Molecular Biologist Breaks Down the COVID Lab Leak Evidence: Furin Sites, Missing Data, Cover-Up

Alina Chan [00:00:00] If the public is shown that repeatedly and consistently scientists were holding back the facts from them, whether it was because scientists were afraid they would panic the public, or whether scientists were trying to protect their own interests, that would completely break the trust between non-scientists and and scientists. And it, it also drags in science writers and science journalists and journalists who have been just regurgitating everything that scientists have told them. I'm Miriam Hoffman, a full-time college student living in Carbondale, Illinois, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:32] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. I interview Alina Chan, who is the co-author with Matt Ridley on a wild new book called Viral on the Origins of the CV two COVID Virus. This is a crazy thriller of a book. I picked it up because Matt Ridley, who's been a guest on the show a couple of times, wrote it and I thought, man, if Matt put this out, if he decided to drop everything he was doing and put a book out on something that is in the news right now, it's gotta be good. And man, as soon as I started listening to that book, I was completely hooked. It is written in such a compelling way, and it's really on a subject that we all lived through, but there was so much about coronavirus that we just didn't pick up on because we were in the middle of it and we couldn't see the wider picture. And so you get to understand why is the virus as bad as it is? You get to see into how it spread what we thought things were going on, and how it all morphed out. It is an incredible book, and I was hugely honored to have Alina Chan come on and talk all about her experience of getting involved with this book, writing it, what did she discover? The craziness that's gone on with the EcoHealth Alliance and Peter dk, but also what this means for a world in which it's really likely that the virus spilled out from a lab in Wuhan China. This is a phenomenal interview and I'm so glad you're here.

Vance Crowe [00:02:02] Before we get there, we are heading into the holiday season, and if you've been thinking about doing a legacy interview for one of your friends, loved one's parents or yourself, I encourage you to do it. For anybody that doesn't know, a legacy interview is where I sit down and do a private interview with you or a loved one to talk about your family values, to talk about your history, your stories, things that you want preserved in a sort of time capsule. We'll have a few general questions that you'll know I'll ask, but once we start the conversation, just like this podcast, we don't know where things will go. I'll explore the hidden nooks and crannies. Just last week, I did a couple that were 85 years old, they'd been married for over, I think, 60 years, and they have a huge family with dozens and dozens of grandkids. And we had a phenomenal conversation talking everything about the loss of children to the experience of raising their family within a church, different experiences that changed their marriage and their lives, what they thought was important, and laughing and telling great stories that they wanted to make sure were captured for their great, great, great grandchildren. So if you're interested in doing this, go to store dot Articulate Ventures and sign up to do one of these interviews before the holiday season. Alright, without further ado, we're going to go to the delightful Alina Chan, author of the brand new book, viral Alina Chan, welcome to the podcast.

Alina Chan [00:03:32] Thanks for having me on the show.

Vance Crowe [00:03:34] So I'm delighted to have you. You are a co-author with one of my favorite people in the whole world, Matt Ridley. And I just finished reading your book about the origin of the coronavirus, and I was stunned throughout the entire thing. It read like a crime thriller, and more than anything, it was an experience of I lived through coronavirus, and yet there is so much about the disease and where it came from and why it's so dangerous, and why do we think, you know, why is it so important that we find out where it came from that I just never thought of? So I'm delighted that you were willing and able to come on the podcast today. So to start off, how did you get involved with writing a book with Matt Ridley about coronavirus?

Alina Chan [00:04:22] So Matt and I first connected in mid 2020. This was after I had put up my preprint on whether the virus was well adapted to humans, and Matt was writing a piece for the Wall Street Journal. So he saw my preprint and we started talking to each other via email and half a year later, so by late 2020, he decided that he wanted to write this book on the original of COVID-19, and he wanted me to join him as a co-author. So I was really stunned by that offer because I, I am nobody, so I'm, I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Broad, but I'm not a science writer. And so I, I took many months to deliberate on this decision because it wouldn't have fairly life-changing effects for me, being more trust into the public light on this topic, which is very controversial, sometimes dangerous topic to talk about for scientists. And by May of this year, 2021, we decided, yes, let's do it. So we signed a deal and we worked furiously on this book, literally 24 7 because he's five hours ahead of me. So I would finish a draft, send it to him, and back and forth just day and night until we got the book sent up to the president September.

Vance Crowe [00:05:34] And so when you're thinking about writing this book, you say it's a little bit dangerous, it's gonna thrust you into the public light for people that aren't scientists. Why it, why do you say this? Like, you know, it's just writing a book.

Alina Chan [00:05:45] So the, the topic is, is extremely polarizing. It's, it's possibly one of the most important questions of our lifetimes and has huge consequences depending on what the answer is. Where did this virus come from? So if it came from nature, from the wildlife trade, I feel like a lot of people would heve a huge sigh of relief because it's just the same old thing happening again and again. But if it came from a lab, from research activities, then, then everything has to change because now there's a new type of risk, a new type of pandemic risk that we have to mitigate. And, and suddenly the scientific community might find themselves in a position where they have to be more transparent, be do their research more safely and be accountable. So finding the answer, where did this virus come from can prevent future pandemics, but it also makes it so that a lot of actions have to be taken.

Vance Crowe [00:06:37] So why is it not obvious where the, where the virus came from? It seems like every other virus that's been out there we're like, Matt, we found the, the culprit animal and we know where it's at. But this one, we, why is it that we don't know?

Alina Chan [00:06:51] So right now, you, you're right, there's no definitive evidence for either a natural or lab origin. There have been efforts made to look for the intermediate host, the proximal animal source of this virus, the original animal population that gave this virus to humans. But almost two years since this virus has emerged in Wuhan, there, there's been no trace of this animal. So they cannot find a proximal animal source of the virus. On the other hand, for the lab origin, this virus emerged in a city where the lab doing this exact type of research, collecting all of these diverse stars like viruses, making novel and sometimes dangerous genetic modifications to them was based in this city. So despite this huge coincidence, that hypothesis has not been properly investigated. The the extent of the investigation was just asking the scientists that, did you leak this from your lab? And of course they said no. So that, yeah, so we are, we're at this situation where what we need now is a systematic investigation. There are still many routes that can be investigated. So we are not at the hopeless dead end yet.

Vance Crowe [00:07:59] So when COVID first hit, you know, and all of a sudden I went from being on the road all the time to being in my house. I started running the podcast all the time, and Matt, actually, Matt Ridley was one of the first people we had on to talk about COVID. And I remember very clearly he, he was talking about like, why are they eating all these exotic animals where, you know, they have all this interaction with bats. And I remember it being a rather profound experience when, when I started hearing Matt explore the idea that it might be a lab leak, because this was one of those things that if you even put this out into the world that you thought, this came from a lab, you were a xenophobic, you, you somehow didn't like the Chinese, you were being unfair, you were being a conspiracy theorist. What, what changed his mind, your mind to, to saying like, Hey, this is something we really need to dig deeper into.

Alina Chan [00:08:51] I think for a lot of experts, scientists and journalists, like the turning point was the joint China, WHO in investigation. So the World Health Organization had begged China for about a year to please let them come in and take a look. So in January of 2021, they finally got to go in, and when they came out, they tried to tell people that a lab leak was extremely unlikely, but yet they said that it was possible, more likely that this virus had emerged from a block of frozen meat imported across borders or something into China. So when people saw that, they, they realized that one, no, no investigation was properly done, so they had no access to data, but that they were also heavily influenced by the Chinese half of the team, which were trying to push a narrative that this virus had not originated in China. And so I think it was extremely concerning. And, and that's when a lot of scientists really stepped up and wrote open letters, wrote it, published in the Wall Street Journal, published in Science Magazine, asking for a proper investigation of both natural and lab-based origins.

Vance Crowe [00:09:56] So let's actually talk a little bit, one of the most interesting parts of your book to me was explaining why COVID was so much more dangerous than other things. Like, can you talk about just, you know, because when we've been living with it for so long, I think people just think like, ah, it's dangerous, it's more dangerous. I don't really know why, what makes COVID a different sort of disease than what we've seen before?

Alina Chan [00:10:19] So this virus is extremely stealthy and, and tricky to contain. And other scientists have brought this up too, trying, trying to shut this thing down, trying to eradicate it has become near impossible now because the first thing is that it can spread before someone even has symptoms. So how, how do you even try to contain something like this where someone could just be asymptomatically spreading the virus to everyone around them? And the second thing is that it has extremely long incubation time of up to two weeks. So for sars, one that was much less, it was like, within, within a week you should develop symptoms, but for sars two, you can just be walking around the streets, taking international flights without any symptoms for two weeks, and then suddenly you start a super spreader event somewhere at a wedding or a funeral or something. So it's extremely hard to contain. And we have seen how successful it is. It's infected now at least two, 250 million people. And so it's been given plenty of oxygen, plenty of opportunity to mutate and evolve to, to handle human preexisting immunity. So even though you've been infected by COVID before, you can get reinfected again and again by emerging variants over time. So at this point, it's, it's just near impossible to eradicate. Like there's, there's no way.

Vance Crowe [00:11:32] And when it gets inside of you, the, the, there was a part about the book, you were talking about the ACE inhibitor and how somehow this is what regulates blood pressure, which is why young people have, have not had that big of a problem with it. But for older people or for people that have comorbidities, this causes major issues. Can you remind me what, what part of the book that was in?

Alina Chan [00:11:53] Yes, so it should be in chapter two, if I'm not wrong, about viruses. So we talk about how SARS one and SARS two both use the same entry receptor, so they bind to this protein called human ACE two, it's, it's expressed on different cells in your body and it's expressed really prolifically over your body, even in your muscle cells, in your, in your blood vessels. And so when the virus sees this protein sticking on cells, it latches on and it recognizes it enters your cell and infects you. But SARS two also has this very unique feature called the furin cleavage site, which is also in its spike that latches onto the ACE two receptor. So this furin cleavage site gives it a lot of novel properties compared to SARS one. And, and so a lot of scientists who have studied this furin cleavage site, they say that without this feature, SARS two would not be a pandemic virus. And it's precisely this feature that makes, that is extremely controversial. A lot of scientists, even top virologists are undecided whether or not it's natural or whether it was inserted into the virus in a lab.

Vance Crowe [00:12:58] So let's talk about a fear and cleavage site. What does that mean? Why is that so rare? And you know, why does this single feature say, ah, this, this means it's not really natural.

Alina Chan [00:13:09] So amongst all of the sars like viruses we've seen to date SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus with this furin cleavage site insertion in the spike. And so the advantage it confers is that it makes the virus much more infectious. So it it primes the spike for binding onto the human ACE two receptor, but it also allows it to fuse with other cells much more quickly. So when you've infected one cell and it fuses with all the surrounding cells, you create these abnormal structures in your body. And that's part of the, part of the danger of the disease is that it, there's so much fusing of your cells that all the fine structure is gone. So for example, in your lung, all of that fine structure is gone. So, and that's why a lot of people have huge respiratory failure or it, that's the same thing in your heart. And so a lot of people with underlying diseases and with heart disease for example, they, they're more susceptible to COVID-19 severe outcomes. And so this, this feature is unique. SARS-CoV-2 amongst all SARS like viruses, and there are fewer cleavage sites at a similar position in distantly related coronaviruses. But till today, SARS-CoV-2 is the only one within its family. And so it is possible that it emerged naturally, it's completely possible, but we have not seen any evidence of that. But it's also possible that it emerged in a lab because in the years leading up to the pandemic scientists working with these viruses had started to start a trend of inserting these features directly into the spikes of novel coronaviruses they picked up in the while.

Alina Chan [00:14:49] So both hypothesis on the table.

Vance Crowe [00:14:53] So you brought up the lab part again, which is when, when the story goes from like, ah, this is an interesting virus to being like a crime thriller, is that you don't really think that it's a biological weapon. You don't think people were sitting there tinkering away trying to release this into the, into the environment to harm people. What is your hypothesis? What, why a lab leak and what do you think people were doing messing around these viruses at all?

Alina Chan [00:15:18] So the lab leak is actually not on the completely opposite end of a natural origin. So for example, for natural origin, the story usually goes is that a hapless person is exposed to an animal that's infected, whether it's a bat in a cave somewhere, or whether it's a, an a very sick animal in the wildlife trade. So in the markets or at a farm, but for a lab origin, that's actually a spectrum of activities that could lead to a lamb escape or research related escape. So it starts with even the field work. So you've got, we know that there were dozens of scientists over the past, more than decade, going out to all these rural and remote areas collecting tens of thousands of samples from not just animals, not just bats, not just animals in the wildlife trade, but even humans. So they were specifically looking for humans living in these remote areas that were infected and collecting samples from them. So during this process, they themselves might have been exposed to a infected animal or human, and then brought that infection back into a very densely populated urban center. So that,

Vance Crowe [00:16:20] To clarify from your book, like this is what it was like, hard to wrap your mind around, these were extremely remote places. Yeah. These were places where the people living in the village either never left or maybe left the village once or twice in their entire lifetime, right? Yeah. They, they were living outside of a cave, you know, in a place where the only reason outsiders came there was to mine some obscure metal or something like that. And, and there were bats living there. And so these adventurers were going out taking tens of thousands of samples and then bringing them back to, well, a variety of labs. But in this particular case, Wuhan, right?

Alina Chan [00:16:56] Yes. So we know that Wuhan had become the epicenter where all of these tens of thousands of samples from high risk animals and humans were being sent for, for several years leading up the pandemic. And so that activity itself, just the collection activity and the concentrating of it in that center could have led to a lab escape. We know that they were doing this work, this research at a very low biosafety level, BSL two, which sometimes just consists of gloves. So sometimes the researchers just handling all these samples with gloves on, and, and there's no way this can protect you from a airon virus like SARS-CoV-2, there's just no way. So other virologists who, who heard and saw the evidence that this work was being done at BSL two, they said things like that screwed up. They said, this should never happen at this, at this level. And, and so further, further to collection though, once, once the virus is actually in the lab and you're handling the sample, virologists will grow, will try to grow the virus in the lab, or if they can't grow it in the lab, they, they can even synthesize it from scratch. So they can even clone a completely novel virus from scratch just using the sequence without leaving any traces in there. So this, these processes of making more of the virus across a boutique collection of different cell lines from bats, humans, pigs like monkeys, this is also a risky activity, especially when you do it a BSL two. And then the, the final step above that is, is putting in features that could enhance the transmissibility or the virulence of a particular pathogen.

Alina Chan [00:18:32] So putting in a fueling cleavage site, for example, or switching in and out spikes or different genes in the virus can make it po capable of causing a pandemic. And this is the last one I'll say on this point, is that in the last two months, all these documents have come out leaked or opting through freedom of Information Act showing that very dangerous work was happening. So including manipulation of human pathogen, MERS virus, putting in parts of Chinese mers like viruses into the mid middle Eastern murder virus.

Vance Crowe [00:19:06] So why in the world would anybody sit in a lab and do this if they didn't have nefarious intent? If they, if, if you didn't think like, oh, these are people, you know, twirling their mustaches and, and preparing to do, you know, bio, bio weapon war.

Alina Chan [00:19:19] The, the whole purpose or the mission of this work was to predict and prevent future pandemics. And so what was happening was there was an international consortia of, of scientists. So it, it wasn't just Chinese scientists, it was scientists in the US and Europe and other parts of Asia and China. They all agreed that they were gonna build this mega database of viruses called the Global Viral Project. And China wanted to be in charge of the prototype, which was based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So they were building their own database of novel pathogens they found in the world. And the point of it was that if a new pandemic started, if a new outbreak were to occur, you could look at that virus's genomic data and compare it to what's in the database. And from there, fill in the picture of how dangerous this virus might be. And yet, when COVID to 19 was detected in Wuhan, that database was inaccessible and never made available. And the partners who had contributed to this database even said, there's nothing useful in there. You, we don't need to see this database. So it's this shocking, like invalidation of the purpose of the entire work.

Vance Crowe [00:20:35] So it's, it's fascinating you bring this up because I think in the book at this point, when you start thinking about like, why is it that people are pushing these things together and now they're making this database, and in comes this term that in US popular culture, we hear quite a bit, but I didn't know anything at all about it. And it's EcoHealth Alliance, right? So this place starts popping up and when you get the history of this group, you find out this was like not a group that was initially when it was set up many, many years ago, designed to be studying this thing. It it made a turn years ago. So tell us a little bit about the history of the EcoHealth Alliance and then how did they get involved in this, you know, story about a, a virology lab in Wuhan China?

Alina Chan [00:21:21] So the EcoHealth Alliance used to be a wildlife conservation organization, but I'd say that things changed once Peter DHE came into the picture. So Peter dhe is the current president of the Equal Health Alliance, and he had been working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Xi Jangly, the PI that has called Dr Xi Jangly to track the bat origin of SARS Cov one of the first SARS virus. So when he changed the name to Equal Health Alliance, the whole mandate of that organization became finding all these viruses and building a, building a huge database of these viruses. So it, it became a very trendy, kind of very postmodern way of looking at wildlife con conservation, right? So, so rather than directly trying to conserve wildlife, they, they were trying to find all the viruses in the wildlife and use that to predict future outbreaks, and from there try to inform policy about protecting wildlife.

Vance Crowe [00:22:26] And so talk about their involvement with the lab. I mean, it just seems so odd that these things would like an American nonprofit led by a British guy. Like it's just so, such a weird thing.

Alina Chan [00:22:41] So we, we know that this is an extremely well funded organization, and its partners are extremely well funded too in, in China and elsewhere. So they had been given literally hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly from the us from the Department of Defense, from the Pentagon and, and from NIH, the N-I-A-I-D infectious Diseases organization. So they were, I think their work was extremely glorified. Like they were consistently publishing in the top journals in all the top scientific journals. And you can see this track record of them publishing with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, like every time they found new cells like viruses or things like that, they got super excited and they would publish it in a very high profile place. But the thing is, when you look at that literature, you soon realize that all of the viruses they've described to date, even even post pandemic, have been collected before 2016. So there this black like box or this window of time between 2016 and 2019, we have no idea what are the new viruses they've collected and brought to the lab.

Vance Crowe [00:23:47] And why does that matter?

Alina Chan [00:23:49] That matters because a lot of natural origin proponents, so people who insist that the virus most likely came from nature have said that the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 doesn't match anything we seen in the literature. So the problem is they're not acknowledging the caveat that scientists take time to publish. So a lot of the work we published was actually done like two or three years ago, or sometimes even more. Some people save papers for a decade, if you can believe that. And so knowing that there's this window of time between 2016 and 2019 that we have no insight into what viruses were collected is a huge loophole. So we need to find out, and I believe that information, some of it might sit, sit at the Eco Health Alliance in New York, so that should be immediately investigated.

Vance Crowe [00:24:34] What do you think is going on that, that the Eco Health Alliance, I mean, from the way the book reads, and I have to admit, like I definitely am falling for the Dunning Kruger effect during your book. Like as I'm listening to it, I'm, I'm like, oh my gosh, we have all the answers we need. So I I am, I'm, I try to apply some level of skepticism, but as you're reading this book, you come to the conclusion like, here's this group. They've been given this mandate, or millions and millions of dollars to be prepared for pandemics. The big one comes, or presumably the big one, at least one of the big ones comes and suddenly

Alina Chan [00:25:09] Which

Vance Crowe [00:25:10] One

Alina Chan [00:25:10] Are they waiting for?

Vance Crowe [00:25:11] Yeah. And now all of a sudden they're like removing data. The head of the organization, Peter Dik starts saying things like, ah, I looked in that file. There's nothing in there for you guys to see. We're just gonna take it away. Why are they getting away with this? Like, what, it seems to me like there's so much social pressure on so many different things where people end up caving and there's so little social pressure here, I don't understand what's going on.

Alina Chan [00:25:37] Yeah. And I think that this is a point that's been pressed by, by very expert people who are experts at calling bullshit, right? So they've said, why are all these virologists so pissed by us a postdoc, me publishing a book when they should be pissed about the Equal Health Alliance not sharing all the information they had when this virus emerged? Like, why are they not like outraged that the World Health Organization was made to say that this pandemic could have started from a frozen block of meat like this, these are extremely damaging to the scientific community and to public trust and science. So it is, it is a problem. And I, I, I hesitate to speculate on the motivations of, of people, but this, this is a problem they should be aware of. Why are they not using their voices and their expertise to call out these clear instances where very important information's being sent on?

Vance Crowe [00:26:31] Yeah. So in preparation for this interview, I went and listened to a few of the Peter DK interviews, and like, it's not like he's so busy. He's like down in a lab, you know, hacking away through things that he can't,

Alina Chan [00:26:44] You know,

Vance Crowe [00:26:44] Get Oh, he doesn't working on

Alina Chan [00:26:45] That anymore.

Vance Crowe [00:26:46] Yeah. He, he's like a, he's a fundraiser, essentially, like the CEO of an organization. And he, when he talks on these interviews, he seems to blithely dismiss the questions that people have for him. And, and when I actually look at the criticisms that you and Matt give, get from other people, it, it, there's like this dismissive thing of like, you know, it's very clearly not a lab leak. This is like a red herring. We should just kind of move past and the people that think this are are, you know, trying to, to mislead. I don't really know what the question is o other than to say like, it, it, he appears to me to be like a, like a maddening figure in this whole thing. Al almost like a person that views himself as the hero that has taken some very serious steps towards being a, a rather imposing villain.

Alina Chan [00:27:35] Well, I mean, he has on multiple occasions, been proven to be extremely misinformed, if I can put that tactfully. So he's, he said that inserting fur cleage sites into novel SARS viruses was a conspiracy theory. And then two months ago we saw documents leaked from his organization showing that they were proposing to do that in early 2018. He said that keeping bets in the lab is a conspiracy theory, and then we see patents and, and documents leaked again, showing that they were taking bets to the lab to experiment with SAR viruses.

Vance Crowe [00:28:06] Yeah, they were, that, that, that one's the one that's really crazy. Like that one is the one where you're like, this appears to be a bold lie because they had a patent to start colonies inside of these labs, right? Yes. They wanted to be able to like, build out a facility because normally you can't domesticate bats, so you have to keep going out to these caves. So they thought, well, what the hell, why don't we create a, a, a, a system that you could colonize bats inside this lab, and by the way, we're gonna patent it. And for him to be out there being like, no, we didn't, you know, this, this isn't true. Seems absurd. Yeah,

Alina Chan [00:28:39] Yeah. When the patents are public material, so you can see when patents have been found and the wuhan nstitute of virology found a patent in 2018 for bad breathing in the lab. So, I mean, and this just whole series of this, and if you read the book, you'll see just time and again, Peter Dak saying all these things that he calls conspiracy theories, and then a few months later you find out that they were doing it. So I, yeah, it, it's very concerning. And even, even virologists who think that this virus might have come from nature, have expressed concern over, over Peter Dhe, that, that he is, he's having a lot of these self-inflicted wound wounds. So that's actually a perspective that was published in, in Science magazine by the chief editor, that he says that the Eco Health Alliance keeps inflicting wounds on, on themselves, but he's not calling them out for, for not being transparent.

Vance Crowe [00:29:32] Yeah, I read that article as well, like, and, and went through and read a whole bunch of them. The, the, the big article, the big publications seem to definitely like give him a few digs, but then they're like, really, he's just misunderstood. People just don't understand a profit, you know, this, this poor lovey, you know, bear and, and like, to me, so in my life of working in diplomacy and international relations at the World Bank and various large corporations, he seems like a figure that you see quite often, right? One that started up a project had really noble intents, right? If, if, hey, if we can figure out a way to find some new virus or find viruses way before they hit the human population, this is fine. But somewhere along the way, this like spins out of control. And from my read of your book, it's basically saying, Hey, the the very thing that they thought they were protecting us from may be the thing that they caused. If that's true, if we end up discovering, hey, with, you know, irrefutable proof that it was a lab leak, what do you think happens to the world? Like, do do people in the lab become personally liable? Do, do, does a country end up owing trillions of dollars to the rest of the world? How does this play out?

Alina Chan [00:30:47] So that, that's exactly right how you described it. It's, so let's go back to late 2019, or even January, 2020, they receive news. The Equal Health Alliance receives news that there's a novel sar like virus outbreak in Wuhan. What should they have done then? So if they even at all suspected it might have come from the lab, this would've terrified them. Because again, like you said, they, they were trying to prevent the pandemic, but maybe their work created this pandemic. So what, what should they do in that situation? And my argument is that in that moment, they should have said something along the lines of this, they should have said, lab accidents happen to anybody. Even the best people have lab accidents. Let's investigate this properly. Everyone respond in a way that you, you, you know, that this virus could have come from a wildlife market or it could have come from a lab. So that could have changed the course of the pandemic entirely. But for some reason, Peter Deak went the opposite way. So he wrote a letter, he organized a letter with other extremely prominent scientists who controlled the funding in science internationally, and they condemned all conspiracy theories suggesting that this virus did not have a natural origin. So instead of going with a more reasonable approach of saying that it could have been a lab accident, don't worry, let's, let's figure it out. They went with, it's a conspiracy theory to suggest that a lab accident could happen and leak this virus.

Vance Crowe [00:32:11] Yeah. And then at the, at that point, when you do that, if the, if the, if the conspiracy theory turns out to be true,

Alina Chan [00:32:18] This

Vance Crowe [00:32:18] Is like, you know, you know Yeah. Like when you lie to your parents, right? The lie yeah.

Alina Chan [00:32:22] To

Vance Crowe [00:32:22] Your parents ends up being worse than whatever crime you were trying to get out of. Because then it says, you know, we can't trust you. You don't have integrity. What does the world look like if, if you find the, the evidence that this, this irrefutably was a lab leak. What, what changes about the world

Alina Chan [00:32:41] That bothers me a lot is, as you said, it's the coverup that's worse than the original accident because accidents happen. So, but the, the point is that if, if the public is shown that repeatedly and consistently scientists were holding back the facts from them, whether it was because scientists were afraid they would panic the public, or whether scientists were trying to protect their own interests, that would completely break the trust between non-scientists and, and scientists. And it, it also drags in science writers and science journalists and journalists who have been just regurgitating everything that scientists have told them. So without any critical thinking, without any skepticism. So when that happens, you, you feed actual conspiracy theories, you feed actual rumors and then, you know, really, really out there hypothesis, like the virus doesn't even exist kind of narratives by people who, who have seen evidence that scientists can be trusted.

Vance Crowe [00:33:37] Yeah. The, I I remember when Matt was on the show, we, we talked about eating bats as like, just like a cultural thing that was going on. And so I tweeted out about this and, and I was talking about it on my podcast, and suddenly I was inundated with what appeared to be a, you know, a person saying, oh, it's not just the Chinese that eat bats, the Taiwanese eat them too. And I got all these images of like the Taiwanese president eating bats. And then I started looking at this account and found out like, this account was publishing everywhere and it appeared to me to be a ba a bot. So like, I was like, oh, well, okay, is this the Chinese government trying to like shift the blame from, you know, point A, you know, them doing the wildlife market over to here and it like now with some high, what's that?

Alina Chan [00:34:26] They're trying to shift the blame to Taiwan.

Vance Crowe [00:34:28] Yeah, definitely to Taiwan and, and like trying to like talk about the cultural things in weird ways. But the thing that really struck me was how important it is the narrative that comes out within, you know, that gets implanted in people's minds, right? Like the first real story that settles in your mind then has to be unseeded by something, which is why the social media sites were starting to ban anybody that talked about these things, to be able to label something as a conspiracy theorist. Like you can try and push people out. You now have like a front row seat on narrative building. What has this done to your worldview about what you know about the world and about what narratives are out there now that you've seen, you've seen this up close firsthand?

Alina Chan [00:35:12] Well, the first thing I'll say about that is that I've been in science and research for more than a decade. And so I, I know I look kind of young, but I have been working in labs for a long time. So I'm not under any like fairytale illusion about, you know, this the sainthood of, of scientists and, and editors that there is bad stuff happening in science. Like there are gatekeepers, there are people who engage in misconduct and that kind of thing. But this origin of COVID situation has brought up some of these worst instances. So for example, one, one case where I think the narrative was really made biased by gatekeeping was that in early 2020, the just a flurry of papers and news reporters and science research journals pushing the Pangolin origin of this virus, just everyone's going like pangolin nuts. Like they're just like, this must have come from a Pangolin. Meanwhile, there was a paper with actual data about the Wuhan market animal cells languishing behind peer review. The editor wouldn't publish it because they thought that there was no way that this, this data was true because the data said no bets or pangolins were ever sold in Wuhan markets between 2017 and late 2019. So if that paper had been a allowed to be published immediately, everyone would've said then there's no pangolins in this city, then where would they have come from? But instead that paper languish behind peer review to June of this year. So I mean, yeah, when when, when editors are keeping data, actual data behind, behind, like behind bars, then, then they're, they're corrupting the narrative, like the information that people are receiving.

Vance Crowe [00:36:48] So when we think about the proof that that would be needed to, to show like, Hey, this irrefutably was a lab leak, or no, we know it's a zoonotic one, what would that even look like? What is proof now that, you know, two years have passed since, since the virus began?

Alina Chan [00:37:07] Yeah, so looking at past coronavirus outbreaks in the 21st century. So there's no point thinking about stuff when before like sequencing was even invented. So looking at SARS one, for example, and, and Mers like when these were detected, the, the scientists and the doctors involved extremely rapidly found the animal source. 'cause they could just look at the earliest cases, contact, trace them and figure out the exposures. So for example, SARS one actually broke out not once, but at least twice. And at the, in early 2004 when it broke out again, one of the index patients was a waitress. And the doctors who diagnosed her said, are there C cats a a type of animal that can transfer SARS viruses to, to humans? They said, are there any C cats in your restaurant? The waitress said no, but they still went anyway. So they went to a restaurant and never cages everywhere, and they sampled the animals, they sampled the her coworkers, and immediately they found antibodies in them. They found traces of the virus in the restaurant. So that's how you collect evidence for a wildlife train origin, for example. But in the case of SARS two, as you said, close to two years have passed. They've searched, they've searched people there. I presume that the Chinese authorities have done contact tracing, but just not sharing the data with us. They've sampled more than 80,000 animal samples, tested them and all came up empty. So they, they tested everything in that market, they could find even the surfaces, and they found zero animal samples had traces of SARS two on that.

Vance Crowe [00:38:38] Because if they did have 'em, they would be, you know, holding them up on poster boards and showing everyone right, like it, it would be like, we want, we want everybody to know it wasn't our lab that did it, it it came from this, you know, mistaken, you know, food market, right? Is your presumption. You

Alina Chan [00:38:53] Didn't think so because that would be much less harmful version of the story. And we know from, from reporting, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that actually at the end of January, 2020, the Chinese scientists had already told the OIE, which is like the world organization for animal health, that none of the animals, some sampled and then market tested positive for the virus. And so they, they, after that they, they kept sampling all these farms and nearby places that supplied the market and found zero still. And by May of last year, the Chinese CDC director even came out and said that seafood market, but there had been a class of COVID cases, was a victim and the virus had existed long before.

Vance Crowe [00:39:36] So if it were a lab leak, do you think there's evidence that will come out for, or there could be evidence that would come out? Or do you think it's more likely that a whistleblower somebody that, that was in the lab that just can't hold it in any longer? I mean, what, what would it take in order to be able to have the sort of evidence that would stop everyone from, you know, disagreeing with you that it was, that it really did come from a lab.

Alina Chan [00:39:57] So we've seen in past lab-based outbreaks, including the Ttra outbreak in, in Soviet Union in the seventies, and also the H one N one pandemic that also occurred in the seventies, that sometimes it takes time, there are people who know, but it's not safe for them to tell us now. So sometimes it takes even a regime change before they feel safe to come out and say, actually here is the record that shows that this happened. And, and that's why it came from the lab for the NRA leak. It was actually just as simple as someone forgetting to replace the air filter in the vent. And because of that, the spas blew all over the one side of the city and infected people. And in the case of the H one N one pandemic, it was said by a Chinese scientist was investigating it in China that it was, it was most likely a vaccine trial gone wrong. So they had inoculated people with a live vaccine at the time that turned out to be still contagious and end up causing a pandemic. So I'd say then I'm hopeful for whistleblower, especially in this era where everything is recorded, you've got phones, like camera phones, emails, everything can be stored somewhere on a thumb drive somewhere. But at the same time, I think that there are many things we should investigate, and they're even outside of China. So for example, the Eco Eco Health Alliance that's based in New York City, they have, they must have a mountain of emails and documents that they've exchanged with scientists in Wuhan, like even in the years leading up the pandemic, like why has that not been systematically examined?

Vance Crowe [00:41:27] Yeah. And it's very interesting how you have gotten information from people. I I am, I was struck to hear Matt Ridley of all people talking about getting information from us right? To know, which in the US has historically been very anti GMO and has used the FOIA requests to be able to request other guests I've had on my podcast before, right? To, to be able to look into their lives, be really obtrusive and, and, but it turns out us right to know has found some information that at least appears on its face to, to be very illuminating with how much has been blocked and how much was known beforehand. So it's been, talk a little bit about where you guys got your information, how you validated it, and I mean, like this is really where the thriller part of the whole book comes in because it's like information pouring in from all these like totally obscure places.

Alina Chan [00:42:19] Yeah. So just rewinding time to early 2020, actually most of 2020, that the scientific consensus and that the media consensus was that anyone suggesting a lab origin was a conspiracy theorist. So a lot of scientists were afraid to speak up in public. So I, I have gotten so many emails in private from scientists and even Virologists telling me that I'm on the right track and not to stop digging and keep finding, keep working and finding the origin of COVID-19. But they, because of fear of personal retaliation, career retaliation, they haven't come out and said it publicly. Some of them even told me that they've been using anonymous accounts throughout the last year to, to, to push for an investigation in the lab origin. So that's the state we were in. And so the only people who were really, you know, trying to find all the information they could from open source areas and through foia, through the Freedom of Information Act tended to be outsiders, tended to be anonymous. So a few scientists here and there who weren't in the field because then they would be further removed from retaliation or organizations like the US right? To know, which traditionally have had a pretty like anti GMO stance, I'd say, right? So it, it fell to the people who had, who still had skepticism of a scientific consensus to, to do a real investigation.

Vance Crowe [00:43:40] So you guys were talking with people like my, my favorite character in the whole book is the Seeker, right? Who's this guy from India who is really good at using search engines and he's able to find information that other people aren't. When you think about like that gathering of information that, that internet, how did you choose who are people that are trustworthy and who are people that like yeah, maybe they, they want it to be a lab leak, maybe more than they have evidence.

Alina Chan [00:44:10] So it's a question of whether the message itself is true, right? So for me as a scientist, it, it wasn't about a messenger. I might really not like somebody or think they're not trustworthy, but you have to look at the message. If it's a Freedom of Information Act or if it's a document, a thesis or something, then that by itself is what you're evaluating because the document, I, the only question is whether it's been tampered with, that's the only thing. But other than that, who, who, who cares? Who came up with the document? Like it's real. So I mean, that, that's the thing. So actually some of these internets loose and, and some of them are scientists on their own, right? I have been talking with them for, for more than a year, right? So since May, 2020 when I put up my Preprint, and actually that was where they, a lot of them met each other. So it's a, it's a strange thing. I, who knows what, what would've happened if I never made that tread on, on Twitter about my preprint? Because soon enough underneath all of the independent investigators found each other and started this really long conversation about where this virus could come from. And they were just posting all the evidence they could find from the internet, like archived websites, archive databases, that kind of thing. And the seeker showed up and he dropped the medical thesis about the mojang min onto that thread. And that, that is what I think really sucked me in. So I was put on alert to this thesis, which, which described these cases in Unan 2012, where six miners were infected by what the thesis said was a SARS like virus. And this drew in all these top labs around China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology to search for sars like viruses in that cave or other bad viruses.

Alina Chan [00:45:48] And that is where the WIV found the nine closest relatives to SARS two at the time that SARS cov to two emerged in Wuhan.

Vance Crowe [00:45:58] I mean, this is exactly why people should go out and, and buy this book because the stories that you're talking about, you're giving like a, you know, two minute overview if, if that and the stories are themselves like gripping, I, I cannot imagine that this will not be turned into a movie at some point because like it's so compelling when you think about all these different situations that happen, people being in these obscure minds, the coverups, the the ways that the Chinese government would be blocking reporters from trying to get to these minds once it came out. I mean, it is absolutely thrilling. Before all of this happened, before you got yourself involved with a thriller, what type of person were you? Were you the type of person that imagined you could get yourself embroiled in international, you know, pandemic, coverup research book project with, you know, Lord Ridley, like,

Alina Chan [00:46:53] No, there's no way I could predict any of this would happen. I didn't even know I would write this book with man until like this year. So when I put out my preprint in in May of last year, I had no expectation of anything happening other than just sharing my preprint with people on Twitter. So it, this has been a whirlwind like, experience, like just extraordinary. I, I met so many great journalists and scientists and sleuths during this journey and it's just, I, I hope they've done their stories justice in the book.

Vance Crowe [00:47:25] But were you, were you like, what type of person were you? I mean, you're clearly a good student, right? You got, you're at the Broad Institute, you're doing your post postdoc, so like what, what type of person were you before this?

Alina Chan [00:47:38] I think I'm still the same type of person, which is that I'm someone who's extremely curious. So it's mostly driven by questions that I want to get answered and determination. So when I, when I think that an answer is within reach, I, I won't stop until it's found. And I, I think that characteristic is also found in some, the stu we described in the book, like the seeker Rosanna Yuri, like Francisco TSIs, the rubber, especially like that that guy is relentless. Like he, he has built this incredible like Excel sheet where he aligns all of the IDs of all the sequences that the WIV the institute virology is found. And and he's the one who shows that, that this is window time between 2016 and 2019. We have no idea what viruses they found. So just, it's, the book just tells all these stories of extreme determination against an onslaught of people calling them racist conspiracy theorists, that kind of thing. Like despite all this bullying from, from sometimes ologists and experts, these, these people have persisted.

Vance Crowe [00:48:43] And so how has your life changed now? Like you're, you're now, I I mean I've gone on Twitter and seen people being critical of you and Matt in, in ways that seem, seem absurd actually, like that they're not actually attacking the book, they're attacking your personalities or the way you handled things. Your life is much more public now. What else is different?

Alina Chan [00:49:06] Yeah, I mean I, I see these attacks and I think Matt and I have done a really good job because of the only thing they can attack is us then and not actual content in the book then we've done a really good job. No, no misinformation in the book whatsoever. Nothing is factually incorrect. So that, that's awesome. Thank I, I thank those virologists for doing that hard work of auditing our book. And I, I don't know what my future will look like, but I, I just knew that this was something that had to be done. So if if everyone is like, I need to protect my career, then, then we're all just gonna just let this happen just pandemic after pandemic without showing that we can track it, that we can hold people accountable, that we can set a precedent for future pandemics. So we, that absolutely is, is my first priority is getting a real investigation going. And I'm confident that there will be one soon and not by the World Health Organization.

Vance Crowe [00:50:03] Who do you think it will be done by? Who, who could do it correctly?

Alina Chan [00:50:06] So there's already signs of a bipartisan committee or commission being launched in the US but there's also a, also a COVID commission planning group, and they want to make this very international, where they engage experts from more countries and collectively sit down and look at all the data together. But I also think it is important to keep funding independent groups of people who are investigating different aspects of our original COVID-19 so that they can be a resource to these larger commissions.

Vance Crowe [00:50:37] So as you think about like what the future will look like in a world where a pandemic came from a lab leak or could have come from a lab leak, what do you think people should be thinking about? Which, what should we be pushing politicians for? Who should we be voting for to make a a world safer now based on the way you've seen the inside of how the world works?

Alina Chan [00:51:01] Yeah, it's, it's pretty astonishing that where we are today with pathogen research is where we were two years ago before the pandemic. So as far as I've seen, zero measures have been taken to, to make the scientific research and publishing system robust to exploitation or to un unintentional errors made by, by parties with huge conflicts of interest. So I also wanna bring, go back to this point that you raised earlier in the, in the interview is about what are the role of the virologists in, in this story, right? And so I never started from, from a point of view of them being like super willing or bad people. It's just that sometimes when you, when you make a series of decisions that, that cover up information, you might find yourself in a place one day where, where people have found your actions unacceptable to, to a point where maybe your initial intention even was to protect your co colleagues in China. Maybe you thought it was possibly a lab accident, but you wanted to protect them so you covered up. But if you keep doing that for two years or more after that, to a point where people are seeing that you've withheld extremely vital information that could point to a lab origin, you, you have obliterated public trust and experts and unfortunately cut yourself as, as a untrustworthy person.

Vance Crowe [00:52:21] Yeah, I mean that's the story of all real good villains. There's, you know, if you have a, a villain that's just bad for the sake of being bad, that, that, that doesn't really exist in the world, but a villain that you understand is one that started out with good intent and then, you know, stumbled down the path. Well, I would highly recommend people go out and buy your book Viral by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley. But if people wanted to support your push towards getting this investigation, can you think of anything they can do?

Alina Chan [00:52:51] Yes. I I think that, well, I I think it's already on the way. So actually some senators in the US bipartisan, both Democrat and Republican have requested our book to be sent to the offices. So the book is having an impact, like people are taking notice. And I think that getting information out to people is very important. When there's public awareness, there's public demand for an investigation. When there's public demand for an investigation, that's when political leaders can, can push for investigation. I'd say, I'd say that right now a lot of power and influence lies with journalists. So if people can engage with journalists and let them know when, when they see them spreading misinformation or things like that, like for example, some, some journalists continue to insist today despite the US intelligence community, despite top virologists, despite top other top journalists saying that lab lab leak needs to be investigated, there are still many platforms that insist that this virus came from a market, for example, and that there's no need to investigate lab leak. So I think that there needs to be public reaction to that and possibly needs to be done on social media, just, just showing that there's a wave of people who, who think that, no, it's not certain that this came from market and this has huge ramifications for the future. Like no one wants to be here again in 20 years. Like maybe you have kids at the time, or maybe you're in your sixties at the time. No one wants like a SARS tree or was a Ebola or NEPA outbreak from a city where there's a lab.

Vance Crowe [00:54:22] Well, Alina Chan, I am so grateful that you hopped on here to chat about this and even more grateful that you put out your Preprint and then said yes to Matt to write this book. I think it was really impactful to me and I would encourage people to go out and read it. So thanks for coming on. If people wanted to follow you on Twitter, where would they find you at?

Alina Chan [00:54:42] Oh, I am at A-Y-J-C-H-A-N.

Vance Crowe [00:54:49] Alright, I'll put that in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on.

Alina Chan [00:54:52] Thanks man.

Vance Crowe [00:54:54] Thanks for checking out this interview with Alina Chan. If you enjoyed this, you might like joining the Articulate Ventures Network. This is a small private group where we get together and talk about the podcast, but also work on projects to help us improve our lives and make ourselves the full person that we know we can be. We run a book club where just this last month we read the book Siddhartha, and we also do things like speaking gyms and circular firing squads and have a Wednesday morning coffee. People that are in the network find that they can talk with other people that enjoy the podcast, but also have all sorts of interactions with other people that think a little bit like they do, but totally differently because they come from a different walk of life. So if you're interested in joining other like-minded people, I highly recommend you go to Network Articulate Ventures to find out more. Thanks for watching and we'll be back next week.