Part of the vast city of Wuhan
PHILADELPHIA
Early this just-finished winter, physicians in Wuhan, China, became aware of cases of a new flu-like illness. It was related, as a so-called coronavirus, to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus (SARS). SARS wrought havoc in China in 2003, causing some 8,000 infections, along with a mortality rate of at least 10 percent. It brought martial law to Beijing and elsewhere in China.
The new pathogen, which we’re now getting used to calling COVID-19, is also a coronavirus, thought to be endemic in bats, and transmitted to humans by an as yet unknown pathway (possibly the pangolin, a lovable denizen of the tropics).
The holocaust in China since December has now done previously unimaginable harm, with tens of thousands or more infected in the nation and a death rate comparable to SARS, bringing much of China to a panicky halt. And now there are hundreds of thousands – or more – cases in the world, and many thousands of deaths as the pandemic rolls on.
All of the noble doctors and other health providers who perished, such as Dr. Li Wenliang, who left a child and an infected pregnant wife -- and there were many more -- fearlessly confronted COVID-19, but without one crucial piece of information: namely, how it spread. It was known that the virus could jump from some animals to other animals, and from one person to another, but how exactly did it get from other animals to humans?
Throughout southern China exist hundreds of technically illegal markets, often huge, such as the one in Wuhan, holding wild species, some endangered, that are not legal to sell or eat. But they are consumed anyway. Bats are sold there, and bats are known to harbor the new coronavirus, as do many other unfortunate creatures. A mainstream story developed saying that the viruses jumped from the bats to another species, and thence to people.
The search is on for this creature. However, it probably does not exist and the whole theory about the virus is probably wrong. The simplest explanation for the epidemic is that somehow a form of the new coronavirus, which normally cannot infect human beings, either appeared through natural mutation and spread, or was engineered in a specially protected research facility for just such perilous work.
The epicenter of the infection is in Wuhan, Hubei, China’s great riverine transportation hub, with a population of 11 million — much bigger than New York. A vast wild animal market has long been there. But no way exists to demonstrate that this “wet market” is point zero. Quite the opposite, for a significant number of infections cannot be traced to the animals there.
Also in Wuhan is the Wuhan Institute of Virology and another laboratory configured specifically for such highly dangerous experiments as modifying bacteria and viruses so that they can yield vaccine or be used as biological weapons. These were built over 10 years with French assistance. That French plan for a research partnership fell through but the state-of-the art, level 4 (the highest-security) laboratory remained, and was put to use.
Now we approach the crux of the matter.
The findings of a long-term study, sponsored by the University of North Carolina, were published in Nature in August 2015. Nature is the most authoritative and trusted regular journal publishing new scientific results. Sixteen international experts participated in the study, including Dr. Zheng-li Shi and Dr. Xing-yi Ge, both of the level four laboratory in Wuhan. Here, with some explanation is what they reported:
“. . . We generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV [coronavirus] backbone. The [result] could] efficiently use multiple orthologs [genetically unrelated variants] of the human SARS receptor, angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE ) to enter, reproduce efficiently in primary human airways cells, and achieve in vitro titers [sufficiently lethal concentrates] equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”
In other words, using one component of the new coronavirus and another one of SARS, one could create a new virus having a deadliness close to that of SARS and able to cross the species barrier, be fruitful and multiply, killing large numbers of victims, particularly elderly people.
From a virological standpoint this was an important breakthrough in understanding how viruses can propagate into new species. The doctors in the experiments, however, were shocked by its medical implications: Neither monoclonal antibodies nor vaccines killed it. The new virus, which was replicated and christened SHC104, [demonstrated] “robust viral replication, in vitro [lab-ware] and in vivo” [living creatures].
“Our work” the authors noted fearfully, “suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV emergence from viruses now circulating in bat populations.” It seems likely to me that the new coronavirus did emerge in some such way, as a result of error at the Chinese P4 laboratory. Perhaps the search was for a vaccine. Less likely is that it was the result of research to create a biological weapon, for though such research is widespread worldwide (restarted in 1969 in the United States), the coronavirus is, in one sense, mild: Some people die, but most recover. It is not anthrax.
In any event, I think that an innocent but catastrophic mistake at the Wuhan P4 lab is now bringing something like Götterdämmerung to China.
If components of the new bat virus were connected in the laboratory to those of the known SARS virus, the result was a “virus that could attach functionally to the human SARS receptor, angiotensin converter enzyme II, with which it had similarities but no kinship (“orthologs”). The species barrier was thus crossed with a laboratory-created virus that could copy itself, reproduce in human airways, e.g., the lungs, and produce in glass laboratory equipment the equivalent of titers (amounts of liquid sufficiently concentrated) to achieve the strength of epidemic strains of SARS.
One intriguing piece of evidence appeared very briefly in the Chinese press.
A Southeast Asian editor wrote me:
“I also found this Caixin {Chinese media company} piece interesting. Especially the following paragraph:
{Prof. Richard Ebright, the laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University} “cited the example of the SARS coronavirus, which first entered the human population as a natural incident in 2002, before spiking for a second, third, and fourth time in 2003 as a result of laboratory accidents.”
This article disappeared almost instantly but its contents have been circulating in Southeast Asia.
It indicates that laboratory mishaps were involved in SARS. So the same possibility cannot be ruled out now. The original article has been expunged in China, including from the Caixin archives.
Since then no more technical or scientific evidence has appeared. So we wait for an explanation from the Chinese government.
In China, the fabric of the society is tearing; its foundations and structures are bending and stooping under the lash of a deathly microorganism, apparently made by humans and somehow released, the effects of which few conceived or expected. Now populations of tens of millions around the world face and may well pay the ultimate price. The all-knowing Chinese Communist Party looks absurd and corrupt. In Wuhan supplies are scarce and crematories have worked 24/7 to dispose of the dead. The self-sacrificing medical profession, however, has little idea of where to turn for a cure.
We are in the midst of a global tragedy. Officials of the despotic Chinese government, which designed and built the Wuhan facility, seem ignorant about what they set in motion, while the biologists, with perhaps some exceptions, will recoil, as will subsequent generations, with what they have wrought.
Arthur Waldron is Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and an historian of China. He’s also a longtime friend and colleague of Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor.
