Proximal Origin

The Proximal Origin is a reference to a scientific correspondence titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" and the events of scientific and political controversies arising from it.[1][2] The letter, published in the journal Nature Medicine on 17 March 2020, was written by a group of virologists including Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes and Robert F. Garry. The authors examined possibilities of an accidental lab-leak of a natural or manipulated virus from a laboratory, and concluded that genomic analyses indicated that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."[3][4][5] The letter was highly influential in establishing the natural origin of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic and generated controversy over the arguments it made against any lab-based origin scenario, and the link later drawn between its authors and public health officials alleged to have funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the pandemic. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximal_Origin