政治化した起源を巡る研究

アメリカの国立衛生研究所が中国とのコロナウィルス の研究に対して助成金を急に取りやめたそうです。トランプ大統領の言葉を受けてのもののようです。

NIH’s axing of bat coronavirus grant a ‘horrible precedent’ and might break rules, critics say

By Meredith Wadman, Jon CohenApr. 30, 2020 , 7:20 PM

The research community is reacting with alarm and anger to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) abrupt and unusual termination of a grant supporting research in China on how coronaviruses—such as the one causing the current pandemic—move from bats to humans.

The agency axed the grant last week, after conservative U.S. politicians and media repeatedly suggested—without evidence—that the pandemic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, that employs a Chinese virologist who had been receiving funding from the grant. The termination, which some analysts believe might violate regulations governing NIH, also came 7 days after President Donald Trump, asked about the project at a press conference, said: “We will end that grant very quickly.”

こちらは中国政府が隠蔽工作をしていたという諜報機関の資料を入手したというオーストラリアのメディアの報道。マードックの系列なので政治的志向は明らかに思えます。

Coronavirus NSW: Dossier lays out case against China bat virus program

Sharri Markson, The Daily Telegraph

May 3, 2020 1:40pm

China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.

The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.

It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.

そのような状況の中で米中協力して研究を進めているところもあるようです。前回の記事でも登場したIan Lipkin博士の研究です。

US and Chinese researchers team up for hunt into Covid origins

Scientists co-operate on search for Covid-19 origins despite charges Beijing is withholding data

US scientists are working with China to investigate the origin of coronavirus, despite criticism from the Trump administration that Beijing is failing to co-operate with outsiders to stem the disease.

Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said he was working with a team of Chinese researchers to determine whether coronavirus emerged in other parts of China before it was first discovered in Wuhan in December. The effort relies on help from the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.