{"id":35565,"date":"2021-05-24T18:46:27","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T01:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=35565"},"modified":"2021-05-24T18:46:27","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T01:46:27","slug":"former-trump-fda-chief-cites-growing-circumstantial-evidence-on-lab-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=35565","title":{"rendered":"Former Trump FDA chief cites growing circumstantial evidence on lab theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA, said Monday that there is growing circumstantial evidence suggesting that COVID-19 may have originated in a lab and not in nature.<\/p>\n<p>The former FDA commissioner responded to The Wall Street Journal\u2019s report that three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers sought hospital care in November 2019 on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/gyknsjwqmccdfjfcdkrmmdnnmwdpcwchhtmqjlpccnnnmk_ozftwwjzjdtlztmqrrjf.html?a=&amp;b=39359\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/gyknsjwqmccdfjfcdkrmmdnnmwdpcwchhtmqjlpccnnnmk_ozftwwjzjdtlztmqrrjf.html?a%3D%26b%3D39359&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1621986594144000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHftIIpdysQ4J0KzZTYmytvPfqwLQ\">CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the challenge right now is that the side of the ledger that supports the thesis that this came from a zoonotic source, from an animal source, hasn\u2019t budged,\u201d Gottlieb said. \u201cAnd the side of the ledger that suggests this could have come out of a lab has continued to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople a year ago who said this probably came from nature, it\u2019s really unlikely it came from a lab, maybe a year ago that kind of a statement made a lot of sense because that was the more likely scenario,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Gottlieb pointed out that the source of COVID-19 has yet to be identified and noted that the origins of related diseases were usually identified at this point following the initial outbreak, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s not for lack of trying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re ever going to get to the bottom of this,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause unless we have a whistleblower \u2014 assuming it did come out of a lab, and I\u2019m not saying it did, but assuming it did \u2014 unless we have a whistleblower or a regime change in China, you\u2019re not going to truly find out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Gottlieb, the former head of&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35566,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35565\/revisions\/35566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}