The US congressional committee is investigating the origins of Covid-19 in Washington at its initial session.
The subcommittee was established by the newly elected Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, and its goal is to determine how the coronavirus first appeared.
According to certain American officials, Covid “most likely” originated from an unintentional lab leak in Wuhan, China. Yet, a lot of scientists point out that there isn’t any proof that it escaped from a lab.
Also, according to the White House, there is no agreement on the virus’s ancestry inside the US government.
The nine Republican and seven Democratic committee has stated that it will endeavor to execute its business without regard to partisanship.
Raul Ruiz, the committee’s senior Democrat, opposed calling witness Nicholas Wade because of a contentious book he wrote at the hearing on Wednesday.
The inclusion of the former New York Times journalist, according to Mr. Ruiz, was risky and showed that he could not be trusted.
The congressman claimed that Mr. Wade’s 2014 book, which made the case that races evolved differently, had received support from Dr. David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux KKK.
Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, defended Mr. Wade as “an extraordinary science writer,” and Mr. Wade claimed that the book was racist.
Dr. Redfield, who first advocated the lab leak idea, used his presentation on Wednesday to reiterate his opposition to so-called gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses to make them more contagious in lab settings.
He told the committee it was “not scientifically plausible” to him that the virus had natural beginnings.
“It was told to me that they wanted a single narrative, and that I obviously had a different point of view,” he said.
Other research shows the virus made the leap from animals to humans in Wuhan, presumably at the city’s seafood and wildlife market.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top virus research facility that studied coronaviruses, is close to the market.
The US taxpayer, according to Dr. Redfield, supported gain of function studies at the Wuhan Institute, he told the committee.
The “most likely” cause of Covid, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week, was a potential laboratory leak.
A few days prior to that, the US Department of Energy stated that it had concluded with “low confidence” that the virus was most likely the consequence of a lab leak in Wuhan.
Numerous experts who have analyzed the virus in response to that claim that there is no fresh evidence supporting a lab leak.
According to Professor David Robertson, director of viral genomes and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow, a natural genesis is still the more plausible option.
