Sharon Lerner
November 4, 2022
An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of Covid
In an article
published Thursday, economist Jeffrey Sachs called for an independent
investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed
light on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, Sachs and his co-author, Neil Harrison, a
Columbia University professor of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics, said
that federal agencies and universities possess evidence that has not been
adequately reviewed, including virus databases, biological samples, viral
sequences, email communications, and laboratory notebooks. Sachs and Harrison
also highlighted a tantalizing scientific detail that may be an indication that
SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, originated in a laboratory: a
sequence of eight amino acids on a critical part of the virus’s spike protein
that is identical to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human
airways.