French Nobel prize winning scientist Luc Montagnier has sparked a fresh controversy by claiming that the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from a lab, and is the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus.
In an interview given to French channel, professor Montagnier who co-discovered HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) claimed the presence of elements of HIV in the genome of the Coronavirus and even elements of the “germ of malaria” are highly suspect.
The hypothesis that a virus was created in a laboratory in Wuhan sounded “a conspiracy vision that does not relate to the real science,” said Jean-Francois Delfraissy, an immunologist and head of the scientific council that advises the French government on the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everyone in the scientific community agrees that COVID-19 is a coronavirus. From time to time there are coronaviruses different from the others, as are SARS and MERS with a pathogenicity which has appeared,” he added.
Both Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) are caused by coronaviruses, and the COVID-19 virus is also known as SARS-CoV-2.
“The world of viruses is a world in perpetual evolution,” said Delfraissy, who is also president of France’s National Consultative Ethics Committee for health and life sciences. “I rather think that COVID-19 is a coronavirus which had an animal reservoir and passed into humans for reasons that are not well known yet.”
What Montagnier spreads is “fake news” that started in March with a manuscript posted by an Indian team on a website where scientists share ongoing analyses without waiting for expert verification, added Schwartz.
Noteworthy, US President Donald Trump last week acknowledged that the novel Coronavirus may have been accidentally leaked by an intern working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
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