MIT Researcher Attacked For Work On COVID-19 Origin Feels 'Validated' After DOE Report

By Mike Sullivan, CBS Boston

February 28, 2023

CAMBRIDGE - The Department of Energy believes with low confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak started from a lab leak in Wuhan. A local researcher has been pushing the United States to investigate the lab for more than a year. Her remarks have led to threats and harassment.

"Backlash was swift and furious. I think a lot of scientists were really offended by it. People called me a race traitor. I was attacked by a Chinese media article," said Dr. Alina Chan, a scientific advisor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "All of that time fighting for the lab origin to be investigated, I do feel validated."

WBZ spoke with her in 2021 when she wrote a book on COVID's origins. Her work outlined two possible scenarios for the start of COVID. One theory is that it began from the market trade of live animals in Wuhan. The other is from a lab outbreak. Her conclusion leaned toward the lab because she says no infected animals have been found in that area during that time.

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