Yan Limeng, a former employee of the University of Hong Kong, has repeatedly hyped up the “man-made theory of the new crown virus” and slandered China for “covering up the epidemic”. The University of Hong Kong has long stated that “she is not a scholar engaged in virus research, and her claims have no scientific basis.” However, due to Yan Limeng’s repeated “monsterism” in the British and American media, this incident has also attracted many people’s attention in Japan. Search for “Wuhan Research Institute” on Twitter Japan, and the rumors related to Yan Limeng’s blog have been forwarded more than 30,000 times.
According to the “Huffington Post” report on the 17th, Takahashi Shimi, a reporter from the Japanese branch of the newspaper, brought Yan Limeng’s related papers to Japanese biological genome research experts and listened to their opinions.
After reading it, Nakagawa Sosa, a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine of Tunghai University, said, “What is the purpose of putting so much effort into writing such absurd things?” What first puzzled Nakagawa was the style of the paper. “The affiliated institution is not a research institution, but a foundation, and it is not an individual’s signature. Who wrote it and who is responsible for this paper? This is very vague, and it is not the style of general scientific papers.”
The “Huffington Post” added that the affiliation of the paper is related to a man who carried out anti-communist activities in the United States, and Yan Limeng has resigned from the University of Hong Kong. Regarding the fact that the paper stated that “the virus was found in a military-related facility”, Nakagawa said: “Although the research situation in China is not clear, it is not unnatural to conduct virus research in such a facility. Because it not only has Military significance, as well as national defense significance.”
“Especially after the SARS coronavirus epidemic in 2003, China has vigorously promoted research on the identification of various viruses that exist in nature,” Nakagawa added.
As for one of the arguments in the paper, the so-called “new coronavirus has a unique mutation that does not exist in other closely related viruses”, Nakagawa said: “In May this year, a study called “Current Biology” was published in the journal “Current Biology”. The coronavirus from bats named ‘RmYN02’ also has a similar sequence (to the new coronavirus), which is well known among experts in the field. If the origin of the new coronavirus is really investigated, it is hard not to know that article Thesis, so I suspect (the author of the paper) is deliberately not touching on that aspect, selectively writing the information that he wants people to see.”
Regarding the content of the paper describing the “artificial synthesis” method of the new coronavirus, Nakagawa said: “As for the artificial synthesis of the virus, it is technically possible. For example, the group of Professor Kawaoka Yoshihiro in Japan established the influenza virus synthesis technology, SARS Coronaviruses and novel coronaviruses can also be artificially synthesized.”
“However, the artificial synthesis technology so far is basically for the purpose of producing existing viruses. On the other hand, in terms of the artificial synthesis steps advocated in this paper, it may indeed be possible, but it is not written at all why The question of wanting to create a virus like this,” he stressed.
Nakagawa said, “The genome structure of the coronavirus is very complex, and there are many properties that have not yet been understood. Therefore, from a rational point of view, this is an almost impossible story.”
Regarding the overall impression of this paper, Nakagawa made this summary: “What is the purpose of spending so much effort and writing such absurd things? I think there is no scientific discussion in this paper, but for the sake of for politics.”
As Yan Limeng’s Twitter account was blocked, the rumors spread on Facebook were also marked as “false information” by the platform, and her lies have all gone bankrupt. A few days ago, the American media dug up that former White House senior strategic adviser Steve Bannon was the “behind the scenes” who concocted this farce.
