An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 – Authors' reply

We write on behalf of our coauthors¹ to agree with Jacques van Helden and colleagues that scientists “need to evaluate all hypotheses on a rational basis, and to weigh their likelihood based on facts and evidence, devoid of speculation concerning possible political impacts”. Scientific knowledge is essential to effectively guide future efforts to reduce the chance of another pandemic,1, 2 including by mitigating or blocking all relevant pathways for a pathogen to host-shift from natural hosts to humans. Endless arguments back and forth about the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, pitting evolution and spillover in nature against a laboratory leak do little to advance our critical knowledge base. We need more scientific evidence that unravels the likely pathway for the virus because real evidence that confirms or refutes hypotheses is far more important than the hypotheses and conjectures themselves. Expert reviews and new data continue to emerge tracing the evolutionary pathway of SARS-CoV-2 in nature over decades, serving to place some controversial genomic characteristics within a broader evolutionary context.3, 4, 5 However, while we need more evidence, the world will remain mired in dispute without full engagement of China, including open access to primary data, documents, and relevant stored material to enable a thorough, transparent, and objective search for all relevant evidence. As we have already seen⁶ this engagement is impossible in an environment of implicit or explicit blame placed on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its scientists. We stand by our statement that “recrimination has not, and will not, encourage international cooperation and collaboration”.¹