The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world's oldest and best-known general medical journals. It was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, an English surgeon who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet (scalpel).
Deborah Blum is an American journalist and the director of the Knight Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is author of books including The Poisoner's Handbook (2010) and The Poison Squad (2018), and has been a columnist for The New York Times and a blogger for Wired.
Carolyn Arthur "Biddy" Martin is an American academic, author, and the current president of Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Nicholas Michael Landon Wade is a British author and journalist. He is the author of numerous books, and has served as staff writer and editor for Nature, Science, and the science section of The New York Times.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison is the official state university of Wisconsin and the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It was the first public university established in Wisconsin and remains the oldest and largest public university in the state. It became a land-grant institution in 1866. The 933-acre (378 ha) main campus, located on the shores of Lake Mendota, includes four National Historic Landmarks. The university also owns and operates a National Historic Landmark 1,200-acre (486 ha) arboretum established in 1932, located 4 miles (6.4 km) south of the main campus.
Constance Steinkuehler (Squire) is an American professor of Informatics at the University of California–Irvine. She previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before taking public service leave, from 2011-2012, to work as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House Executive Office, where she advised on policy matters about video games and learning.
Rebecca Margaret "Becky" Blank is an American economist and academic administrator. The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Blank has also served in various roles in the United States Department of Commerce, including as acting United States Secretary of Commerce. In the summer of 2022, she will become the new president of Northwestern University.
Michelle Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, also known as Cedillo, was a court case involving the family of Michelle Cedillo, an autistic girl whose parents sued the United States government because they believed that her autism was caused by her receipt of both the measles-mumps-and-rubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines. The case was a part of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding, where petitioners were required to present three test cases for each proposed mechanism by which vaccines had, according to them, caused their children's autism; Cedillo was the first such case for the MMR-and-thimerosal hypothesis.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which reports to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The institute is one of nine independent organisations in the Wuhan Branch of the CAS. Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. The institute has collaborated with the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France, and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The institute has been an active premier research center for the study of coronaviruses.
False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media. False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against "fake news", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant.
Patricia, "Patty" Loew is a journalist, professor, author, and community historian, broadcaster, documentary film maker, academic and advocate. She has written extensively about Ojibwe treaty rights, sovereignty and the role of Native American media in communicating Indigenous world views.
Pierre Kory is an American critical care physician who gained attention during the COVID-19 pandemic for advocating widespread off-label use of certain drugs as treatments for COVID-19, as president and co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Kory testified twice to the U.S. Senate regarding COVID-19. During his testimony in December 2020, Kory erroneously claimed that the antiparasitic medication ivermectin was a "wonder drug" with "miraculous effectiveness" against COVID-19.
The COVID-19 lab leak theory proposes that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Central to the theory is the observation that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is in the same city as the pandemic's earliest known outbreak. The theory has also gained support because of suspicions about the secrecy of the Chinese government's response. Scientists from WIV had previously collected SARS-related coronaviruses from bats; allegations that they also performed undisclosed risky work on such viruses is central to some versions of the idea. Some versions, particularly those alleging alteration of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, are based on speculation, misinformation, or misrepresentations of scientific evidence.
Michael Joseph Mina is an American epidemiologist, immunologist and physician. He was formerly an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and currently Chief Medical Officer at eMed.
Twindemic is a term used during the COVID-19 pandemic, referring to the possibility of a severe flu season happening alongside an increase in cases of COVID-19 during the fall and winter of 2020 and 2021. A consequence of a twindemic may be a mixture of two different infections in the same person at the same time. The term twindemic is a portmanteau of "twin" and "pandemic".
Alina Chan is a Canadian molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is a postdoctoral fellow. During the COVID-19 pandemic she became known for questioning the prevailing consensus regarding the origins of the virus and arguing that a laboratory escape scenario should be investigated.
Jasmine Y. Zapata is an American physician and epidemiologist. She is the chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for community health at Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Her career includes work as a pediatrician, public health researcher, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, author, and her support for youth empowerment with a variety of initiatives.
The Lancet letter was a statement made in support of scientists and medical professionals in China fighting the outbreak of COVID-19, and condemning theories suggesting that the virus does not have a natural origin, which it referred to as "conspiracy theories". The letter was published in The Lancet on February 19, 2020, and signed by 27 prominent scientists, gaining a further 20,000 signatures in a Change.org petition. The letter generated significant controversy over the alleged conflict of interest of its authors, and the chilling effect it had on scientists proposing that the COVID-19 lab leak theory be investigated.
Vidya Krishnan is a health-focused Indian investigative journalist and author, based in Montreal.
Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 is a 2021 book by Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chan and British science writer Matt Ridley. The authors describe ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19. The Wall Street Journal's Adam O'Neal said the book has compiled "perhaps the most comprehensive case for the lab-leak theory currently available".
