Scientists told a major European public broadcaster they faced censorship for stating that Covid-19 didn’t evolve in nature but was developed in a laboratory, The Disinformation Chronicle reports.

 “I have never seen science so compromised,” German geneticist and molecular biologist Günther Theissen, chair of the Department of Genetics at the University of Jena, told the German-language science programme Nano.

“Some scientists have managed to manipulate public opinion, including politicians and the media,” Theissen said during a segment last week on the German-Austrian-Swiss public broadcaster 3sat.

The programme presented evidence, corroborated by several scientists interviewed by the programme, that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, was developed in a laboratory.

According to Nano: “The tip of the spike protein, with which SARS-CoV-2 docks onto the ACE2 receptor in the lungs, fits surprisingly well. Particularly striking, however, is another gene segment of the virus, the so-called furin cleavage site. This enables the pathogen to perfectly enter human cells.”

According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, SARS-CoV-2 has a unique furin cleavage site positioned in the spike protein at the S1/S2 junction, suggesting it was engineered. Virologists have yet to identify one in any other related coronavirus.

“Whether there will ever be conclusive proof of the virus’s origin remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: science has not covered itself in glory when it comes to this issue,” Nano concluded.

Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, said the Nano report presented a convincing case in favour of the lab-leak theory.

Ebright is a critic of gain-of-function research, which some people believe was used to develop SARS-CoV-2 at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Nano “reported the scientific funding proposals, scientific progress reports and scientific evidence that shows, beyond a reasonable doubt, that US-approved, US-funded, Wuhan-conducted research on genetically engineered SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] viruses caused Covid,” Ebright said.

According to Nano, “The evidence is mounting that SARS-CoV-2 did not have a natural origin but was made behind the walls of a high-security laboratory. But who has an interest in concealing the origin of the virus?”

Investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker, publisher of The Disinformation Chronicle, told The Defender: “It is quite interesting that German public television would air such a story when they have been one of the countries with a high level of censorship.

“But for some reason, they have been much more open to discussing Covid issues than the United States. I think that’s because Tony Fauci hasn’t been able to manipulate their media.”

Dr Anthony Fauci led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nano’s report focused on the publication of “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Published in Nature Medicine in March 2020, the paper concluded that Covid-19 had a zoonotic, or animal, origin.

It became one of that year’s most-cited papers, accessed over 6 million times. In 2023, The Nation reported that over 2,000 media outlets cited the paper. During the Covid-19 pandemic, government officials and mainstream media outlets used the paper to discredit proponents of the lab-leak theory.

In a letter published in The Lancet in March 2020 promoting the zoonotic theory, several co-authors of “Proximal Origin” stated they “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.”

However, some co-authors of the paper privately expressed doubts that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from nature.

In an early 2020 email, Nano reported, Australian virologist Edward Holmes, Ph.D., wrote that SARS-CoV-2, “Seems to have been pre-adapted for human spread since the get go.”

But during an April 2020 White House briefing, Fauci said the paper provided evidence “totally consistent with a jump of species from an animal to a human.” And in a March 2020 tweet, João Monteiro, publisher of Nature Medicine, said the paper would “help to stop spread of misinformation” and “put conspiracy theories about the origin of #SARSCoV2 to rest.”

In April, the Trump administration launched a new version of the government’s official Covid-19 website, presenting evidence that Covid-19 emerged due to a leak at the Wuhan lab.

The CIA, FBI, US Department of Energy, Congress and some foreign intelligence agencies have also endorsed the lab-leak theory.

In 2020, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, determined with between 80 per cent and 95 per cent certainty that the Covid-19 outbreak originated with a leak at the Wuhan laboratory. However, successive governments kept the information “under lock and key,” according to a German investigative report published in March.

“Of course, Trump and the American intelligence community had repeatedly whispered that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory,” the Nano programme stated. “But the impact was greater when it was revealed that the German Federal Intelligence Service also considered the laboratory hypothesis highly likely.”

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that censorship extended to intelligence agencies. In August 2021, the Biden administration excluded the FBI from a White House intelligence briefing, preventing the bureau from presenting evidence supporting the lab-leak theory.

“Most of the evidence reported by German public television has been available since 2021-2022,” Ebright said. “However, none of it – absolutely none of it – has been presented in the US by ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, The New York Times or The Washington Post.”

The Nano report comes as the Trump administration is investigating whether the authors and publisher of “Proximal Origin” allowed Fauci and other government officials to influence the paper’s conclusions in exchange for funding.

In a series of posts last week on X, Senator Rand Paul (Republican-Kentucky) suggested that Fauci may have to testify under oath before Congress regarding his knowledge of the origins of Covid-19, as part of Paul’s broader investigation into the virus’s origins.

The investigation may be one means of bypassing Fauci’s “pre-emptive pardon,” which former President Joe Biden issued in the final minutes of his administration in January. The pardon does not provide Fauci with immunity for perjury if committed while testifying before Congress, or from facing state-level charges.

In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending US federal funding of “dangerous gain-of-function research” in China, Iran and other countries. Trump’s executive order also paused federally funded gain-of-function research in the US for 120 days, during which a new policy for such research will be developed.

The Nano report also came just days after the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens released a report on the origins of Covid-19, stating that “the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spill-over,” but that a lab leak cannot be ruled out.

“The World Health Organization’s advisory staff on the origins of the coronavirus doesn’t want to go that far,” the Nano report stated.

• A Tell Media report / Republished with the permission of The Defender