WHO adviser says report on COVID origins ‘outrageous,’ Wuhan lab leak hypothesis not seriously investigated

Jamie Metzl, an American author and member of the World Health Organization international advisory panel on Human Genome editing, slammed the WHO on Wednesday for their “outrageous” conclusion that it was “highly unlikely” that COVID-19 was the result of an accidental Wuhan, China lab leak.

“They did a great job of considering the possibility of a zoonotic jump between intermediate animal hosts and frozen food transmission,” Metzl said. “But, they did absolutely nothing to even consider the possibility of an accidental leak. And it’s outrageous that they would insert that it’s highly unlikely when they didn’t even bother to look into it.”

During an appearance on “The Fox News Rundown Podcast,” Metzl joined host Chris Foster to discuss the new WHO report regarding the origins of coronavirus.

Metzl said the joint report, created by the Independent Advisory Committee and organized by the W.H.O and their Chinese government counterparts, could never be a “legitimate process,” because the investigation of discovering the zoonotic origin of the coronavirus already included an implicit bias and preferred conclusion.

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Metzl said: “What they said is that they were given the task of examining the zoonotic origin of the pandemic. So in the framing of the task, a conclusion was already implicit. And so that was why, according to them, they didn’t have the mandate or the capacity or the skills or the team or the access to even investigate. And so you couldn’t have a legitimate process without examining all of the hypotheses. They only examined some.”

He added that all the leading hypotheses and models needed to be legitimately investigated in order to be considered “credible.” By not examining one of the leading hypotheses, the WHO was conducting a “half examination” with flawed results.

The WHO international advisory board member said that he wants a “full and “unrestricted” international forensic investigation to determine which hypothesis is correct, but added that he believes the “most likely” possibility is an accidental lab leak where coronaviruses were being studied.

Metzl also said that China should not be “rewarded” for their “cover-up,” including the destruction of samples, the removal of access from databases, the imprisonment of journalists, and the placement of universal gag orders on Chinese scientists.

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“They shouldn’t be rewarded for that by us saying, well, I guess we can’t evaluate the lab leak hypothesis. I mean, that also is a clue,” Metzl said.

“In any case, the Chinese government has been, you know, untransparent at best and outright duplicitous at worst.”

The WHO-China joint study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,” according to the draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.

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The investigation team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis.

The report’s release has been repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese government was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China.

To hear the full interview, subscribe and download The FOX News Rundown on your favorite podcast player. The FOX NEWS RUNDOWN is a news-based daily morning podcast delivering a deep dive into the major and controversial stories of the day.