minister by the me to do, you know, said the armed forces were obliged to defend the country from irregular groups that added the human rights needed to be respected and that the events at the border would be investigated. the news. ready and money insight into ha, here top stories on al jazeera, she 7 leaders have back to global infrastructure plans to compete with china's belton road initiative. the announcement came on day to if the latest summit with the you on 60 general at the table, global health was still a major talking point. joe hall reports from cornwall. you're right. you're right. described as a historic moment, d. 7 leaders pledged their collective might to plan to fight to future pandemic. the carpet bay declaration aims to develop black scenes in under

a 100 days to build better scientific surveillance techniques and to beef up powers for the world health organization. but some were eager to stress that the current pandemic is not yet over. we didn't really though, for the power to come together and to organize any fixed response to the corporate. and the only way to be effective in the government is get an idea that everybody was vaccinated sooner rather than later. the key thing to remember how far is that the damage is reaching right now. people need to right now and crucially, countries need financing right now. and every single that i think we've seen from this g 7 so far come to that any extra money on until we see the money. none of this unfortunately can be credible big promises sometimes empty are often a feature of big summits. this one though, had something to offer that does feel substantial. united states, i said before, we're back us back. we feel very,

very strong about cohesion of nato. and i for one think that the european union is incredibly strong and vibrant entity biden's administration. once g 7 allies to support a global infrastructure project to rival china's belton road initiative. it's a returned to us leadership that many of his fellow leaders have solely missed. even if warm words with the e. u won't be entirely to the taste of the summits. host morris johnson said at the outset that this g 7 summit would be an opportunity to reaffirm the values that bind these 7 developed world democracies. and yet, at this very summit, he stands accused by the european union of failing to honor his own commitments on breaks it. the series of meetings you leaders have told johnson the better relations will only come if he abide by the terms of post briggs in trade arrangements in northern ireland and the u. s. president with an irish roots

appears to be on their side. i think that will have some pragmatic solutions and if we don't, then i think that what our friends have also understood is that it's the prime duty of the u. k. government to uphold the territorial integrity of the united kingdom, which is the sound of a prime minister no matter how isolated and however disappointed that breaks it has caused a cloud over his summit, nevertheless, refusing to back down. jonah, how al jazeera coldwell. oh dear, his electoral commission says just over 30 percent of voters took part in saturdays, alimentary elections. the pro democracy movement known as he rock, had called for a boycott. election is the 3rd since president of the disease, but if he was forced to step down and 2019 i level delegation in turkey is in libya, trying to shore up bilateral ties on car has been a staunch ally of tripoli,

government and has provided it with military support against forces loyal to the warlord holly for hosta. at least 7 people have been killed in twin boma tox. in afghanistan capital kabul, 2 rounds blew up within 30 minutes of each other. they were in a district which is home to many from the has are, and minority is 12 members of the venezuelan delegation to the corporate america football tournament have been tested positive for current of ours. several players are among those infected. the team is due to play the opening march against host brazil on sunday. and danish football player christian ericsson has regained consciousness after collapsing the pitch in the year 2020 game against finland. the 29 year old was given cpr at big rush to a neighbor coming up next is the bottom line. stay with us. ah

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 was 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. this 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 han institute of urology, 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. gigi 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 geno

editing. it's great to have you both with us today. let me, 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 woo, hon lab being, you know, g o engineered and even released by the chinese military to, 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 these theories are coming back, i guess, you know, asia really well. my questions from china is 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 in the 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. ted rose has said that all that the w h o support 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, the world, many of us in the united states and i'm a progressive democrat,

got in the habit of just assuming 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 cobra 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 a 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 scientists 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 you know, should not be put into it quite yet. that you know, that scientists could basically mad me 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 collectively know it. know, so i completely agree with white way is 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 will 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 bioweapon with the idea. well, maybe could have been a very small genome added just of what was called the for in 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 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 they 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 a g, g, some of the, the dimensions of lab protocols, lab safety. we do apparently understand and i don't have the report. but there are the accusations, and 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 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's, that's what an investigation is for. however, i don't think that that we are going to be able to satisfy i 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, though 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 lead to 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 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. a 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, and 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, and that's 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 my 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 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'm one 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 virus 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 bad could have come out of the cave wearing and name tag speaking english and fact to somebody and post them into and people would, you know, trying to 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 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 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 tends 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 li flagged and you may not be able to stop it, but at least halt some of the incidents like that, christopher baby experiment row. so this is, it's not as a nebulous kind of governance for sure because 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 there are mismatches is increasingly dangerous. the 2nd challenge, if i may have non state actors, right?

so not paid after doing this is a difference between what government and military's 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 not 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 dazel in the ico health alliance. and anthony voucher dark company out. you said hey, you know, the u. s. government is help 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 desert 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 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 will 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 conflict of interest. then he was a member of both the w h o organized but not lead study team. and the lancet commission right just has a massive conflict of interest and someone who has funded the work at the institute of garage that's now being brought into question. well, thank you will g g, i love your comments on that, whether it's about peter de 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 and robust 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 is to small a 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, 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. and 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, if we don't do what we can to stop spill overs? well, i'd like to thank johns hopkins university immunology dr. g g 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 car is very, very good to talk to you both. thank you. they said, so what's the bottom line in relations between super powers? there's no such thing as an innocent question. it'd 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 coven 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 fighting the next. whether we'd like to or not, the consequences for mankind are staggering. and that's the bottom line.

ah, the demand for low price clothing is accelerating at high speed. that's absolutely great by 2030, the industry will expand by an additional 60 percent. i'll just take a detailed look at the disposal fashion, which was our committee oh, or the date exposing the hidden human and environmental costs. why was a company give free what she's never been there? no doubt it was her boss fashions or knowledge of the of the native means as it breaks the rates of a bio in many parts of the country becoming increasingly real with detailed coverage conditions aren't really clean until a local administrator said that they've detected several cases of cholera. from

around the world, a couple of 100 migrant children have been found places on the mainland to alleviate pressure in the air to the no money site in general, your top stories on al jazeera g 7 lead as meeting in the united kingdom have agreed on a global infrastructure plants rival china's influence, the details on how it will be financed or unclear. james bayes is out the summit in call. this new us lead initiative is coming 8 years after the belt and road initiative, which is well established around the world. us officials estimate there is a 4 trillion dollar interest.