Statement on the "Lab-leak" Investigation June 2, 2021 The Critical China Scholars issue this statement to register grave concern about the politicized re-opening of the inquiry on the “lab-leak hypothesis” about COVID-19 origins. The specific political motivations underlying the inquiry, led by the Biden administration, guarantee that there can be no findings that will be useful for the kind of internationally trusted science necessary to promote global health. The only likely outcome is the further deterioration of relations between the US and the PRC, stoking already high degrees of Sinophobia and anti-Asianism in the United States and beyond. Countries such as the PRC have no good reason to believe the United States is engaged in a legitimate inquiry as every bit of information that has been released already has become inflamed and embedded into a political quagmire of antagonism and mistrust. The further poisoning of the political atmosphere means, moreover, that the scientific collaborations that have been ongoing throughout this past 18 months – those collaborations that yielded the vaccines, the sequencing, and other breakthroughs in understanding the behavior of the virus – could also be curtailed, which would be a setback for science, humanity, and our common global society.
The safety of biomedical research is a concern greatly exacerbated by the narrow pursuit of national and corporate interests; it will require a global approach that rigorously avoids privileging any country – including or especially the US. A Biden-led inquiry cannot lead to anything but the further empowering of US supremacists. Programs such as the Department of Justice’s China Initiative – which has engaged in a nationwide witch hunt for US-located Chinese and Chinese-American lab collaborations allegedly connected to the Chinese state – sow distrust and embed racist assumptions into the very core of the scientific world. A multilateral inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 is desirable, but it can only succeed if it is carried out on a foundation of trust between China and the other powers. The measures required to establish such trust are also desirable on their own terms: cooperation to end the pandemic globally and, in place of the US’s current zero-sum orientation toward economic growth and technological development, cooperation for global sustainable development. >From https://criticalchinascholars.org/interventions/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8947): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8947 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83271739/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
