A leading British zoologist has said he faced death threats and his family appeared in an on online ‘‘kill list’’ during a sustained wave of harassment over his work with Chinese scientists on virus research.
Dr Peter Daszak, head of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), told the South China Morning Post that he had experienced a “medieval” witch hunt from critics of the non-profit’s decades-long scientific partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The scientist described a series of “relentless” attacks, including an envelope containing white powder that had been sent to his home address in the United States. He said the names of his children and his wife were also posted on a “kill list” on 4chan, an anonymous online forum.
“That is not appropriate or normal for a scientist to be put through. And you get zero sympathy for this,” Dr Daszak told the Post.
“No one has come and punched me in the face yet or shot me. But I am certainly expecting that – which is weird as a scientist,” he said.
The Alliance’s association with the WIV became controversial after the outbreak of Covid-19 as the Wuhan laboratory was thrust into the centre of unproven claims that it was the source of a virus leak that triggered the deadly pandemic at the end of 2019.
The WIV is located just eight miles from where the first known cases of Covid emerged and it reportedly had a history of practicing gain-of-function experiments which use the technique of increasing the potency of viruses.
Last year, the WIV was stripped of US government funding for ten years over accusations it had conducted dangerous experiments that increased the potency of coronaviruses before the pandemic.
The US Department of Human Health and Services (HHS) said it was debarring the Chinese laboratory after documents reportedly showed scientists had inserted new spike proteins into four bat coronaviruses, increasing viral activity more than tenfold.
The EHA had been working with Chinese scientists at the WIV since 2005 – shortly after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) – to try to identify the wildlife source of the virus with a view to preventing a similar coronavirus causing a global outbreak.
Its partnership with the WIV was carried out with approval from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the State Department.
But since 2020, it has faced tough questions over whether its US-funded research in China followed grant protocols in place to block risky research.
The EHA said in a recent report that many of the claims levelled against it stem from the “false assumption” of a lab leak. “There is not a scintilla of verifiable scientific evidence for this,” it said.
In previous correspondence with the Telegraph, Dr Daszak said that the EHA’s work with the WIV did not fall under restricted gain-of-function research.
The precise source of the pandemic has never been identified although many investigations have focused on the Wuhan wet market linked to the earliest known human cases.
Earlier this month, vital data based on 800 genetic swabs taken from the market just days after Covid-19 was first detected, were published in Cell, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals.
It shows that the two earliest known strains of Sars-Cov-2 were present in the market and that wild animals known to catch and spread the virus, including racoon dogs and civets, were present.
The researchers were unable to show the animals were themselves infected and caused the outbreak, but they argued it was a strong signal that the pandemic had natural origins.
The World Health Organisation has concluded that a lab leak was extremely unlikely.
NIH funding to the EHA was terminated in 2020. The Alliance faces the threat of debarment by the HHS, which would cut off its federal funding.
Dr Daszak is not the only scientist involved in discussions about Covid origins who has faced online hate. The Telegraph is aware of other leading academics who have been harassed on social media.
Dr Daszak told the SCMP that the EHA’s work had been hampered by geopolitics and the public’s view that the scientific partnership with Chinese scientists was “inappropriate and wrong’’.
He said the politicisation of the issue had caused reputational damage and threatened to hinder important work to prevent future virus outbreaks.
“We have got scientists in the countries that are most at risk of the next pandemic now out of work and unable to help prevent the next one,” he said.