Dr Alina Chan has an unusual to-do list. For the next few weeks she’ll be publicising her first book. After that she’s planning to change her name. The aim, she says, is to fade into obscurity to save her career and stay safe.
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-co…
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-co…
If this sounds like an odd strategy for a debutant author, it helps to know that the book, which she has co-written with the British science writer @mattwridley, is about the origins of Sars-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic.
It’s not that Chan thinks she knows for sure where it came from.
Instead, the case she’s been making since May 2020 is that we can’t be certain that it did not emerge from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Instead, the case she’s been making since May 2020 is that we can’t be certain that it did not emerge from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a laboratory that specialises in bat coronaviruses and lies just a few miles from where the first documented Covid cases occurred.
When she first spoke out, the lab-leak theory was dismissed as conspiracy theory.
Facebook and Wikipedia banned any mention of the possibility that the virus had escaped from a Wuhan lab.
Today, thanks in part to Chan, a lab leak is broadly acknowledged as quite plausible.
Facebook and Wikipedia banned any mention of the possibility that the virus had escaped from a Wuhan lab.
Today, thanks in part to Chan, a lab leak is broadly acknowledged as quite plausible.
Reframing the debate has taken a toll. “Writing the book was my way of trying to close this chapter of my life. It’s been very satisfying doing this work, but it’s also terrifying and exhausting, and I don’t think I can keep it up"
Friends have warned her that she’s made too many enemies in science.
“And then there’s also the Chinese government. It’s a real concern and it keeps me up quite a bit: that I am probably on some watch list. So it’s just safer for me if I change my name.”
“And then there’s also the Chinese government. It’s a real concern and it keeps me up quite a bit: that I am probably on some watch list. So it’s just safer for me if I change my name.”
Chan, 33, is a post-doctorate researcher at the prestigious Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Her work involves looking at how viruses can be modified to carry useful genetic material into a patient’s body to treat disease.
Her work involves looking at how viruses can be modified to carry useful genetic material into a patient’s body to treat disease.
When the first reports emerged of a mysterious pneumonia in Wuhan, she found herself bridling at how researchers dismissed out of hand the idea that the virus might have originated in a Wuhan lab.
Chan thought that seemed too hasty.
Chan thought that seemed too hasty.
It was plausible, Chan and her colleagues suggested, that Sars-CoV-2 had been allowed to replicate in human cells grown in a petri dish or possibly in “humanised mice.”
She now says that she was naive, that she had no idea of the storm that would follow.
She now says that she was naive, that she had no idea of the storm that would follow.
“I just wanted to question how this virus got so well adapted for spreading in humans. After that, everything was just led by my curiosity.
Also, I have this bad habit of not really thinking through personal consequences.”
Read the full interview here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-co…
Also, I have this bad habit of not really thinking through personal consequences.”
Read the full interview here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-co…
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