Great Barrington Declaration Author Joins COVID-19 Lab Leak-Pushing Group

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has linked up with another fringe group of scientists. The Stanford University health economist disastrously advised Trump on pandemic policy and was a co-author of the scientifically rebuked, pro-economy/anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration (GBD). Now, he is on the board of directors for a group that continues pushing the lab leak COVID-19 origin hypothesis. Biosafety Now announced the addition of Bhattacharya on their Twitter/X account on August 14. 

Weaponizing uncertainty

While Republican politicians and a concerning portion of the general public have embraced the lab leak origin narrative, the overwhelming majority of the virology community hold that a natural origin from animal spillover, as has been seen in previous pandemics, is most likely. The lack of definitively identified mechanism for the likely animal spillover has, for years now, been a source of weaponizable uncertainty.

Trump began pushing the lab leak narrative early in the pandemic. In April 2020, the strategic communications firm O’Donnell & Associates published their “Corona Big Book” of suggested anti-China messaging for Republicans, which featured lab leak talking points. Despite a lack of evidence to support the leak, the Trump administration controversially cut National Institutes of Health funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that conducts federally-funded global research into viruses. Seventy-seven US Nobel Laureates in the sciences signed a letter speaking out against this decision in May 2020.

This is not to say the scientific community was automatically closed off to the lab leak hypothesis. As EcoHealth Alliance recently discussed in a public statement on the ongoing political attack on their organization, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci, maintains an open mind regarding a lab leak origin while asserting the natural origin to be most likely. Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show Fauci in 2020 cooperating with scientists who were looking into whether the novel virus could have arisen from lab research.    

What is Biosafety Now?

Biosafety Now was founded by two Rutgers University professors, molecular biologist Dr. Richard Ebright and microbiologist Dr. Bryce Nickels in February of 2023. While calling for laboratory safety measures is not inherently wrong, they have refused to be open to evidence pointing away from the lab leak origin to which they have anchored themselves. And the behavior of these two academic professionals cannot be justified.

In March, a dozen scientists who have been on the receiving end of online harassment from Ebright and Nickels filed a formal complaint with Rutgers. It highlighted instances of the two scientists comparing their “opposition” on the origins issue to “historical war criminals and mass murderers, including Pol Pot, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, and Shirō Ishii” and encouraging their large online followings to harass their fellow members of the scientific community. The GBD crowd has engaged in their own vengeful rhetoric in calls for accountability for “lockdowners.”

Last month, Nickels and Bhattacharaya co-authored an OpEd for the New York Post titled “Why science should never try to triumph over nature.” Their piece promotes the lab leak and calls on Congress “to enact and implement independent oversight for research that represents an existential risk to humanity.” A week prior to their Post article, BioSafety Now shared an interview Nickels and Bhattacharya conducted with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been one of the louder voices in Congress to push the lab leak narrative. 

Bhattacharya and the Biosafety Now founders are no strangers to The Hill. Bhattacharya is a member of the Norfolk Group created to send GOP-friendly “experts” to the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (HSSCP) and testified in their opening hearing on “examining COVID policy decisions” in February 2023. In June, Ebright testified to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for the “Origins of COVID-19: An Examination of Available Evidence” hearing. Paul serves as the ranking member of this Senate committee and used his time to further promote the lab leak.

Politics over science

As I have previously discussed, the GBD and the lab leak were highlighted in the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation’s “Road Map for COVID-19 Congressional Oversight” published a month ahead of the first HSSCP hearing featuring Bhattacharya. The GOP-led subcommittee appears to be following this script and has focused on the lab leak throughout this spring and summer. This has seen EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak and now-retired Fauci dragged before Congress for harassing show trials motivated by political agenda over science.

As I more recently discussed, the Heritage Foundation’s own “non-partisan” commission published a report on China and COVID-19 last month. This report laid out a case, based around the lab leak, to hold China responsible for US pandemic damage and recommended legal and policy actions to hold them accountable.

Bhattacharya isn’t the only new addition to Biosafety Now. As noted in the tweet above, they also announced the addition of four new members to their advisory board. They included two scientists as well as technology futurist and geopolitical commentator Jamie Metzl and science writer Matt Ridley. Metzl was the chairman of the aforementioned Heritage Foundation commission. Ridley, who has a history of climate science denialism, co-authored a book with researcher Dr. Alina Chan, who published a buzzy but flawed lab leak-promoting New York Times opinion piece the day Fauci testified to the HSSCP.

Why now? (Hint: Election year)

The seriousness with which Bhattacharya and the lab leak-pushing GOP are now taking the pandemic should be contrasted with their years of minimizing messaging. It must not be ignored that this shift comes during a key presidential election year. Notably, and by no accident, many pushing the lab leak narrative fail to address Trump’s failure of leadership in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As certain narratives become less useful and others find a (manufactured) resurgence — as is currently happening with the lab leak — we see a common thread of ideologically motivated individuals like Bhattacharya spouting party-line messaging. Some new names who have promoted ideas deemed useful to this agenda find themselves players in a much larger political strategy. People like Bhattacharya, however, do so expressly for the benefit of their politics and themselves — and to the detriment of science.