(Imogen Braddick’s article from the SUN UK on 14 June 2023.)
COVID "patient zero" was a Wuhan scientist
carrying out experiments on souped-up coronaviruses, a report has claimed. Ben
Hu was allegedly conducting risky tests at the Wuhan Institute of Virology -
along with two other colleagues Ping Yu and Yan Zhu.
Ben Yu has been named as one of three Wuhan scientists first infected with Covid. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been at the centre of the storm over the origins of Covid. It's understood all three fell ill with Covid-like symptoms and needed hospital care weeks before China disclosed the virus outbreak to the world.
Until now they
had never been named. Several US government officials have now identified the
three scientists in a bombshell report by journalists Michael Shellenberger and
Matt Taibbi. Writing in the Substack newsletter Public, they alleged the
scientists were experimenting with coronaviruses when they became sick in 2019.
Many experts and
intelligence officials have long suspected bungling scientists at the lab
accidentally spread Covid during so-called "gain of function" experiments
on bat coronaviruses. And the naming of "patient zero" could be the
so-called smoking gun - adding to mounting circumstantial evidence of a lab
leak.
It's not clear
who in the US government had the intelligence about the sick lab workers, how
long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public. But author and
journalist Sharri Markson - who The Sun interviewed on the lab leak theory in
2021 - said it marked an "explosive development".
And Jamie Metzl,
a former member of the WHO advisory committee on human genome editing,
described it as a possible "game changer". "It’s a game changer
if it can be proven that Hu got sick with Covid before anyone else," he
said. "That would be the ‘smoking gun. Hu was the lead hands-on researcher
in Shi’s lab."
 |
| Ben Hu above is Shi Zengli's star-pupil. |
DRASTIC - an international team of scientists and sleuths attempting to fill in the gaps on Covid's origins - researched the three scientists back in 2021. Hu's biography on the Wuhan Institute of Virology's website shows he was working as an assistant researcher, alongside a photo of him.
He was said to
be the "star pupil" of virologist Shi Zhengli - the virologist at the
lab who became known as "batwoman" for her research on bat
coronaviruses. According to Markson - the author of What Really Happened in
Wuhan - Hu was running a state-funded project in 2019 to see if two new coronaviruses
could infect humans. The study involved souping up the viruses and
experimenting with them on humanised mice.
But the results
were never published and the study's existence was wiped from the internet as
Covid was spreading around the world - raising suspicion of a possible lab
leak. It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with Covid
before anyone else... that would be the 'smoking gun'
A source told
The Sun that Hu appeared in footage taken in 2017 and aired by Chinese
state-run TV working in the lab without protective gear. The same video shows
scientists from the Wuhan lab hunting for bat viruses with inadequate protective
gear.
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at MIT and Harvard, told Public: "Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli. "He was her star pupil. He had been making chimeric SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanised mice. If I had to guess who would be doing this risky virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be him."
She added:
"If this info had been made public in May of 2020, I doubt that many in
the scientific community and the media would have spent the last three years
raving about a raccoon dog or pangolin in a wet market." Dr Steven Quay, a
US scientist, said: "He was always my first choice for one of the infected
WIV workers but it seemed too simple."
A bill signed by
Joe Biden this year called for the release of the names of the sick
researchers, their symptoms, and whether they had been involved with or exposed
to coronavirus research. And next week, the US is set to release previously
classified material - which might include the names of the three Wuhan scientists.
Earlier this
year, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, said "the FBI has for
quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a
potential lab incident in Wuhan". China has long been accused of
attempting to cover up or distort its role in the story of Covid - something it
denies.
But last month,
China's own former government scientist admitted the Wuhan lab leak theory
should not be ruled out - sparking fury from Beijing. Professor George Gao, the
former chief of China's Centre for Disease Control, played a key role in the
efforts to trace the mystery origins of Covid - and said scientists should
"suspect anything".
Speaking to the
BBC Radio 4 podcast Fever: The Hunt for Covid's Origin, Professor Gao said:
"You can always suspect anything. That's science. Don't rule out
anything." Professor Gao retired from the CDC last year after playing a
top role in the pandemic response and efforts to find the origins of the virus.
He would have
had access to top secret government information on the outbreak of Covid. And
he said a formal investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology was carried
out by a government department. If I had to guess who would be doing this risky
virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be
him [Ben Hu]. The government scientist claimed the "lab was double-checked
by the experts in the field".
Investigators
believe scientists were working with Chinese military to create a mutant virus
and pursue bioweapons just as the pandemic started. The findings follow a team
of US investigators who combed through top-secret intercepted communications
and research.
In 2016,
researchers discovered a new fatal type of coronavirus in a mineshaft in
Mojiang, Yunnan province. But they failed to warn the world about it, which was
then subsequently transported to the Wuhan lab and the work became classified.
The virus is the
only known immediate relative of Covid-19 known to be in existence
pre-pandemic. One US investigator told The Times: "The trail of papers starts to go dark. That's exactly when the
classified programme kicked off. My view is that the reason it was covered up
was due to military secrecy related to the army's pursuit of dual-use
capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines."
