Virologists stand by COVID-19 origins paper at heated hearing.

A 2020 paper studying the early origins of the COVID-19 outbreak was the focus of an often contentious July 11 House hearing investigating the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” the paper reads.

Those words, written by five virologists in the 2020 paper, prompted many officials to repeatedly dismiss the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic started in a lab.

Two of the paper’s authors, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry Jr., testified at the hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. House GOP members contend that the paper was part of a coverup by former National Institutes of Health figures Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins.

“This is not an attack on science. It’s not an attack on peer review,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the select subcommittee and a doctor of podiatric medicine, said in his opening statement at the hearing. “We are examining whether scientific integrity was disregarded in favor of political expediency, maybe to conceal or diminish the government’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or perhaps its funding of risky gain-of-function coronavirus research.”

Proximal Origin

A report released by House Republicans on the panel noted that the paper, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” appeared on Feb. 16, 2020. A paper with the same title was published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020.

Referred to simply as “Proximal Origin” in the committee report and at the hearing, the paper concluded that COVID-19 “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” and that “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” according to the committee report.

“Proximal Origin” has been accessed 5.84 million times and has received the fifth most attention of any paper ever tracked, the committee report states.

“This is one of the single most impactful and influential scientific papers in history, and it expressed conclusions that were not based on sound science nor in fact, but instead on assumptions. The question is why,” the report reads.

The subcommittee has investigated the origins of COVID-19 since April.

The panel’s report shows that messages between several virologists discussed the possibility that parts of the virus appeared to be man-made. That position changed after a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call between virologists and Drs. Fauci and Collins, the committee alleged in the report.

On Jan. 31, 2020, Dr. Fauci “suggested” that Mr. Andersen draft a paper regarding a possible lab leak of COVID-19, according to the report.

During a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call that included Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, and several virologists, Dr. Fauci again suggested writing a paper about a potential lab leak, according to the report.

“After publication, Proximal Origin was used to downplay the lab leak hypothesis and call those who believe it may be true conspiracy theorists,” the committee report reads.

Allegations Are ‘Absurd and False’

Drs. Fauci and Collins and the virologists have said that the allegations aren’t true and called them politically motivated.

“Let me categorically say that these allegations are absurd and false,” Mr. Andersen, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in California. said during testimony at the hearing.

“Conclusions stated in Proximal Origin were based on scientific data and analyses by a team of international scientists with extensive track records in studying virus emergence and evolution. None of this work was influenced by Dr. Fauci.”

Mr. Garry, a professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine, testified that “the evidence remains clear: SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the wildlife trade.”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s two main campuses “are considered the prime suspects for a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 because they are the sites of the most advanced research programs on coronaviruses in the city,” he said.

“However, there was no cluster