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| WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2021, with studies of the coronavirus pandemic’s origins going nowhere and the issue embroiled in bitter partisan politics, David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford, quietly made a request of his congresswoman. | 华盛顿——2021年春天，人们在新冠病毒大流行起源的研究上一筹莫展，这个问题本身也卷入了激烈的党派政治。这时，斯坦福大学的微生物学家戴维·雷尔曼悄悄向他的议员提出了一个请求。 |
| He told his representative, Anna Eshoo, that he was organizing a letter from leading scientists calling for an open and independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 — including into whether it had come from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. He wanted to know if she would publicly endorse the idea. | 他告诉代表他的议员安娜·艾舒，他正在组织著名科学家签署联名信，呼吁对新冠病毒的起源进行公开和独立的调查——包括调查它是不是来自中国武汉的一个实验室。他想知道，她是否会公开支持这个想法。 |
| The outreach worked. As soon as the letter appeared online in the prestigious journal Science, Eshoo became one of the first Democrats in Congress to call for an investigation into the origins of COVID. | 他的求助奏效了。这封信出现在著名的《科学》杂志网站后，艾舒马上就成了国会中第一批呼吁对新冠起源进行调查的民主党人之一。 |
| It was the prelude to a political sea change on the issue: Within weeks, President Joe Biden ordered a top-to-bottom intelligence review of how the pandemic began, which has since come to mixed conclusions. | 这是新冠起源问题引发的一场政治巨变的前奏。几周之后，乔·拜登总统下令对大流行病的起源进行全方位的情报审查，这一行动后来得出了各方不一的结论。 |
| The story of the hunt for COVID’s origin is partly about the stonewalling by China that has left scientists with incomplete evidence, all of it about a virus that is constantly changing. For all the data suggesting that the virus may have jumped into people from wild animals at a Chinese market, conclusive proof remains out of reach, as it does for the competing hypothesis that the virus leaked from a lab. | 新冠病毒溯源的过程在一定程度上与中国的阻挠有关，这让科学家们没有完整的证据，但从根本上是源于这种病毒在不断变化。尽管所有数据都表明病毒可能是从中国一个市场上的野生动物传染给人类的，但仍缺乏确凿的证据，而另一个有力假说，即病毒从实验室泄漏的说法，也是同样的情况。 |
| But the story is also about politics and how both Democrats and Republicans have filtered the available evidence through their partisan lenses. | 但这个过程也与政治有关，还与民主党人和共和党人如何通过他们的党派视角过滤现有证据有关。 |
| Some Republicans grew fixated on idea of a lab leak after former President Donald Trump raised it in the early months of the pandemic despite scant evidence supporting it. That turned the theory toxic for many Democrats, who viewed it as an effort by Trump to distract from his administration’s failings in containing the spread of the virus. | 前总统特朗普在大流行的最初几个月提出实验室泄密的说法后，一些共和党人对此产生极大兴趣，尽管没有什么证据支持该说法。这样一来，这种说法在许多民主党人那里就成了毒药，他们认为，这是特朗普试图将人们的注意力从其政府遏制病毒的失败上转移开。 |
| The intense political debate, now in its fourth year, has at times turned scientists into lobbyists, competing for policymakers’ time and favor. Relman is just one of several researchers and like-minded thinkers who has successfully worked the corridors of power in Washington to force journalists, policymakers and skeptical Democrats to take the lab leak idea seriously. | 激烈的政治辩论现已进入第四个年头，有时会把科学家变成说客，争夺政策制定者的时间和支持。有一群研究人员持和雷尔曼类似的看法，他们在华盛顿权力走廊的努力获得了成效，迫使记者、政策制定者和持怀疑态度的民主党人认真对待实验室泄密的说法。 |
| But the political momentum has not always aligned with the evidence. Even as the idea of an accidental lab leak has now gained standing in Washington, findings reported last week bolstered the market theory. Mining a trove of genetic data taken from swabs at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan in early 2020, virus experts said they found samples containing genetic material from both the coronavirus and illegally traded raccoon dogs. The finding, while hardly conclusive, pointed to an infected animal. | 但政治势头不见得有相称的证据支撑。实验室意外泄漏的想法现在是在华盛顿站稳了脚跟，但上周报告的调查结果支持了市场传播的说法。病毒专家表示，他们在2020年初从武汉华南海鲜批发市场的拭子中提取了大量基因数据，发现样本中含有来自新冠病毒和非法交易的野生动物貉的遗传物质。这仍然谈不上是决定性的发现，但它指向了一只受感染的动物。 |
| The new data from the market suggests that China is holding onto clues that could reshape the debate. But for now, at least, the idea of a lab leak seems to have prevailed in the court of public opinion: Two recent polls show that roughly two-thirds of Americans believe that COVID probably started in a lab. | 来自市场的新数据表明，中国掌握着可能重塑这场辩论的线索。但至少就目前而言，实验室泄漏的想法似乎在公众舆论中占了上风：最近的两项民意调查显示，大约三分之二的美国人认为新冠可能始于实验室。 |
| ‘Conspiracy Theories’ | “阴谋论” |
| In January 2020, as the virus began circulating in Wuhan, Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser to Trump who had worked as a reporter in China, developed suspicions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, known for its advanced research on bat coronaviruses. | 2020年1月，随着病毒开始在武汉传播，曾担任驻华记者的特朗普政府副国家安全顾问马修·波廷格对武汉病毒研究所产生了怀疑，该研究所以对蝙蝠冠状病毒的先进研究而闻名。 |
| Pottinger quietly made a formal request asking intelligence officials to investigate the new outbreak. | 波廷格悄悄提出正式请求，要求情报官员调查新暴发的疫情。 |
| In Washington’s polarized ecosystem, the notion that the virus could have come from the Wuhan lab was seeping into public debate. On Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., raised the idea in a Senate hearing and on Twitter. | 在华盛顿两极分化的生态系统中，关于病毒可能来自武汉实验室的观点正在渗透到公众辩论中。在国会山，阿肯色州共和党参议员汤姆·科顿在Twitter和参议院听证会上提出了这个说法。 |
| Around that same time, according to emails disclosed later, some American virus experts privately told health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that the virus could have been engineered in a lab, but required more study. | 根据后来披露的电子邮件，大约在同一时间，一些美国病毒专家私下告诉卫生官员——包括时任美国国家过敏和传染病研究所所长安东尼·福奇博士——该病毒有可能是实验室制造的，但需要更多的研究。 |
| When they examined data, including on naturally occurring viruses that shared critical features with the new virus, they concluded the opposite. In a study, they wrote that the virus was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” | 当他们检查数据时，包括与新病毒共享关键特征的自然产生病毒，他们得出了相反的结论。在一项研究中，他们写道，该病毒“不是实验室构造或有意篡改产生的病毒”。 |
| The study also said the virus was unlikely to have evolved in the course of certain laboratory experiments. (It did not look closely at whether a scientist collecting or isolating a natural virus could have accidentally released it, a hypothesis for which there remains no direct evidence.) | 该研究还表示，该病毒不太可能是在某些实验室实验过程中演化而来的。（但该研究没有关注是否存在某收集或分离天然病毒的科学家意外释放了病毒，这一假设目前尚无直接证据。） |
| Those findings reinforced the view from a February 2020 letter in The Lancet in which scientists, worried that lab leak fears threatened data sharing from China, condemned “conspiracy theories” about a lab-related origin. | 这些发现强化了《柳叶刀》杂志2020年2月的一封信中的观点。在那封信中，科学家们谴责了实验室起源的“阴谋论”，他们担心对实验室泄漏的恐惧会威胁到来自中国的数据共享。 |
| Changing Democrats’ Minds | 改变民主党人的想法 |
| When Biden won the 2020 election, some experts who called for a fuller investigation of the lab leak hypothesis saw an opportunity to persuade Democrats to give the idea a closer look. | 当拜登赢得2020年大选时，一些呼吁对实验室泄漏假说进行更全面调查的专家感觉有机会说服民主党人，对这一说法给予更多的关注。 |
| In December 2020, Jamie Metzl, a biosecurity and technology expert at the Atlantic Council who had worked in the Clinton administration, arranged a private telephone call with Jake Sullivan, the incoming national security adviser. Metzl made the case, he said, “that a research-related origin was a very real possibility.” | 2020年12月，曾在克林顿政府任职的大西洋理事会生物安全和技术专家孟天行(Jamie Metzl)设法私下里与即将上任的国家安全顾问杰克·沙利文通了电话。他说他试图阐明“与某项研究相关的起源是非常有可能的”。 |
| Metzl joined a small group, organized by French and Belgian scientists, who had said the lab leak hypothesis could not be ruled out. The scientists, he said, were having trouble getting letters published in science journals. With Metzl’s help, the group published its views in news outlets around the world. | 孟天行加入了一个由法国和比利时科学家组织的小组，他们曾表示，不能排除实验室泄漏的假设。他说，这些科学家想在科学期刊上发公开信未果。在他的帮助下，该组织在世界各地的新闻媒体上发表了自己的观点。 |
| Market Clues | 市场的线索 |
| As backers of the lab leak idea made their case in Congress, Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, set out to test those claims. Having once investigated — and helped to discredit — a theory that AIDS came from contaminated polio vaccines, he believed a lab leak was possible and so he signed the Science letter. | 当实验室泄漏说的支持者在国会陈述其观点时，亚利桑那大学的演化生物学家迈克尔·沃罗贝开始着手验证。他曾经调查并参与推翻了艾滋病源于受污染脊髓灰质炎疫苗这一理论。他相信实验室泄漏是可能的，因此签署了《科学》杂志上的那封信。 |
| He first nudged the scientific journal Nature, he said, to request that researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology make available genetic sequences of previous coronaviruses they had reported in the journal. They did, and shortly thereafter, in May 2021, posted a study describing those viruses, none of which was closely enough related to the pandemic virus that genetic tinkering could have produced it. | 他说，他首先敦促科学期刊《自然》向武汉病毒研究所的研究人员提供要求，要他们提供在该刊发表过的冠状病毒的基因序列。他们照做了，不久之后，也就是2021年5月，他们发表了一项描述这些病毒的研究，这些病毒都与导致大流行的病毒没有足以通过基因修补来产生的密切关系。 |
| Next, Worobey analyzed the earliest known COVID patients, finding that a disproportionate number had worked at or visited the market. | 接下来，沃罗贝分析了已知最早的新冠患者，发现有相当多的人曾在市场工作或去过市场。 |
| Meanwhile, evidence emerged that live mammals known to spread coronaviruses — including raccoon dogs, furry mammals related to foxes — were being sold at the Huanan market before the pandemic. And in September 2021, a report of coronaviruses recently discovered in Laotian bats showed that naturally occurring viruses were capable of latching onto human cells. | 与此同时，有证据表明，已知会传播冠状病毒的活哺乳动物在疫情暴发前曾在华南海鲜市场出售，其中包括貉，一种与狐狸有关系的毛茸茸的哺乳动物。2021年9月，一份关于前不久在老挝蝙蝠中发现的冠状病毒的报告表明，自然产生的病毒能够附着在人类细胞上。 |
| New information about the work of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was also intensifying concerns about a lab leak, even as hard evidence of such an incident remained elusive. | 有关武汉病毒研究所工作的新信息也加剧了人们对实验室泄漏的担忧，尽管此类事件的确凿证据仍然难以找到。 |
| To some scientists, the institute’s efforts to study never-before-seen coronaviruses raised questions about what else it might have collected. Those questions turned more pointed with news in the fall of 2021 that EcoHealth Alliance, a research organization, had sought Defense Department funding in 2018 to partner with the virology institute on experiments that would have genetically altered coronaviruses. | 对一些科学家来说，该研究所对从未见过的冠状病毒的研究，让人们怀疑他们可能还收集到了其他东西。这些问题在2021年秋天变得更加尖锐，因为有消息称，研究机构生态健康联盟在2018年寻求国防部资助，与武汉病毒研究所合作进行基因改造冠状病毒的实验。 |
| The proposal was not funded. But the concerns fueled Republican attacks on Fauci for his institute’s funding of other EcoHealth projects and drew attention to the lab leak theory. | 该提案没有得到资助。但这种担忧引起了人们对实验室泄漏理论的关注，并加剧了共和党人对福奇的攻击，因为他的研究所资助了其他生态健康项目。 |
| Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who had publicly argued that a lab leak should be considered, said he helped Congressional aides vet questions that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wanted to ask Fauci at upcoming hearings. And Relman said that he tried to help Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who were examining the research, find common ground with Democrats. | 罗格斯大学分子生物学家理查德·埃布赖特曾公开表示，应该考虑实验室泄漏问题。他说，他曾帮助国会助手审查肯塔基州共和党参议员兰德·保罗想在即将举行的听证会上询问福奇的问题。雷尔曼说，他试图帮助正在审查这项研究的众议院能源和商务委员会的两党成员达成共识。 |
| Congressional inquiries gained steam even as Worobey’s research leaned toward a market origin. In February 2022, he and others reported that the clustering of early COVID cases around the Huanan market could not be explained purely by chance. A second study by the team, looking at the genetic diversity of viruses collected early in the outbreak, also pointed to the market. | 尽管沃罗贝的研究倾向于市场起源，但国会的调查仍在升温。2022年2月，沃罗贝和其他人报告说，早期新冠病例在华南海鲜市场周围聚集不能纯粹用偶然来解释。该团队的第二项研究关注疫情暴发初期收集病毒的遗传多样性，其结果也指向市场起源。 |
| The studies, published in Science, persuaded many virus experts that the notoriously risky wild animal trade had, as on previous occasions in China, ignited a deadly outbreak. | 这些研究发表在《科学》杂志上，让许多病毒专家相信，与中国以往的情况一样，臭名昭著的高风险野生动物贸易引发了这场致命的疫情。 |
| But some scientists and lawmakers were unconvinced. In the Senate, aides were many months into a bipartisan investigation of the origins of the pandemic, including the lab leak idea. The resulting report — in a sign of enduring partisan divisions, it was endorsed only by Republicans — said that safety risks at the Wuhan Institute of Virology made a lab leak likely. But it presented no direct evidence to suggest it had actually occurred. | 但一些科学家和立法者并不信服。在参议院，助手们对大流行的起源进行了几个月的两党调查，包括实验室泄漏的观点。报告称，武汉病毒研究所存在安全风险，有可能导致实验室泄漏。这份报告显示出长期存在的党派分歧，仅得到共和党人的支持。但它没有提出任何直接证据来证明确实发生了泄漏。 |
| Weeks after the report’s release, Republicans won control of the House. | 报告发布几周后，共和党人赢得了众议院的控制权。 |
| ‘Toxic’ Politics | “有毒”的政治 |
| This month, the new House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic convened its first hearing to examine the pandemic’s origins. The market theory was barely discussed. | 本月，新成立的众议院新冠病毒大流行小组委员会召开了第一次听证会，以审查大流行的起源。市场起源假说几乎没有被讨论。 |
| Some scientists saw the hearing as one-sided and rife with scientific inaccuracies. Ebright, though, saw an opportunity. With House Republicans leading COVID hearings and Democrats holding the Senate by only a slim majority, he hopes to mobilize the public to push for bipartisan Senate hearings on COVID origins. | 一些科学家认为听证会是片面的，科学上的谬误甚多。然而，埃布赖特看到了机会。在众议院共和党人主导新冠疫情听证会，民主党人仅以微弱多数控制参议院的情况下，他希望动员公众，推动参议院就新冠疫情的起源举行两党听证会。 |
| “The political balance is on the knife’s edge,” he said. “A very small amount of advocacy could have significant impact.” | “政治平衡危如累卵，”他说。“少量宣传就能产生重大影响。” |
| Other scientists, though, said that the campaign by lab leak proponents, far from creating a more open discussion, had given rise to such vitriolic attacks that many researchers are reluctant to speak publicly about the issue. | 不过，也有一些科学家表示，实验室泄漏说支持者的运动不仅没有引发更开放的讨论，反而带来如此刻毒的攻击，以至于许多研究人员都不愿公开谈论这个问题。 |
| After three years of divisive politics, Eshoo said she would like the COVID origins inquiry to be taken out of Congress’ hands and turned over to an independent panel. | 在经历了三年的分裂政治之后，艾舒表示，她希望新冠起源调查能从国会转移到一个独立委员会。 |
| “If you take partisan politics and you mix that with science,” she said, “it’s a toxic combination.” | “如果你把党派政治和科学混为一谈，”她说，“这是一种有毒的组合。 |
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