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  • 2020-04-29 (xsd:date)
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  • Did This Nobel Prize Winner Say COVID-19 Was Created in a Lab? (en)
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  • Since the outset of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, we've fielded a number of questions about the origins of this strain of coronavirus. While the general consensus of the scientific community is that COVID-19 evolved naturally, there have been some outliers who have proposed other theories about this disease's origins. Luc Montagnier, for instance, a French virologist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), said during an appearance on France's CNews that COVID-19 was not natural and suggested that this disease actually resulted from work done by molecular biologists who were attempting to create an AIDS vaccine. Montagnier said (translation via European Scientist): Here's the video of Montagnier claiming that COVID-19 was artificially created in a lab by scientists working on an AIDS vaccine: While Montagnier truly made these statements, his theory that COVID-19 was artificially created in an attempt to create an AIDS vaccine has been widely disputed by scientists. Virologist Etienne Simon-Lorière from the Pasteur Institute in Paris called the theory absurd, saying: European Scientist also published an article debunking Montagnier's claim. During his appearance on CNews, Montagnier noted that his theory was supported by a paper published by a group of researchers in India. While it's true that a paper claiming that HIV-1's genetic code could be found in COVID-19, this paper, as the Cnews presenters noted, was not published in a peer-reviewed journal. Furthermore, the paper was subsequently withdrawn by its authors. We addressed that paper in another article concerning various conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus: While many of the medical professionals responding to Montagnier's statements tended to focus on scientific issues with his claim, CNews noted Montagnier's history of wading into pseudoscience territory. Montagnier, for instance, is a proponent of water memory, an unproven theory at the center of many homeopathic remedies, which, according to Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society's panel of experts, doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny. Nobel Prize-winner Montagnier truly said that COVID-19 was created in a lab by researchers who were attempting to make an AIDS vaccine. However, that doesn't mean what he said was accurate. In fact, a peer-reviewed study from the Scripps Research Institute that was published in the journal Nature in March 2020 found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered. National Institute of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins provided his thoughts on this study from the Scripps Research Institute in a blog post, writing that a new study debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally. Collins went on to say that there is still much to learn about the origins of COVID-19, especially on how it was initially transmitted to humans. For this, Collins provides two scenarios: This isn't the first time we've been asked about comments a Nobel Prize winner supposedly made about the coronavirus. Another Nobel laureate, Tasuku Honjo, was also rumored to have said that COVID-19 was man-made. While the scientific community disputed the accuracy of Montagnier's comments, Honjo's alleged comment was dismissed because he simply didn't say it. That quote was entirely fictional. (en)
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