Covid-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan – says HIV discoverer and Nobel laureate

Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier, the man who discovered HIV in 1983 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for this, claims that the new coronavirus is not of natural origin and originated in a laboratory. Montagnier, who is not averse to any controversy, claims that Covid-19 accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan. He made statements on the French channel CNews.

For the Pourquoi Docteur site, he went into even more detail. “With my colleague, biological mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, I have carefully analyzed the genome (the genetic composition of an organism, ed.) Of this virus.” According to the professor, SARS-CoV-2 contains fragments of HIV. “But they cannot possibly come from a patient,” says Montagnier, who thinks that the theory about the fish market as the origin of the virus is a “nice story”.

Attempt to create AIDS vaccine

“You can only inject HIV into a genome with the help of molecular instruments. It is a very meticulous work. That can only be done in a highly secured laboratory,” Montagnier continues. “They tried to develop a vaccine against AIDS in Wuhan, and then a virus was developed, which accidentally escaped from the laboratory. “The lab in Wuhan has specialized in these coronaviruses since the early 2000s,” he says. “They have expertise in this area.”

According to the professor, the human error also means good news. “Nature does not accept molecular fiddling at all. This unnatural virus will be eliminated by nature again. Even if nothing is done, it will gradually disappear,” says the professor, who believes that the measures being taken now will help slow the pandemic.

Critical voices

Anne Goffard, virologist and lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Lille, recalls that the authors themselves withdrew the study after “comments from the research community on the technical approach and interpretation of results”. Furthermore, Goffard says that if the researchers are actually looking for an AIDS vaccine, it is “impossible to make crazy genetic manipulations”.

“This is an excellent team of researchers who have published several very high-level articles. We shouldn’t think of them as fools and think they play a wizard in their labs.”

Researcher Etienne Decroly is also critical. “Molecular manipulation obviously exists. One of the things we are trying to find out is why viruses are dangerous to a particular species. So we can try to insert precise sequences to create virulence factors (substances secreted by microorganisms that cause the microorganism to become pathogenic to humans, ed.). But looking at SARS-CoV-2, nothing proves the existence of intentionally added sequences. We find traces of a natural evolution in the genome of the virus.”

Not first theory

Conspiracy theories that point to a failed Chinese laboratory experiment as the cause of the current pandemic have been circulating for some time, and there is no hard evidence to support it. For example, the American newspaper The Washington Post recently obtained documents that show that the US government was concerned about safety years ago in a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first broke out. She feared that one of the experiments might someday get out of hand and that a dangerous virus would spread all over the world.