The lab leak
I’ve been fascinated by zoonotic diseases (infectious diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans) since I began covering health care in 2015 and read the book “Spillover” by David Quammen. The book, first published in 2012, takes the reader on a quest to learn where and why zoonotic diseases such as Ebola, SARS and HIV emerged and presents the case that the next devastating human pandemic will begin as an animal infection.
One of the more striking points from the book that I had never known until reading “Spillover” is that the pandemic strain of HIV appears to have jumped from a chimpanzee into a human in the southeastern corner of Cameroon as far back as 1908, which is more than 70 years before the disease was identified.
So, you can imagine that I’ve been intensely following the news around the origin of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, including the recent surge in stories about the “lab leak” theory, many of which I find extremely interesting but also mostly speculative. I finally came upon an article in “Nature” by Amy Maxmen and Smriti Mallapaty that I think clearly explains the actual science behind what we know, what’s possible and what’s not, and figured I’d share it here in case anyone else was interested.
Happy reading,