The House of Representatives voted unanimously Friday morning on a bill to declassify intelligence on the origin of covid-19, following two reports suggesting the fatal virus originated in a Chinese lab, even as scientists expressed skepticism about the theory.
The House voted 419-0 on the bill, a remarkable show of unity from a governing framework that is rarely based on law, after the Senate passed its edition of the bill unanimously last week, meaning the bill will head to President Joe Biden’s office.
If the law becomes law through President Joe Biden, Director of National Intelligence Avril Danica Haines would have 90 days to submit a report on unclassified data to Congress: Biden has not spoken out for or against the bill, but in the past he had ordered more data from the intelligence network about the origin of the virus just months into his presidency.
The bill asks officials to release data on studies conducted before the fatal virus emerged in late 2019 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some lawmakers and two recent reports recommend the virus originated.
In a report last week, the Energy Ministry concluded that the maximum likely source of the virus is a laboratory leak at the Wuhan Virology Center, though the ministry admitted to reaching its conclusion with “little confidence,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Two days later, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the FBI believed the virus came from a Wuhan lab “for some time” (Beijing has continually denied the claim that the virus originated through a leak in the lab).
Scientists also expressed doubts about the lab leak theory, which was long regarded as a discredited trust after several lawmakers added that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky. ) and former President Donald Trump raised the concept in the early months of the pandemic. Researchers in a March 2020 paper published in Nature Medicine rejected the theory, saying they “don’t believe any kind of laboratory situation is plausible. “Other studies have linked the origin of the coronavirus to a rainy market in Wuhan, where scientists spread the virus from live animals sold in the market to people. A July 2022 study in Science found that the market was the “epicenter” of the virus, with only two-thirds of the first 41 patients hospitalized in Wuhan having direct contact with the placeplace market.
Last week, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news convention that “all hypotheses” related to the origin of the virus remain on the table and that the foreign organization is still investigating where and how it spread to humans. It is waiting for more information from the Chinese government to make a final decision. His comments reiterated several other reports indicating it would likely be too early to say where the virus came from. In May 2021, an organization of scientists published a letter in the journal Science, saying that the theory had not been fully studied and that “we want to take hypotheses about the consequences of herbs and the laboratory seriously until we have enough data. “An October 2021 National Intelligence Council report also said the lab theory and rainfall market theory are “plausible. “
Covid most likely comes from lab leak, Energy Department says, but Biden says no ‘definitive answer’ (Forbes)
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Chronology: How the origin story of the Covid lab leak went from “conspiracy theory” to debate (Forbes)
All theories about the origin of Covid – laboratory leaks – ‘on the table’, says WHO director (Forbes)
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