Who are Angus Dalgleish and Birger Sørensen? China made Covid-19 in Wuhan lab, claim scientists
Did China create the coronavirus that led to Covid-19? Ever since the pandemic broke out, former president Donald Trump has been claiming so, and on May 27, a former Trump official who investigated the origins said so as well. Now, two reputed scientists have also backed the theory in a shocking paper that is set to be published soon.
British professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sørensen have joined the growing number of people claiming that Covid-19 didn't originate from bats, as initially thought. They believe that the virus was created by China, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from where it leaked. That theory was widely dismissed in 2020, both by China and the World Health Organization (WHO), but is slowly gaining credibility.
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President Joe Biden, on May 27, ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of Covid-19, and didn't explicitly rule out the lab-leak theory. Originally, the theory was dubbed "racist", and blamed for the rise in anti-Asian violence, but if Dalgleish and Sørensen are to be believed, it is anything but. Their research was first published by The Daily Mail, with the article slated to be published "in the coming days".
Who are Angus Dalgleish and Birger Sørensen?
Professor Dalgleish is currently serving as a professor of oncology at St George's Hospital Medical School in London. A graduate of University College London, Dalgleish is a Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians of the UK and Australia, Royal College of Pathologists and The Academy of Medical Scientists. According to Cancer Centre London, Dalgleish has an interest in how viruses cause cancer, on which he has done research.
Dalgleish is also the co-founder of Onyvax, a pharmaceutical that makes vaccines for common tumours. "He currently sits on eight editorial boards, is the author or co-author of peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 70 chapters in medical books. He is the co-editor of five medical books," the centre says. In 2016, Dalgleish was involved in a massive controversy after his comments at a pro-Brexit conference. Reportedly, Dalgleish said that the NHS is on its knees and "could collapse completely" because of immigrants from the EU that it is legally obliged to treat. Apart from that, he is widely considered to be a leading cancer expert in the UK. He is also known for his breakthrough work in creating the first working vaccine for HIV.
Sørensen is a virologist who is currently the chair of Immunor, the pharma company that has developed the Covid-19 vaccine 'Biovacc-19'. He has 27 publications to his name and has an MSc from the University of Tromsø. He is currently the CEO of Bionor Holding, a pharmaceutical that is working on a vaccine for HIV. He previously served as the 'Head of Vaccines' of the company and was also the Chairman of the Norwegian Bio Industry Association between 2006 and 2010. Beyond that, not much is known about Sørensen.
Shocking claims revealed
According to the two experts, scientists at the Wuhan lab created the virus and "then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats". The two claim to have evidence for over a year but were ignored by leading academics and publications as such claims were seen as racist. The duo also made accusations of "deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data" at the lab. They also note that several scientists who spoke out have mysteriously disappeared.
Their made the claims after they began analysing samples of the virus in 2020 when they were attempting to create a vaccine. At the time, they discovered "unique fingerprints", which they claim could have come only from manipulation in the lab. As a result, they believe the virus (SARS-Coronavirus-2) has "no credible natural ancestor", and believe that ''beyond reasonable doubt", the virus was created in the lab.
The 22-page paper will soon be published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery. They conclude by saying, "a natural virus pandemic would be expected to mutate gradually and become more infectious but less pathogenic which is what many expected with the Covid-19 pandemic but which does not appear to have happened". The angle is expected to be probed by both the US, and the WHO in the coming months.