6:05 AM 10/24/2022 - Controversial new research suggests SARS-CoV-2 bears signs of genetic engineering | Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2 | Scientists in furious row over 'lab-made Covid' claims
6:05 AM 10/24/2022 Controversial new research suggests SARS-CoV-2 bears signs of genetic engineering posted at 09:35:06 UTC via economist.com A string of about 30,000 genetic letters were all that it took to start the nightmare of covid-19, the death toll from which is likely to be more than 20m. Exactly how this story began has been hotly contested. Many think that covid-19’s emergence was a zoonosis—a spillover, as so many new pathogens are, from wild animals, for it resembles a group of coronaviruses found in bats. Others have pointed to the enthusiastic coronavirus engineering going on in laboratories around the world, but particularly in Wuhan—the Chinese city where the virus was first identified. In February 2021 a team of scientists assembled by the World Health Organisation ( WHO ) to visit Wuhan said a laboratory leak was extremely unlikely. However, this conclusion was subsequently challenged by the WHO ’s boss, who said ruling out this theory was premature. Two rece
