Federal atomic lab refuses to pull debunked study, calls lab leak origin ‘conspiracy theory’

Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL), the federal laboratory known for designing the atomic bomb, is continuing to push the false claim that the coronavirus did not originate in a Chinese lab and that stating otherwise is a “conspiracy theory”. 

The government center, which operates under the Department of Energy, confidently dismissed any suggestion that the coronavirus was engineered in a laboratory in a 2021 study on COVID-19 “conspiracy theories”. The study, brought to Frontline News’ attention by The Daily Wire, was authored by an eight-person team and referenced on the LANL’s website in September. 

“This study examines four oft-repeated and long-lived conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19: 5G technology is somehow associated with the disease; Bill Gates or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created or patented the virus; the virus is human-made and was released from a laboratory; and a COVID-19 vaccine will be harmful,” reads the study. 

But high-level scientists involved at the time in Wuhan Institute research recently confirmed that the virus did, indeed, originate from a lab in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. 

Dr. Andrew Huff, the former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, confirms in his new book The Truth About Wuhan that the virus was leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.  

“EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Huff writes in his book, a pre-release copy of which was provided to The Sun.  

Dr. Huff worked at EcoHealth Alliance when it was first given the grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2014 to study bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute.   

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, who led the 2014 coronavirus project, steered over $600,000 in funds to the Wuhan lab, which ultimately became the source of the virus leak. But Daszak and Dr. Anthony Fauci denied that the lab was the source of the COVID-19 pandemic, insisting that it originated in a “Chinese wet market”.   

In February 2020 Daszak helped publish a letter in The Lancet condemning the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory. The letter was used by government officials and media outlets to scorn those who suggested the virus was leaked from the lab. Social media platforms placed a ban on the “conspiracy theory”.   

Leaked emails, however, showed that top U.S. and British scientists believed the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, but decided to shut down the theory for political reasons — “international harmony,” as one put it.   

Fauci, in the meantime, claimed in Congress under oath that the NIH “has not ever and is not now funding gain-of-function research.” Gain-of-function (GoF) research genetically alters an organism to enhance it; in other words, creates viruses so antidotes can be developed.   

But NIH Principal Director Dr. Lawrence Tabak said in a letter last year that EcoHealth admitted the NIH grant was used to infect mice with a modified bat coronavirus to make them sicker. 

Given that the LANL’s study is now invalidated due to at least one of its “conspiracy theories” being confirmed, Frontline News reached out to LANL to ask if the atomic lab will be pulling the now-debunked study or taking any action to remedy its false claim. 

The LANL failed to provide a comment.