Shame on the cabal of Western scientists who mocked my Covid lab leak theory to protect their own backs - growing evidence suggests I was right: IAN BIRRELL

It can be lonely as a journalist when you dare to challenge conventional wisdom – especially if taking on two superpowers and some of the world's top scientists over the cause of a pandemic.So it has been gratifying to see the steady acceptance of my argument – backed by investigations in harness with fellow dissidents around the world – that it was foolish to ignore the hypothesis that Covid-19 might have leaked from a laboratory.Few serious people now dismiss this concept, despite China's continuing cover-up – especially after the CIA joined the FBI and US Department of Energy in stating that the startlingly well-adapted coronavirus was 'more likely' to have come from a Wuhan lab than to have spilled over from animals.This view is shared by German intelligence and France's academy of medicine. And given the pandemic's lingering impact, we should pursue the truth remorselessly to protect the future world.Yet this hypothesis was branded racist and a conspiracy theory when I started to unravel Covid's emergence six years ago.Like many others, I was struck by the strange 'coincidence' that it erupted in the city with a secretive lab containing the world's biggest repository of bat coronaviruses and carrying out high-risk research to boost infectivity.This newspaper deserves credit for publishing a string of groundbreaking articles that exposed the ties to US funding, inadequate safety controls in Wuhan, duplicity of China's dictatorship and studies contesting the official version of events.There is still no definitive conclusion to this debate. Yet one thing is clear: there was a conspiracy to dupe the public, involving leading scientists and research-funding bodies in Britain and the US. Cover up: It was foolish to ignore the hypothesis Covid-19 might have leaked from a laboratory, writes Ian Birrell. Pictured: Researchers working in Wuhan's secretive Institute of Virology The Wuhan Institute of Virology is at the centre of hypothesis that Covid-19 might have leaked from a laboratoryThese powerful figures hastily pushed statements into influential scientific journals to refute suggestions Sars-CoV-2 – the strain of coronavirus causing Covid-19 – might be linked to 'any laboratory-based scenario'.But now we can see how central players in this sordid scandal reacted as their claims were shredded. The release last week of private chats on the Slack messaging app in an inquiry led by Rand Paul, chairman of the US Senate Homeland Security Committee, shows how they feared the possibility of a lab leak despite their public stance dismissing it.Still they sneered at critics. I am called 'a knob', 'bully', 'that f***er', a 'low IQ individual' and 'a piece of s***' among the infantile insults shared by these scientists for having the audacity to ask questions. Others get worse abuse – with the 'F' word used 189 times.They also talk about frustrating Freedom of Information (FOI) requests – an activity that has already led one US protagonist to face federal charges. 'Birrell wrote a letter to the Principal threatening to write about it [the non-disclosure of documents] so the lawyer just wants to make sure everything is in place to tell him to p*** off,' says Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist at Edinburgh University, in one missive after my FOIs were rejected on risible safety grounds.So this publicly funded higher education institution – which boasts about its 'culture of openness' – helped stifle investigations into the worst public health disaster for a century.And bear in mind this professor is one of the world's most-cited scientists. 'Stay off emails,' he says at another point, displaying contempt for any concept of transparency. 'Or carefully curate some emails for the FOI records.'Sadly, such arrogance and attitudes became all too prevalent during the pandemic – helping shatter public confidence in both science and government.. Rambaut was one of five authors of the Proximal Origins statement published by Nature Medicine in March 2020. It became one of the most cited articles in academic history after ruling out a lab leak.It has since emerged they were covertly marshalled by former US presidential adviser Anthony Fauci alongside his boss Francis Collins, director at the time of the biggest American medical funding body, and Sir Jeremy Farrar, then head of the wealthy Wellcome Trust and now chief scientist at the World Health Organisation.Patrick Vallance, the Government's then chief scientific adviser, was another key figure. When I tried to obtain his emails, minutes and notes on this issue through FOIs, I received 32 emails with almost every word redacted.Three months after the Nature Medicine statement, however, lead author Kristian Andersen put odds of a lab leak at 30 per cent. 'Our paper was pretty strong in saying 'there's no way', but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage,' he told colleagues.This Danish immunologist remained dismissive about the lab leak theory in public, telling Sky News soon afterwards that 'as we describe in our paper, all the data strongly suggest that this is a natural virus'. Privately, he also admitted they made a false claim on bat coronavirus research: 'We… say that this work is performed 'all of the world', but that isn't true – it has exclusively been going on at WIV [the Wuhan Institute of Virology].' Andersen even says 'they created the virus' when discussing Fauci and Collins – and admits 'most scientists I talk to believe there is a likely connection to the lab'.This would be more shocking if plenty had not already emerged about their deception. Farrar talked privately about 'Wild West' biosecurity in Wuhan. Andersen admitted the lab escape theory was 'so friggin likely'.Suspicions were raised initially by the 'furin cleavage site' on the virus, which made Covid highly infectious to humans but not seen on similar coronaviruses.Then it was discovered scientists in Wuhan and key Western collaborators sought US funding to insert this feature into Sars-like viruses a year before its spread.'It really isn't beyond plausibility that someone went ahead and tried some of this stuff,' admits Rambaut in these latest messages. 'We just need to re-convince ourselves it is coincidence.'Another strange coincidence in this saga. Yet it seemed odd to rule out the leak theory after frequent incidents of lab-acquired infections – especially when this disease appeared hundreds of miles from the nearest colonies of bats with similar coronaviruses.It is now beyond doubt that this clandestine cabal of scientists used their prominence to push a false narrative dismissing plausibility of a lab leak and 'conspiracy theories' to protect their backs.If the pandemic began with a lab accident, this was a human error.Yet China's subsequent cover-up was unforgivable – as were the useful idiots who assisted its duplicity in the West.They betrayed both humanity and the creed of science – and they deserve only shame and retribution.