Why do we still not know from where the coronavirus originated?
'Unreported Truths' author Alex Berenson calls for global investigation on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
"Unreported Truths" author and investigative journalist Alex Berenson called for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 Monday as researchers struggle to identify the source of the global pandemic.
"There's a lot we don't know," Berenson told "Tucker Carlson Tonight." "Here's what we do know: Anybody who raises this issue gets accused of being a conspiracy theorist.
"There's people in the scientific community who are very deliberately conflating a couple things," Berenson explained. "One is, is it a bioweapon? It's probably not a bioweapon. It wouldn't be a very good bioweapon because it doesn't kill anybody who's healthy.
"But the other question ... is, could it have escaped from the lab? Probably a lab in China. Probably a lab in Wuhan where coronaviruses were being researched."
SCIENTISTS MAY KNOW WHERE CORONAVIRUS ORIGINATED, STUDY SAYS
While China and the World Health Organization have repeatedly denied any assertion that the outbreak originated in a lab in Wuhan, there is increasing confidence among U.S. officials that it likely started as an attempt by the Asian country to show its virological capabilities.
Berenson said scientists had been conducting what is known as "gain of function research" at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which involves manipulating a virus to make it more virulent in order to identify "what natural virus might become dangerous to humans if it mutated in various ways."
"To do it ... you often genetically modify these viruses," he said. "You take bits of virus and put them together. Or you just put various viruses in various animals and you wait for them to recombine."
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"We don't know what happened here," Berenson continued, "but we haven't found the animal host. We haven't found a virus in the wild that's very much like [coronavirus]. And, we have a giant lab that we know had safety problems in China in 2018 the same city where this emerged.
"This demands a real international investigation and it hasn't gotten one."