While the rest of the scientific community have conveniently forgotten that their role is to question and explore without having a foregone conclusion in mind, one scientist has been at the forefront of questioning the origins of COVID-19, but her work has been largely ignored by the media and scientific community. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, told the UK Parliament Science and Technology Select Committee this week that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was likely engineered, and likely originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Chan began her scientific quest by asking questions but later progressed into making more direct accusations, largely because of the total and complete failure of those within the science community to give equal consideration to the lab leak potential. Chan, who has co-authored a book the Origins of COVID-19 (available on Amazon here), now lives in fear for her life, believing that if her well-evidenced theory proves correct, she could become a target of those who have the most to lose, such as the Chinese Government.

On Wednesday she testified before the UK Parliament Science and Technology Select Committee:

The Covid lab leak hypothesis is now the most likely origin of the pandemic, MPs were told today.

Dr Alina Chan, a specialist in cell engineering at Harvard and MIT, said the idea that the virus may have been genetically engineered is ‘reasonable’.

She highlighted a number of coincidences in the Covid timeline and said the state-sponsored Chinese cover-up of the early stages of the pandemic added to suspicion.

Speaking to the Science and Technology Select Committee, Dr Chan said: ‘I think the lab origin is more likely than not.

‘Right now it’s not safe for people who know about the origin of the pandemic to come forward.

‘But we live in an era where there is so much information being stored that it will eventually come out.

‘We have heard from many top virologists that a genetically engineered origin is reasonable and that includes virologists who made modifications to the first Sars [sic] virus.’

Chan likely refers to Dr. Ralph Baric, an expert virologist with the University of North Carolina and who is often referred to as “The Godfather of Gain-of-Function.” Baric, Chan, and seventeen other scientific experts signed a letter in May, demanding an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 after only 4 pages out of the 313-page WHO report considered the potential of a lab-leak theory. Baric too has much on the line, as at least two of his studies, labeled as gain-of-function and ordered by the NIH and NIAID to continue through the Obama Administration-ordered pause in that type of research, were conducted in conjunction with Dr. Shi Zhengli and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

And just this past month another signer of that letter, Dr. Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist with the University of Arizona, published a report on the origins of COVID-19, reversing his previously stated position of giving both the lab leak theory and the natural zoonotic spillover event theory equal weight.

Chan claimed that a unique feature of the virus is what enabled it to cause the pandemic and that WIV was developing a “pipeline for inserting” this feature:

‘We know this virus (Covid) has a unique feature, called the furin cleavage site, and without this feature there is no way this would be causing this pandemic.

‘A proposals was leaked showing that EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were developing a pipeline for inserting novel furin cleavage sites. So, you find these scientists who said in early 2018 ‘I’m going to put horns on horses’ and at the end of 2019 a unicorn turns up in Wuhan city.’

According to the Daily Mail, after the May 2021 Science article was posted urging a further look at the lab leak theory, another study made even more explosive claims:

[A] study by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sørensen claimed it had ‘prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China’ for a year.

The study included accusations of ‘deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data’ at Chinese labs.

And in July, at least, the Biden administration believed the lab leak origin theory was at least as plausible as a zoonotic transfer, but couldn’t come to a conclusion because the Chinese government wouldn’t provide the necessary documents.

As Lord Ridley argued in the hearing at which Chan testified, the time for a real, thorough, and complete investigation, absent the participation of anyone related to the lab, has come. The United States needs to stand up to China, because if this virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the failure to properly identify that and address the safety concerns of the other viruses researched and stored at the lab could lead to another catastrophic outbreak tomorrow, and another the day after that, and another a day after that. The irony of a government entity funding research to prevent the next global outbreak, then accidentally creating a global outbreak, and then being trusted to handle not only the investigations of the origins of that virus but the response to that virus, certainly should not be lost. The question is, now that we are waking up to the reality of this, what are we going to do about it?