Dr. Jeremy Farrar is a Director of the Wellcome Trust

Dr. Jeremy Farrar

 

World Health Organization Under Pressure to Fire Dr. Who Edited Lab Leak Paper

 

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

By Michael Katz

Reprinted from NEWSMAX

 

Stiff resistance is building against the incoming chief scientist of the World Health Organization because of his ties to a February 2020 paper that quashed a theory the coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Many experts are calling for Dr. Jeremy Farrar, former director of the Wellcome Trust nonprofit in London, to be fired even before he takes over his post as the WHO’s chief scientist in the second quarter of this year, The Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

Emails uncovered by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic showed the British doctor made direct edits to a scientific paper called “Proximal Origin,” which was prompted by Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and written in February 2020 to quash the theory the coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

memo by the subcommittee dated Sunday said, “Dr. Farrar is not credited as having any involvement in the drafting and publication of Proximal Origin. According to new evidence obtained by the Select Subcommittee, Dr. Farrar led the drafting process and in fact made direct edits to the substance of the publication.”

Dr. Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, told The Daily Mail, “In this context, the appointment of Dr. Farrar as a chief scientist at the WHO is a major unforced error. The WHO would do well to review and revoke the appointment.”

Dr. David Livermore, a microbiologist at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain, also said the agency might want to reconsider hiring Farrar.

”If he is to lead the WHO, it would be wise for Dr Farrar to commission investigations of COVID’s origins entirely independent of the organization’s hierarchy, himself included,” Livermore told The Daily Mail.

The select subcommittee said in the memo Farrar made a crucial edit on Feb. 17, 2020, the day Proximal Origin was to be published. In an email to Kristian Andersen, a professor at Scripps Research, Farrar suggested to change from “unlikely” to “improbable” that “SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus.”

Robert Moffit, who has written extensively on the origins of the coronavirus for the Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Mail, “I don’t think he should take the job.”

“He should refrain from taking any position like that until these matters are cleared up and published,” Moffit said. “We don’t want someone to take over the WHO who may… refrain from taking a position until all these issues [on Covid origins] are cleared up.”

Newsmax reached out to the WHO for comment.

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