ah, and al jazeera, with every ah no, i hello, i'm adrian funding and how the top stories on al jazeera us president joe biden has pressed allies of the g 7 summit. the bolster cooperation in dealing with a resurgent china leaders have agreed to support a rival to china's belton road infrastructure project. biden's plan called build back better world, seeks to fill $40000000.00, truly 40 trillion dollars worth of gaps in global global infrastructure. biden's also expected to push g 7 leaders to speak out against forced labor and rights

abuses in china, on diplomatic as a james base has the latest on the g 7 talks from the dives in cornwall in the u. k . china's belt and rhode initiative may, may, i say, have a new rival, has a burial, could name of what the biden administration are proposing, building back better for the world initiative, the b 3 w. now they say that this will be on an ambitious and credible scale. they say the problems with the belt and road initiative is the lack of transparency. doesn't have profit environmental labor standards. and they say many of the countries that signed up for it are in debt, and i'm not getting anything out of it financially in the end and the ending off of solve the problem with this us plan. i think it's pretty simple and that's they are 80 years late behind the belt and road initiative. and we've got no idea how they're going to fund this. the estimate from us officials is that there is a gap of 40 trillion dollars hoping to sign something called

a car is bay declaration. and the idea that is to look at all of the things that have happened in the world over the last 1516 months, and see if in the future they can be sped up. so everything is ready if there is another con demik. so the world wouldn't have to wait for a vaccine to be developed or be plans constantly rolling plans to develop vaccines . the other things we've had the, you know, the supply of protective equipment, things like that. they want to have everything ready in a resilient manner. one of hong kong is prominent pro democracy activists has been released from prison, i guess charles more than 6 months in jail, for her role and an anti government protest in 2019. the 24 year old was convicted along with activists. joshua wong and i have a lamp for an unauthorized rally, a police headquarters, access challenge. joshua won't face other charges on the aging national security law. algerians

a voting in the 1st parliamentary election since mass protest forced president of the disease boot flicker to step down 2 years ago. the pro democracy movement behind those process is urging support, as the boy called the boat off. the 7 of its leaders were arrested on thursday. saudi arabia is barring foreign pilgrims from attending the harsh muslim pilgrimage for a 2nd year due to the pandemic, while citizens and residents will be able to attend. the number will be kept at 60000 north label than 2000000 people would travel to mecca to take part in what's seen as an obligation for muslims to perform at least once in a lifetime. code 19 cases arising in russia, particularly in big cities like moscow. but it's mary, ruling out any new locked ounce russia recorded more than 13000 view cases on saturday. that's the highest single day number since february. moscow accounted for nearly half of those infections. iraq, the 3rd and final presidential election debates will be held live on state television sues. the theme is people's concerns radians per pass aversion. next

week's holes. candidates had a heated discussion in the last and televised debate when accusing each other. amongst other things, treason that been processed in nigeria on democracy day. it's usually a day when people celebrate the end of military rule. people have been gathering in lagos, to vent that anger against countries failing economy. and politicians from both us political parties have put forward a bill that could break up the world's largest and most powerful tech companies. it's the product of a 15 month investigation by an anti trust subcommittee in the house of representatives. they argue that companies like facebook, google, amazon, and apple have too much power and often destroy small businesses. if past the bill would make it more difficult to tech giants require, competitors, others, the headlines that he is continues here on al jazeera, off the bottom line, coming up next. ah,

me. hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question. are american officials and scientists starting to believe that the corona virus pandemic came from a lab accident? it will. hon. let's get to the bottom line. ah, does it even matter how the pandemic began? isn't it more important to figure out how to end the disease that has wiped out more than 3700000 people worldwide, and it's still spreading. for china, the case is closed cove in 1900, jump from animals to humans in late 2019 period. and i might add that some folks in china pushed a conspiracy theory that the u. s. military hatched it and release it in china. last years, investigations focused on a wet market and woo hon. it's old sea food and exotic animals for human consumption. the world health organization and many scientists agreed with this

theory. even though there are still a lot of lingering questions. when former president donald trump talked about the possibility of an accident at the one institute of her ology, it was generally dismissed as a conspiracy theory changed with racism. but now president joe biden is asking his intelligence agencies to look into that very possibility. and china says, washington is now just playing politics. so how do we responsibly investigate the origins of cove? it without political blinders? today we're speaking with dr. g. g gronvold, in immunology at the johns hopkins center for health security, and the author of synthetic biology, safety, security, and promise. she's a member of the threat reduction advisory committee, which advises the defense department on how to reduce the risk of nuclear, biological, chemical and conventional threats. and jeannie metal who writes about the future of technology, health care and geo politics. and he's the author of a great book, hacking darwin, genetic engineering, and the future of humanity. he's a member of the world health organization expert advisory committee on human genome

editing. it's great to have you both with us today and let me just start with you. if you are sitting in china and during the tenure, a president, trump, a lot of these theories you know about the virus coming from the will, han lab being, you know, geo engineered and even released by the chinese military tooth to, to their own people. i think a lot of that was discounted largely by the media now. president biden is in and some of the theories are coming back. i guess, you know, asia really well. my questions from china's perspective is wouldn't you expect a little whiplash in their response? it depends on where in china, i certainly believe that there are many senior people in china who recognize what happened here, and that is whatever the origins of the pandemic. and there is a legitimate debate and a legitimate conversation right now about whether emerge naturally 0 or not, john, from animals to humans or through some kind of lab incident. it's

a very real question. it's an honest question. you mentioned in your intro, steve, that the world health organization has cited with the natural origin hypothesis, which is 100 percent as much as i love you. it's 100 percent untrue. dr. tedra has said that all that the w h o supports the investigation of all high policies, including the possibility of a lab incident origin. so if i were in china, i would be a little worried right now, because i would know that the chinese government has carried out a massive cover up from day one. immediately they started destroying samples, disappearing critical records, imprisoning citizen journalists, asking the most basic questions when they establish a universal gag order, preventing chinese scientists from saying, or writing anything publicly about pandemic origins without prior government approval. and so i don't think it's whiplash. i just think that you're right that

the world, many of us in the united states and i'm a progressive democrat, got in the habit of just assuming it everything that president trump said was just some kind of fabrication or lie or whatever. but even a broken clock is right twice a day, and that's why i've been saying we need to evaluate the message, not the messenger. and i think right now there are 2 very valid origin hypotheses, and that's why i've always called for a full investigation. so we can get to the bottom of what went wrong and then address our greatest vulnerability. it's a fascinating challenge and is a mystery sort of like a, who'd done it and, and you know, one would think of that line. well, if china is incident or innocent of this, why do they behave so guiltily? but let me start, you're gone for a moment. can you share with us where he, some of your skepticism comes of at least that path of looking at this pan democrats escape if you will, into mankind?

sure. happy to. so a lot of the theories about where coven came from, come from either that it was originally in animals and made the jump somehow to humans, or that it was actually created in the laboratory. and i think that the evidence for that ladder that it was created in the laboratory is very weak. and, and so there's a lot of problems with that. with that idea. one of the issues is that people, i think put a lot of, i mean i think science is amazing, but it's often a lot more incremental and tedious than i think a lot of people think and, and so i, a lot of the discussions over what is possible in the laboratory to, to create, put a lot of faith in science that should not be put into it quite yet. that you know,

that scientists could basically match wave a magic wand and create a virus of this type. right now there is a serious investigation that we need to have for the origin of this virus, but, but we need to do a lot more science to and a lot more exploration to figure out where this fires could have been derived. well, let me ask jamie, and both of you together. i mean, one of the critiques you offer in your, in this paper was that when it comes to genetic editing and genetic design, a topic that jamie metal knows a lot about. that we're not yet at the point in our collective knowledge in science and how to micro engineer those changes in genes in a way that would produce, you know, very fine results as of yet we're going in that direction. your argument is that we're not there yet. jamie, are we there yet? and we just don't collective we know it. know, so i completely agree with what d g 's just for the people who think that

a bunch of scientists in china sat down and they brought out all of their, their best crisper tools. and they just built using the tools of synthetic biology, some kind of, of this actual virus and then unleashed it on the world. that's a very futuristic idea. maybe in 20 years, 50 years. that'll be possible. it's certainly not possible now. but that's why i think a lot of people have gotten confused with this conflation of the idea of a genetically bio genetically engineered bio weapon with the idea. well, maybe could have been a very small genome added just of what was called the for and cleavage site. and there's a big debate about that happening right now. but you don't even need to go to, to the point of assuming that there with any genome editing to make the lab incident hypothesis possible,

it could be something as simple as people from the one is due to a variety or the cdc going down to one of these bad infested caves and you, non and in southern china and being infected and to the human being the vectors i could have easily been. the one is due to her ology, which has the world's largest collection of bat corona viruses. and they were doing things like called serial passage, which are just exposures of viruses to other viruses, to other cell cultures, to 8th, to knock in humanized might, it could easily have been that in all there were a lot of different permutations. and one of them was one that was more able to, to jump to, to human than somebody in the lab was infected and just accidentally walked it out . there was some problem of waste disposal. and so i think we don't have to go all the way to a genetically bio engineered virus to raise the very legitimate sion of an

accidental lab incident. well, i think this raises gigi, some of the dimensions of lab protocols, lab safety, we do apparently understand and i don't have the report. but there are the accusations in some of the intelligence reports done by the u. s. government. the 3 individuals became sick in november of 2019 and that there was another case prior to that that doctor anthony valgy has asked to look into, which is a number of people who became sick after investigating a cave some time ago. and so what of jamie's speculation that there could be something along these lines that may still be tagged to the lab, but may be less diabolical. i think that the only way that a laboratory accident argent makes sense with knowing the science that we have is if it was just like jamie described, where a virus was taken from the natural world and was examined in the laboratory and

came out somehow. i still think that, you know, the natural introduction is probably more likely but, but you know that that's what an investigation is for. however, i don't think that that we are going to be able to satisfy everybody's curiosity to, to be able to get to that level of certainty. we can, we have to take the word of what has been put forward. right now. we have heard, it's been in the news for months that the people who worked in the lab had serology, tested, and were not had not been exposed to coven prior to the demick. so we either take that or retest, or i don't know how one would get to greater certainty than that declaration. i think there are more things that can be done scientifically that we're not doing to be able to better underscore like, you know,

to figure out where this came from. and that is to do more sampling of the environment and to, to be able to trace back some of the where the animals came from. those leads are going to go cold if they're not cold already. and so i think it would be nice to see more of an effort that we all work together to be able to find the origin and the natural world and then see where that takes us. well, let me ask steve. okay, yeah, let me, let me just jump in there. i'm all for additional testing and i'm in for sure we should do all kinds of testing and sampling in the natural world because as i've said, that's one very legitimate hypothesis. one of the reasons why i'm so sir and about, and i think we need to do much more to examine the lab incident hypothesis, is that everything that gigi said is contingent upon our essentially trusting the word of should jang lee and a small number of people at the woo hon institute of veronica g. in an ideal world

on day one of the pandemic, she had dr. show and others would have said, you know, please, international community. however, however, organized, come in and review our records. look at the lab notes. look at the databases of what viruses we did or didn't have in our repository. if at that time, let's say on day one, we knew that the one institute of veronica had sars coby too, or a possible precursor virus to it, in their repository, that would be game over. we would know that the origin is a lab and then if on the other hand we had full access, we knew everything that was happening there. she has said that there was no chinese military engagement at w i. v. although every us intelligence agency has asserted that there was a, there are major question about sure. jang lee legitimacy and her, her credibility and accountability. these serology tests, the g, g mentioned,

were taken way after the potential exposures. so the chinese cover up and the destruction of evidence there, the and it that in my view, that's the problem. these are unanswerable questions. they just can't be answered without a full process or looking into them. and when the international study team was in china, people think it was an investigation. they were on the ground for 4 weeks, 2 weeks in quarantine, and then 2 weeks for a highly curated, manipulated study to or include a visit to the cobra propaganda museum. and then at the end of their, of their 2 weeks, they did a vote on which hypotheses were more or less likely. and they did it by a show of hands where the chinese scientists had to raise their hands in front of the chinese party commissars. and we all knew that people would ask basic questions had been put in prison. so do you think one of those scientists could have raised

their hand? it's a yeah, i think a lab in the origin is possible. we should look into that meeting that all of this exists within a content g g. looks like you want to respond. yeah, i think i just want to caution your viewers about a concept that we called mirror imaging. so this is something that we thought about a lot when it was the u. s. as the had an adversarial relationship with the soviet union. and that whole idea was looking at the soviets and saying, why are they doing this? well, they must be doing this way for this reason. and, and the whole idea is could be false if you are making your enemy or your adversary a little bit more like you. so, i want to caution you. your viewers is to say that sometimes china is going to behave in a particular way that may not have anything to do with whether or not they are covering up this particular incident. and it's important when you're looking at the discussion of where this fires came from, that we will push the science and push what we know and not what we think we know

about or, or what we presume to be why china is acting the way that they are, well, i mean, i've said that like a bat could have come out of the cave wearing and name tag speaking english. in fact, somebody and postal insta and people would, you know, china may act exactly the same way. and even if the origin was clear, isabel, let me, let me just say a few moment just a little bit on what g g said. i don't think that's just china being china shouldn't be any way that we should think about this about this issue. because there we have this terrible in my view, very likely avoidable pandemic. there's this terrible cover up we can't get into, that's just china being china and saying, oh, transparency and accountability. that's just our thing. we should just let them do their thing if they want to, you put a 1000000 weavers in concentration camps. that's just china being china. i think

it's i totally reject that. i think your 2nd point is a very important point. we are entering the era the age of synthetic biology. he wrote a great book about that. and then the core message of this era is that our species has the increasing ability to read, write and hack the code of life. and over time, we're going to have a much greater ability to just to, to manipulate all of life, including, including viruses and including, you know, maybe it's 10 years, maybe it's 20 years, however many years. and so we need to be thinking about this, and that's why we need to be learning the tough lessons. that's why we need to be doing everything we can to understand how this pandemic started and how we can be much better prepared for the next ones. all i mean is that one should not assume that the origin of the virus has anything to do with, with the way that china is acting. and we need to make sure that we separate out the science from other consideration. but what i but it is true,

but that while g and biology in general is, is it's, this is the science of the century and, and a lot of nations are looking towards biology as a way to lift their economies and to provide not only medicines, but materials and manufacturing and everything else into for the next several decades. so countries reporting a lot of money into the bio sciences and and so we have to think of different ways that we can keep bio safety funded that we can encourage good norms and, and be able to have the kind of safety systems in place. so that people are appropriately flagged and you may not be able to stop it, but at least halt some of the incidents like that. christopher baby experiment. so this is, it's not as a nebulous kind of governance for sure big. you know,

you can't tell other nations what precisely they are doing, but we do have treaties. we do have norms, we do have engagements. we have publications. there are lots of different layers and ways that we can try and, and promote our vision of how science should be operating. thank you. please. just a minute. that's why i think there's, there's a through line between the crisper babies and it's an open question whether they even got greater resistance, future resistance to, to h i v, which is doubtful. but there's a through line chain, the, the who john way, crisper baby issue, right. and this, and a lot of other things that are, that are happening and there are too light pieces of it. one is that science and our biggest challenges are global. busy but we're not organized to address global challenges and their mismatches is increasingly dangerous. the 2nd challenge,

if i may have non state actors, right? so not lead actor doing. this is a difference between what governments and militaries are organizing to do and what individuals who are entrepreneurial and think they're going to tackle something with new technologies or doing. yeah, and connect back. so, i mean, if you, if you are all the states that have navies looked, probably looked at what happened with the u. s. s. roosevelt. and said, you know, that, that is terrible. we've got to do something about our defense right now to say that are to be able to take a symbol of american power and reduce it to a hospital ship. mean that's, that's, and that's something that we need to be worried about. it. let me, let me ask jamie, let me ask you a question. you have written a lot about your concerns about a guy named peter, daz, in the ico health alliance, and anthony voucher dark. tiffany voucher said hey, you know, the u. s. government has helped fund some of his work, the defense support. and if you could do batt surveillance and be involved in that, that's a good thing. it would be irresponsible not to what are your concerns about peter?

dad's that. if you can give us a brief catch up on that. so peter days it is one of the world's premier will call him a virus hunter. people who believe that we need to have surveillance to understand these viruses that are out there. and we can't just bury our head in the sand and he was actually one of the heroes of the effort to track down the origins of the 1st sars outbreak. the reason why i have become moved from being a big fan of his, in the past to a big critic of his now are essentially to thing. i 1st, he was the organizer of a letter in the british journal, the lancet in february of last year, which claimed without sufficient supporting evidence that this outbreak on almost certainly are very likely stems from natural origin. and called anybody who was even raising the possibility of a lab incident origin. a conspiracy theorist i called that scientific propaganda,

i've called it thuggery. i even called for the editor in chief of the lancet to be fired because i think it was not appropriate to use that kind of language when there was, we needed to have an open, honest conversation. second, peter, who already we know through email access to right to know with highly manipulated in that process and trying to create the impression of unanimity and didn't disclose any conflicts of interest. then he was a member of both the w h o organized but not lead study team. and the lancet commissioner has a massive conflict of interest and someone who has funded the work at the one institute of garage that's now being brought into question of thank you will g g. i love your comments on that. whether it's about peter to day sake, but also on the broader side of the scientific commons globally, and how you know that. i mean, these don't follow national lines and my impression,

how can we make sure that that remains healthy, enroll bussed in serving the public interest. i'm going to give you the last word. so i think that there's a lot that we need to learn from this. and one of the things i've been struck by to talk to small group of people have been making this their career to be able to investigate new viruses. we should be doing a lot more of this and making sure and seeing what we can do to stop pandemic, not just, not just make vaccines really quickly once they, once they come upon us. so i think that means opening this up to being a greater a bigger field, having more engagement between scientists working on. we have seen pretty clearly that infectious diseases don't know, borders and putting our head in the sand is not going to change that. you know, we don't do what we can to stop spill overs. well, i'd like to thank johns hopkins university immunology dr. gigi gronvold and writer

and technology future ologist jamie met. so thank you both for being with us today . i really wish we could have these kinds of conversations whenever we have a connor is very, very good to talk to you both. thank you. so what's the bottom line in relations between super powers? there is no such thing as an innocent question. it would be absolutely fabulous to think that the world is open to unshackled, scientific inquiry, just for the sake of science and human curiosity. but here in the real world, everything consequential get shackled by politics. sometimes there are good folks trying to help the whole world come out on top of this process, but that's not always how it works. if the u. s. government is challenging china's version of the truth, it will be seen as an act of aggression. and for some reason or other, china has done a lot to blur the origins of covert and muscle. those who knew something about the early days of the killer virus. so politics aside, identifying the source of the pandemic is vital to fighting the next. whether we'd like to or not, the consequences for mankind are staggering. and that's the bottom line,

ah, with energy and change to every part of our universe. or small to continue the change all around the shape, my technology and human ingenuity. we can make it work for you and your business nation. yes. as hell. what makes you happy? spit out. just look at the state of the art director home capability means these guys were like yeah, it's cool, isn't it?

they won't want to miss that page. let me watch. i want to see the reply, child sat space to deliver your vision. ah, hello again, adrian. and again hearing though how the headlines on i was a 0 g 7 lead us have agreed to support a u. s. proposed infrastructure plan designed to compete with china's belton road initiative. the u. s. plan called build back better world as part of president jo bivens efforts, the former more unified front to compete economically with china ill, she pushed the g 7 summit. the goal for china out on the alleged force labor practices and human rights abuses, global vaccine access and fantastic recovery also dominate.