has any relevance to the Covid-19 pandemic unless it can be shown the WIV possessed SARS-CoV-2 in its lab before the outbreak, and there is no evidence of that either.
In hindsight, it seems there may be a legitimate debate to be had over whether certain experiments conducted at the WIV should have been handled at higher biosafety settings, even if they weren’t out of the ordinary. However, it’s clear that accusations of the WIV being a nefarious bioweapons lab conducting research in subpar safety conditions compared to the rest of the world at the time are misleading at best, and at worst unproven or false.
In hindsight, it seems there may be a legitimate debate to be had over whether certain experiments conducted at the WIV should have been handled at higher biosafety settings, even if they weren’t out of the ordinary. However, it’s clear that accusations of the WIV being a nefarious bioweapons lab conducting research in subpar safety conditions compared to the rest of the world at the time are misleading at best, and at worst unproven or false.
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