Fmr. FDA Commissioner: There Isn’t ‘Good Thesis’ for Natural Origin of COVID, Evidence for Lab Origin ‘Has Grown’

On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb stated that evidence in favor of COVID-19 emerging from a lab “has grown over time” while “The side of the ledger that points towards a zoonotic source has been fairly stagnant.” And there isn’t “a good thesis on how this came out of nature.”

Gottlieb said, “I don’t think we can definitively conclude where it came from right now. Certainly, the side of the ledger that speaks to the possibility that this came out of a lab, I think has grown over time. The side of the ledger that points towards a zoonotic source has been fairly stagnant. We haven’t found a species that it could have come from. We haven’t really pieced together a good thesis on how this came out of nature. So, that side of the ledger really hasn’t budged since the early days, with the exception of some slight additional evidence in terms of the genetic sequence as we evaluate that might point that direction. So, I think this is still a question very much open to debate, and I don’t know that we’re ever going to have a definitive answer to it. We’re awaiting the 90-day report from the U.S. government intelligence agencies. That might partially inform this discussion.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett