More than 30 scientists worldwide published a joint open letter on April 4 pointing out the limitations of the current WHO panel for the investigation of the retrospective origin of the new coronavirus, their restricted access, lack of independence and necessary access to conduct a comprehensive and unrestricted investigation of all hypotheses about the origin of the new coronavirus, and the existence of conflicts of interest. The experts called for the creation of a new body to conduct a comprehensive and independent investigation into the origins of the outbreak.
The joint open letter, published by more than 30 scientists worldwide on April 4, calls for a new international investigation. They say the WHO team completed a mission last month to Wuhan, the mainland Chinese city where the first known case was found, without sufficient opportunity to fully investigate the possible source of the new coronavirus, including whether the virus leaked from a laboratory.
Nikolai Petrovsky, a vaccine expert at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who participated in signing the open letter calling for a new investigation, noted that in terms of the current global traceability of the new coronavirus, “we don’t know any more than we did a year ago.”
The open letter criticizes the WHO mission for “not having an independent mandate or permission to conduct a full and unrestricted investigation” to fully investigate the possible sources of the new coronavirus, including whether the virus leaked from a laboratory. And, “According to our analysis, and as confirmed by global investigations convened by the WHO and Chinese Communist authorities, there is currently no evidence that the virus is of exclusively natural origin.”
Petrovsky said, “All possibilities are on the table, but I have yet to see a single piece of independent scientific data that would rule out any of them.”
The open letter notes that while the “collaborative” process mandated by the World health Assembly in May 2020 was intended to be a comprehensive review of the origins of the pandemic, “we believe that the structural limitations of this effort make it virtually impossible for the action teams convened by WHO to achieve this aspiration “
The open letter states that “half of the joint panel is made up of Chinese citizens, their scientific independence may be limited, the joint panel bases its conclusions on information that the Chinese Communist authorities have chosen and then told them, and any report of the joint panel must be approved by the Chinese and international members.”
The experts argued that the joint WHO and Chinese panel did not have the independence and access to data necessary to conduct a true investigation. Also, members of the study group said that the Chinese side was reluctant to disclose important data that might indicate that the crown disease was released months earlier than initially recognized.
In addition, the open letter noted that the selection of the members of the joint WHO and mainland China panel failed to avoid conflicts of interest, and that one member of the joint panel funded research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Virus Institute. However, the work of the joint panel was inaccurately reported in the media as an independent investigation, claiming that its conclusions reflected those of WHO.
The experts noted that any findings of the Joint Commission, while potentially useful to a limited extent, neither represent the official position of WHO nor represent unrestricted independent findings.
Finally, in an open letter, the experts called on the international community to establish new institutions and procedures that could overcome the structural flaws in the joint WHO-China panel and conduct a new, comprehensive and independent investigation into the origins of the CCP virus outbreak. The letter was published in the Wall Street Journal and Le Monde in France on April 4.
The letter was also signed by Jamie Metzl, a member of the White House National Security Council during the Clinton administration, Bruno Canard and Etienne Decroly, virologists from the French National Center for Scientific Research, and two French geneticists, Jean-Michel Claverie and Virginie Courtier, among others.
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