Unpublished letter submitted to The Guardian on 3 May:
There has been much debate in the past few weeks over the secrecy surrounding the reports, minutes and membership of Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Emergencies (SAGE)
A decade ago, in the autumn of 2009, the then Labour Government decided to consider and issue, by the end of December that year, a set of principles applying to the treatment of independent scientific advice provided to Government.
In House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report “The Government’s review of the principles applying to the treatment of independent scientific advice provided to government” Third Report of Session 2009–10 (HC158 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/158/158ii.pdf), it records on pager 27 the Labour Government statement:
“It is the longstanding view of Government that all independent advice it receives be made publicly available as a matter of routine. This view is clearly laid out in the Government's Guidelines on Scientific Analysis in Policy-making.”
Why has the current Conservative government changed this policy?
Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE): Coronavirus (COVID-19) response
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies.
Role
SAGE is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to decision makers to support UK cross-government decisions in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR). The advice provided by SAGE does not represent official government policy. Find out more about SAGE (PDF, 101KB, 4 pages).
Participants
The group is co-chaired by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, and includes experts from within government and leading specialists from the fields of healthcare and academia.
Independent Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)
These groups consider the scientific evidence and feed in their consensus conclusions to SAGE.
Scientific evidence supporting the government response to COVID-19
The national and global response to the spread of COVID-19 continues to develop quickly and our knowledge of the virus is growing. These statements and accompanying evidence demonstrate how our understanding of COVID-19 has evolved as new data has emerged.
The evidence was often complied very rapidly during a fast-moving response and should be viewed in this context. The papers presented here are the best assessment of the evidence at the time of writing, and their conclusions were formed on this basis. As new evidence or data emerges, SAGE updates its advice accordingly. Therefore, some of the information in these papers may have been superseded at a later date.
This page will be updated on a regular basis with the latest available evidence provided to SAGE.
Lest doubters suggest that such a leak from a top security
bio-research lab is not possible, Ihave
assembled below three article that demonstrate the opposite.
One by the WHO is from China in 2004, one from France,
and the firsd tone from the UK in 2007
Final report
on potential breaches of biosecurity at the Pirbright site 2007 (80 pages)
“… such was the
condition in which we found the site drainage system
that we conclude
that the requirements for Containment Level 4 were not met, thus
constituting a
breach of biosecurity for the Pirbright site as a whole”
HSE is now pleased to present to the government a final
report on potential breaches
to biosecurity at the Pirbright site. We have addressed
the questions posed to us by
our terms of reference and, as a result of our
investigations, have been able to develop
an explanation of how the foot and mouth disease virus
used at the Pirbright site can
be linked to the first farm infected.
This has been a complex investigation and the report is
the product of careful work
by a large group of technical experts. While HSE has led
the team and contributed
specialists across its own areas of expertise, vital
contributions have been made by
staff from a range of distinguished organisations. HSE is
grateful to thank everyone
involved for making their skills and knowledge so readily
available. In particular, I would
like to thank Defra,
the Veterinary Medicines Directorate,
the Health Protection Agency
and the Environment
Agency for the staff they provided to the investigation team. I
would also like to record my appreciation of the work done
in support of our inquiries
by Surrey Police, the Central
Science Laboratory, the Meteorological Office and the
Health and Safety Laboratory.
My colleagues in HSE have been a tremendous support. Their
professionalism and
willingness to go the extra mile has made it possible for
the work to be done thoroughly
and for this report to be completed within four weeks of
the start of the investigation. I
would like to pay tribute to them – they deserve the
thanks of everyone with an interest
in this issue.
I would like to record that the investigation has been
carried out with the support
and co-operation of the management and staff from the Institute for Animal Health,
Stabilitech Ltd, and Merial Animal Health Ltd.
Dr Paul Logan
Summary of Findings
Following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in
Surrey on 3 August,
the government asked the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
to lead an investigation
into biosecurity issues at the Pirbright facility – a site
occupied by the Institute of Animal
Health (IAH) and also by two private companies called
Merial Animal Health Ltd (Merial)
and Stabilitech Ltd (Stabilitech). The Department of the
Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (Defra) had established that the virus strain
causing FMD in the first infected herd
of cattle at a farm in Normandy, Surrey was O1 BFS67 (also
known as 01 BFS1860
and hereafter referred to as O1 BFS). This is a laboratory
strain not naturally found
in the environment and was one upon which work was being
carried out by all three
occupants of the Pirbright site ahead of the first
outbreak. HSE’s job was to lead a
team to investigate:
potential breaches of biosecurity at the Pirbright site;
whether such breaches may have led to a release of any
specified animal
pathogen;
whether any such breaches had been rectified to prevent
future incidents.
2 The period covered by our investigation was 7–26 July
following advice from Defra
epidemiologists.
3 The team started work at the site on 5 August. Within
two days, we established
and prioritised our main inquiry lines and set these down
in an initial report submitted
on 7 August. Within a month of the first outbreak, the
team has completed the
investigation and our conclusions and recommendations are
summarised below,
according to the questions we were asked to address in our
commission from the
government. Our report in full follows.
O1 BFS virus strain
4 We conclude first that this virus strain, found in the
first infected animal herd in
Normandy, is highly likely to have originated from the
Pirbright site. We conclude this
from the results of nucleotide sequencing tests of the
virus strain in question, which we
commissioned as part of the investigation. However, due to
very small differences in
the strains used at all three organisations at Pirbright,
it has not been possible to
pinpoint precisely through sequencing the exact origin of
virus found in the infected
animals at Normandy.
Breaches of biosecurity at Pirbright
5 We looked at biosecurity controls in four areas where we
judged it possible for the
virus to escape containment arrangements at Pirbright, namely
solid waste disposal,
airborne routes through the fabric of site buildings or
faults in filtration systems, liquid
waste disposal, and human movements.
Solid waste
6 We found no evidence of any breakdown in the containment
systems for solid
waste disposal at the Pirbright site overall.
Airborne release
7 We found no evidence of a biosecurity failure that could
have led to the virus being
released from the site into the atmosphere. The
appropriate bio control systems were
functioning properly at Merial. The same was true at IAH
and Stabilitech, although we
did find some weaknesses in the physical integrity of
their premises and in their filter
testing regimes.
Liquid waste disposal
8 IAH and Stabilitech work on experiments with only small
amounts of live FMD
virus. Waste from those experiments can include the live
virus that passes through
a chemical effluent inactivation process before entering
the Pirbright site drainage
system. That process does not achieve complete
inactivation; a final effluent treatment
process on the site is designed to achieve that before the
waste passes into the public
sewer. Waste water from human showers, which could also
contain some live virus,
enters the site drainage system direct. It was therefore
possible for small quantities of
live virus from IAH and Stabilitech to have entered the
site drainage system at this point
in the system. However, because this was in accordance
with Defra’s requirements, we
conclude there was no breach of biosecurity in this
respect.
9 We take the same view in relation to Merial. During the
period covered by our
investigation, Merial were engaged in large-scale FMD
vaccine production and we
established that
the resulting waste containing the live FMD virus O1 BFS was flushed into the
company’s effluent sump and then passed into the site drainage system. The
quantities involved
were much larger than those for IAH and Stabilitech. However, this
act of discharge was permitted by Defra, hence we conclude
there was no breach of
biosecurity at this juncture by Merial.
10 However, such was the condition in which we found the
site drainage system
that we conclude that the requirements for Containment
Level 4 were not met, thus
constituting a breach of biosecurity for the Pirbright
site as a whole. Our conclusion
is supported by the evidence we found of long-term damage
and leakage, including
cracked pipes, unsealed manholes and tree root ingress. We
have investigated
ownership of the drainage system, which rests with IAH.
However, we are aware of a
difference of opinion between IAH and Merial over
responsibility for maintenance of a
key section of pipe relevant to this investigation.
It has been more than three weeks
since the last case was placed in isolation in China’s latest SARS outbreak,
prompting the World Health Organization to declare that the chain of
human-to-human transmission appears to have been broken.
However, WHO experts and the Chinese
authorities are still trying to determine the exact cause of the outbreak. The investigation has centred
primarily on the National Institute of Virology in Beijing where experiments
using live and inactivated SARS coronavirus have been carried out. Two
researchers at the Institute developed SARS in late March and mid-April. The
outbreak was reported on April 22 and the Institute was closed a day later.
Preliminary findings in the
investigation have yet to identify a single infectious source or single
procedural error at the Institute – and it is conceivable that an exact answer
may never be determined. Neither of the researchers is known to have directly
conducted experiments using live SARS coronavirus. However, investigators have serious concerns about
biosafety procedures at the Institute – including how and where procedures
using SARS coronavirus were carried out, and how and where SARS coronavirus
samples were stored.
WHO and Chinese authorities view
with concern the occurrence of laboratory-associated SARS cases. WHO urges all
Member States to view this latest outbreak as an opportunity to review the
biosafety practices of institutions and laboratories working with SARS
coronavirus.
During and after the SARS outbreak
of 2003, a large number of specimens were collected from possible human cases,
animals and the environment. These specimens, which may contain live SARS
coronavirus, are still kept in various laboratories around the world. Some of
them are stored in laboratories at an inappropriate containment level. SARS
coronavirus has also been propagated in reference and research laboratories,
and distributed to other laboratories for research purposes. Research using
live and inactivated SARS coronavirus – and other pathogens capable of causing
serious illness -- is being conducted in many laboratories.
WHO has issued the following
laboratory safety guidelines and recommendations:
In these guidelines, WHO strongly
recommends Biosafety Level 3 (BSL 3) as the minimum containment level to work
with live SARS coronavirus. WHO also urges Member States to maintain a thorough
inventory of laboratories working with and/or storing live SARS coronavirus and
to ensure that necessary biosafety standards are in place.
WHO commends the Chinese authorities
for taking swift action to contain the latest outbreak once it was recognized
and reported, by way of extensive contact tracing and the quarantine and
medical observation of such individuals. Once again, it has been demonstrated
that SARS is a containable disease.
“Coronavirus was created in a laboratory” – Nobel Prize winner Luc
Montagnier
French virologist and Nobel Prize
winner for his work on HIV, said the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was created in a
laboratory by inserting genes from HIV-1, the AIDS virus, into a coronavirus.
“We have concluded that this virus was created,” said the French scientist,
during an interview with the French channel CNews.
In 2008 Montagnier won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the research
that led to the discovery of the HIV,
According to Montagnier, “molecular biologists” inserted HIV
DNA sequences into a coronavirus as part of their work to find an AIDS vaccine.
“There has been a
manipulation of the virus: at least part of it, not all of it. There is one
model, which is the classic virus, which comes mainly from bats, but to which
HIV sequences have been added,” he said. “In any case, it’s not natural,” he
continued. “It’s the work of professionals, of molecular biologists. Very
meticulous work. For what purpose? I don’t know. One hypothesis is that they
wanted to create an AIDS vaccine,” he said.
To back up his theory, Montagnier cited the study by a group
of researchers at the Indian Institute
of Technology in New Delhi, which found “an uncanny resemblance” and “little
chance of coincidence” in the amino acid sequences of a SARS-CoV-2
and HIV-1 protein. The study, published on a website where scientists share
ongoing analyses without waiting for expert verification, was later withdrawn
by its authors.
Montagnier also predicted the imminent disappearance of the
virus, because its supposedly artificial origin would be weakening it.
“One can do anything with nature, but if you make an
artificial construction, it is unlikely to survive. Nature loves harmonious
things; what is alien, like a virus coming from another virus, for example, is
not well tolerated,” he said. For the scientist, the parts
of the virus into which HIV was inserted are rapidly mutating, causing it to
self-destruct.
“So what we’re seeing is that in the western United States,
in Seattle, the sequences are destroyed, virtually non-existent. So if the
pathogenic power of the coronavirus is linked to the insertion of these
sequences, we can think that it’s going to disappear,” he said.
The scientific
community questions Montagnier’s theories. Montagnier has made a controversial statements
before. Since 2010, the famous virologist began to spread a series of theories
questioned by his colleagues, such as the supposed microbial origin of autism,
for which he launched a crusade against vaccines (which in 2017 earned him a
petition signed by a hundred doctors who called his statements “dangerous”).
After the interview, French experts again refuted
Montagnier’s latest theory.
Jean-Francois Delfraissy, an immunologist and head of the
scientific council advising the French government on the COVID-19 pandemic,
said in an interview with France’s BFM TV that the hypothesis that a virus was
created in a laboratory sounded like “a vision about a conspiracy that is not related to
real science. Everyone in the
scientific community agrees that COVID-19 is a coronavirus. There are different
coronaviruses than others, just like SARS and MERS with emerging
pathogenicity,” he added.
For Olivier Schwartz, head of the virus and immunity
department at the Pasteur Institute in France, studies of the virus’ genes
clearly show that it was not a virus produced by humans in a laboratory. “Professor Montagnier spreads whimsical theories,”
he told the French weekly L’Obs. Schwartz said that “SARS-CoV-2, the virus that
causes COVID-19 disease, was not created in the laboratory. We see this by studying
the genetic heritage of the virus, which has been sequenced by Chinese teams
and then verified in many other laboratories, including the Pasteur Institute,
which was the first in Europe to do so”.
According to several experts, the outbreak could have
originated in the Wuhan wet market. But the truth is that the origin of the
coronavirus remains a mystery.
Experts question the
Indian study cited by Montagnier. “The
Indian team ended up withdrawing their manuscript. My personal opinion is that
these Indian researchers had good faith from the beginning in their desire to
analyze the genome of the virus, and realized their mistake later. But
Professor Montagnier has accepted a whimsical theory,” Schwartz concluded.
For its part, the scientific community at Massive Science
has already identified some 15 viruses that incorporate the same sequence
common to HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, including a bee virus and a sweet potato virus.
According to Gaetan Burgio, a geneticist at the Australian National University,
interviewed by Le Monde newspaper, “the typical sequence is short. If there had been
deliberate insertions of HIV sequences, they would have been much larger. It is
a coincidence.
What is known about
the origin of the virus Theories about a possible human origin of the
coronavirus were fueled after it became known that U.S. intelligence agencies
were investigating whether the virus may have accidentally left the Wuhan
Virology Institute. The Virus Cultivation Center, Asia’s largest virus bank has
more than 1,500 varieties preserved.
Fox News cited U.S. government sources and said the “patient
zero” of the pandemic could have been infected by a virus strain from a bat
being studied in the laboratory and then passed on to the population of Wuhan.
A study by a group of Chinese scientists, published in
January in The Lancet, revealed that the first patient of COVID-19 had no
connection to the Wuhan animal market, nor did 13 of the first 41 patients.
Shi Zhengli, one of China’s leading experts on bat
coronavirus and deputy director of the Wuhan laboratory, was part of the team
that published the first study suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 (the official name of
the virus) came from bats.
In an interview with Scientific American, Shi said the
SARS-CoV-2 genome does not match any of the bat coronaviruses his lab has
studied so far.
According to Filippa Lentzos, a biosafety researcher at
King’s College London, although there is no evidence for the accident theory in
the lab, there is also no “real evidence” that the virus came from the market.
“For me, the origin of the pandemic is still an unanswered
question,” she told AFP.
