SARS conspiracy theory

The SARS conspiracy theory began to emerge during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China in the spring of 2003, when Sergei Kolesnikov, a Russian scientist and a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, first publicized his claim that the SARS coronavirus is a synthesis of measles and mumps. This compound cannot be formed in the natural world and thus, according to him, the SARS virus must have been produced under laboratory conditions. Earlier, another Russian scientist, Nikolai Filatov, head of Moscow's epidemiological services, had commented that the SARS virus was probably man-made.

This news caused controversy in many Chinese internet discussion boards and chat rooms. Many Chinese believed that the SARS virus could be a biological weapon manufactured by the United States, who perceived China's rise as a potential threat to its dominance and superiority in the world. The failure to find the source of the SARS virus further convinced these people and many more that SARS was artificially synthesised and spread by some individuals and even governments. However, a great deal of very convincing circumstantial evidence suggests that the SARS virus crossed over to humans from civet cats, a type of animal that is often killed and eaten in Guangdong, where SARS was first discovered. Some people in Taiwan and the United States have also expressed doubts and speculated that SARS could be a biological weapon developed by mainland China.

Supporters of the conspiracy theory suggest that SARS caused the most serious harm in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, regions where most Chinese reside, while the United States, Europe and Japan were not much affected. Conspiracists further point out that SARS has an average mortality rate of around 10% around the world, but no one died in the United States from SARS, despite the fact that there were 100 reported cases. Regarding reasons why SARS patients in the United States experienced a relatively mild illness, the U.S. Center for Disease Control has explained that anybody with fever and a respiratory symptom who had traveled to an affected area was included as a SARS patient in the U.S., leading to earlier treatment in the U.S. than may have been the case elsewhere.

In October 2003, Tong Zeng, a Chinese lawyer and a volunteer in a 1998 Chinese-American medical cooperation program, published a book that again speculated that SARS could be a biological weapon developed by the United States against China. In the book, Tong disclosed that in the 1990s, many American research groups collected thousands of blood and DNA samples and specimens of mainland Chinese (including 5000 DNA samples from twins) through numerous joint research projects carried out in China. These samples were then sent back to the United States for further research, and could be used in developing biological weapons targeting Chinese. These samples came from 22 provinces in China, all of which were hit by SARS in 2003. Only provinces like Yunnan, Guizhou, Hainan, Tibet and Xinjiang were left out, and all these provinces suffered less severely during the SARS outbreak. The author suspects that Japan is also involved, as many Japanese factories in Guangdong in the 1990s made it compulsory for all workers to have blood tests in the factory annually, rather than asking workers to go to local hospitals for blood tests and a proper physical examination. However Tong Zeng admits that these are only speculations, and he does not have any concrete proof from the study of the virus's genetic sequence.

Some scientists acknowledge the possibility that the SARS virus was man-made, and some have also noticed there is genetic material in the SARS DNA sequence that does not match any previously known virus, implying it could be man-made.

Coronaviruses similar to SARS have been found in bats in China, suggesting they may be their natural reservoir.