Unravelling the conspiracy

In a now widely circulated 2018 interview with Chinese state TV, military scientist Chen Hu was asked about the capabilities of an engineered bio-weapon. Hu described the effects of such weapons as ‘devastating’ and ‘equaling that of an atomic bomb’. He then went on to appeal the need for creating defensive capabilities against such events.

A year after he gave that interview Dr. Chen was dead at age 57. In his obituary the numerous achievements of the scientist were outlined, among them the fact that despite being a military doctor, he had helped develop groundbreaking research using CRISPR gene editing; specifically the mice embryos that had been given an engineered resistance to HIV in 2017.