Scientist who branded the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory finally admits conflicts of interest.

Peter Daszak, who orchestrated the highly influential statement in the Lancet which effectively branded the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory, has finally been forced to take a step back.

Last September GMWatch reported the outrage of well-credentialled scientists over Daszak’s appointment as lead investigator into the origins of the pandemic for the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. How, we wondered, could the Commission have put a man in charge of an “objective” enquiry into the origins of the pandemic who had been at the very heart of the campaign to stop the possibility of the lab leak hypothesis being taken seriously?

At the time, GMWatch seemed like a lone voice reporting this issue. The mainstream media published no concerns about Daszak’s massive financial conflict of interest, never mind the fact that he was a long-term friend and collaborator, as well as a funder, of Shi Zhengli’s lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), or that he had a track record of making seriously inaccurate and misleading statements about the origin issue.