BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – The virologist Christian Drosten was outraged by the statements made by the Hamburg researcher Roland Wiesendanger in the magazine “Cicero”, in which he accused Drosten and other virologists of deliberate deception about the origin of the corona pandemic. “Cicero offers an extreme character the stage and provokes personal attacks against me with suggestive questions,” criticized Drosten on Thursday evening via Twitter. According to the scientist from the Berlin Charité, reliable factual claims are avoided. “It’s not an interview, it’s an incident.”
In addition to the interview with the nanoscientist Wiesendanger in “Cicero”, one with him also appeared in the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” (NZZ). In both, the researcher explained his theory on several points that Sars-CoV-2 came from a laboratory in Wuhan. He accused leading international virologists like Drosten, who assume the virus originated in the animal kingdom, to be deliberately misleading and covering up.
A group of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) had come to the conclusion in a report on the origin of the corona virus that the theory that the virus could be related to a laboratory incident and was therefore of artificial origin was “extremely unlikely”.
Wiesendanger, who works at the University of Hamburg, has long held an opposing position. About a year ago, he made headlines with an investigation in which he came to the conclusion that both the number and the quality of the evidence point to a laboratory accident at the Wuhan City Virology Institute as the cause of the pandemic. Last but not least, the methodology of the work was criticized – he also used YouTube videos as sources, for example./jjk/DP/jha