The UK government has said it is now actively considering the possibility that China’s coronavirus crisis was the result of a laboratory leak in Wuhan, after reports showed the Cabinet Office had previously censored references to the theory.
It was revealed earlier this week that Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s memoirs from the pandemic era contained mentions of his belief that COVID-19 could possibly have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, by the UK Government’s Cabinet Office, which has the right to were removed Senior government officials review books before publication to prevent potentially sensitive information from being released.
“It’s just too much of a coincidence that the pandemic started in the same city as the lab, which by the way is a full 40 minute drive from the wet market originally linked to the outbreak,” Hancock wrote in one of his notes on a possible lab leak in the original version of his book.
The Cabinet Office justified the removal of the former Health Secretary’s comment on the lab leak, saying it was the government’s position that the Wuhan lab’s proximity to the original outbreak was “entirely coincidental” – despite prominent figures such as former MI6 director Sir Richard Dearlove supported the idea and warned the government to “reconsider how it handles its relationship with China.”
In a slight dismissal of apparent kowtowing to the communist government in Beijing, Downing Street said in a statement on Friday that there “remained questions to be answered about the emergence and spread of Covid-19”.
“The UK wants to see a robust, transparent and science-led review and believes all options remain on the table until this is complete,” the spokesman claimed in comments reported by The Telegraph.
Kowtow: UK government censored reference to Wuhan lab leak in health agency memoirs https://t.co/Bev65gViKv
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 9, 2023
This comes as both the Department of Energy and the FBI in the United States appear to admit that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was likely the starting point for the virus.
Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray said: “[T]The FBI has long held that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential laboratory incident in Wuhan.”
At the height of the virus crisis in China, health officials, mainstream media and Silicon Valley all sought to shut down talk of the lab leak theory, branding it a conspiracy theory after then-President Donald Trump highlighted the possibility that the Wuhan lab existed the source of the pandemic.
dr Anthony Fauci in the US was an early critic of the theory, claiming in May 2020 that “the best evidence shows that the virus behind the pandemic was not made in a laboratory in China”.
Former MI6 chief: Chinese communists will have destroyed evidence of Wuhan lab leaks by now https://t.co/8WxcCNSazi
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 3, 2021
In the UK, the lab leak hypothesis was also branded a “conspiracy theory” by a group of 27 scientists in a letter to the respected English medical journal The lancet in March 2020.
It was later claimed that 26 of the 27 scientists who signed the letter had conflicts of interest, either linked directly to the Wuhan lab or through researchers and funders linked to the facility.
The infamous lancet The letter was written by none other than British zoologist Dr. Peter Daszak, who was later forced to admit his own conflict of interest as he serves as president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance — an NGO that directly funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology after being told by the then-directed Dr. Anthony Fauci-led National Institutes of Health (NIH).
A report by The Intercept last year claimed the US government had provided $3.1 million in funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, including $599,000 donated to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the Research into the modification of bat coronaviruses to increase their ability to infect humans has been questioned. Dr. Faucci that his agency did not fund the so-called gain-of-function research.
dr Daszak was later part of the World Health Organization investigative team that examined the lab and concluded that there was “no evidence” of a leak.
However, the investigation relied heavily on information provided by Chinese researchers in the lab, and the WHO team did not have access to hard evidence proving the virus did not exist in the lab prior to the pandemic – meaning they essentially did Take the word of the communist officials to arrive at their conclusion.
The CCP tried to pressure Germany to spread China’s coronavirus propaganda https://t.co/47eYfs0dmy
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 28, 2020
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka