US targeting China to hide its own past: expert

All the COVID-19 lab-related theories lack serious evidence, and the US has no right to point a finger at other countries, especially China, when it comes to "biological warfare", Tom Fowdy, an Oxford graduate and East Asia specialist, said in an article published on RT.com Thursday.

The lab-related claims, and their overwhelmingly political character, have been extremely disruptive toward scientists' bid to establish facts about the pandemic, the article said.

However, the suggestion in the US that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab just won't go away. The thought that a state could act malevolently in this way has taken hold for a reason: the US has its own checkered past in biological research.

In 1942, the US launched its own biological warfare program. It was first alleged to have been utilized in the Korean War, ironically against the Chinese. In 1952, reports began to emerge of Chinese soldiers from different cities dying with what appeared to be anthrax and from uncommon conditions such as encephalitis.

During the Vietnam War, a number of chemical and biological weapons were also used, with severe implications for the population.

The US itself has heavily invested in and used biological warfare. Fort Detrick, a site in Maryland that has long been the heart of US biological weapons research, closed down its germ research operations in August 2019, after two bio safety breaches involving dangerous pathogens.

The idea of a lab leak is unsubstantiated and arguably nonsensical. But the thought that a state could act in such a way is on America's national conscience for a reason.