Biosecurity: Closing the gate after the horse has bolted
By Iain Fraser - Geopolitical Journalist, Gibraltar
www.geopoliticalmatters.com
The BBCs lauded World Affairs Editor, John Simpson has written a fantastic article examining the lack of security protocols in the World´s virus laboratories.
Simpson says we have seen what an out-of-control virus can do to our overpopulated, highly interconnected planet. Some 166 million people have been infected in just 18 months with an official death toll from Covid-19 is 3.4 million, though the World Health Organization (WHO) are saying the true figure is probably 8 million or even higher.
The US has just announced it is revisiting the origins of the virus, including the possibility that it escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, despite the WHO saying earlier this year this theory was "extremely unlikely" but as Simpson says, we have always known there's a risk a deadly pathogen could do that.
Now a leading expert on biological warfare has called on leaders of the G7 group of leading industrialised nations to consider tighter restrictions, warning loosely-regulated laboratories are a gateway for terrorists.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a soldier turned academic who formerly commanded Britain's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment. He has examined the effects of chemical and biological warfare at first hand, especially in Iraq and Syria.
