bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Stephen Chen

Research that may “reshape the history of the pandemic” by tracing coronavirus outbreaks to Italy as early as September 2019 has been hit by a backlash by scientists.
One critic, Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at the Texas A&M University-Texarkana, said that besides some technical issues, he was irked by the fact that the paper was written by a group of oncologists and published in Tumori Journal, a peer-reviewed journal about cancer.
“Scientists are generally only expert in a narrow field,” said Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University-Texarkana.
“Likely the peer review would have been carried out by reviewers and editors familiar in some aspect of cancer biology, but not virus research,” he added.


Some other members in the research community were more straightforward.
“I’m not going to link it. It’s a bad paper,” said University of Arizona biologist Naim Matasci on Twitter. Non-biologists also chimed in.
“I haven’t even read that paper … but I don’t buy it for a second,” tweeted Philippe Lemoine, a PhD candidate in philosophy at Cornell University.
Science has become an extremely specialised profession and scientists studying one bacteria may hesitate to comment on a study about another because they belong to different species.
Professor Wang Shengdian, a principal investigator studying cancer at the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said that while the findings published by the Italian team in Tumori Journal might need to be verified by further studies, any suggestion that oncologists were unqualified for this investigation was “complete nonsense”.


The Italian team identified antibodies that could bind specifically to the Sars-CoV-2 virus in more than 100 cancer patients’ blood samples collected as early as summer last year, months before the virus was detected in China.
This is their turf because cancer is caused by mutated cells that can trigger the immune system just like the virus.
Many oncologists spent their entire career studying how to fight cancer with the help of immune response, including antibodies, according to Wang.
US death toll hits grim world record of 250,000
The HPV vaccine is a good example of how the virus and cancer are closely related. This and some other discoveries in cancer immunology won the Nobel Prize.
“Antibodies make some of the most important therapeutics to treat cancer. To say [oncologists] know nothing about antibodies or viruses is an insult,” he said.
The Italian study was led by Professor Gabriella Sozzi, an award-winning scientist with the National Cancer Institute in Milan. Sozzi has spent nearly 40 years studying the interaction between tumours and the human immune system.
“We know that cancer keeps the immune system under control so that it cannot be recognised and eliminated,” she said in a Q&A on the researchitaly.it website in 2017.
Immunotherapy has the job of “unlocking this ‘checkpoint’ with specific antibodies,” she added.


Sozzi and colleagues were puzzled by the outbreaks in Italy, one of the worst hit countries in Europe. They noticed an unusual surge of severe “flu-like” cases reported by local doctors before the pandemic. Some oral swabs and waste water samples collected before there were confirmed cases also tested positive.
Her team happened to have kept a large number of blood samples from patients in a lung cancer screening programme dating back to September last year.
Although blood does not usually contain the coronavirus, it carried antibodies produced by the immune system after an infection.
France first European country to pass 2 million virus cases
Their findings challenged a common belief in the West, if not most parts of the world, that the pandemic started in Wuhan, in late December. Some politicians, most notably US President Donald Trump, hold China responsible for the outbreak as the birthplace of the virus.
“I am a scientist, I do not do politics,” Sozzi said in an interview with Chinese state television CGTN earlier this week.
She said that their findings showed clearly that the virus had been spreading in Italy well before the first case of infection was officially confirmed in her own country, but it did not determine where the virus had originated.
 


Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotels sees ‘bleisure’ boom after pandemic curbs, CEO says

US could require US$15,000 bonds for some tourist, business visas

China’s Shenzhen, Guangzhou airports hit record highs, surpass pre-Covid passenger levels

Landmark US Chinatown survived Covid, anti-Asian violence – but tariffs pose new threat

Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus: Italian paper on origins of pandemic hit by backlash from scientists

Twitterati and commentators from inside and outside the science community have shared their opinions about a paper in a cancer publication speculating that coronavirus was present in humans in Italy months before the outbreak in Wuhan. Photo: AFP

Coronavirus hunters pick up another piece of the trail in Italy

Tracing the coronavirus pandemic to its origin could help prevent future outbreaks. Photo: AP

Dr Gabriella Sozzi, a senior staff scientist with the Italian Ministry of Health. SCMP Pictures (UNDATED HANDOUT)

(FILES) In this file photo taken on April 17, 2020, an aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province. - The World Health Organization said on May 5, 2020 that Washington had provided no evidence to support "speculative" claims by the US president that the new coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab. The facility is among a handful of labs around the world cleared to handle Class 4 pathogens (P4) - dangerous viruses that pose a high risk of person-to-person transmission. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP)

Coronavirus was in Italy in December, waste water study finds

Nurses stage a flashmob protest over wages in Rome, as Italy eases its lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Photo: AFP

Coronavirus: rapid virus mutations in some children may complicate search for vaccine

Chinese researchers have found a “novel mutation” in the intestines of some children recovering from Covid-19, a development that may have implications for the developers of a vaccine. Photo: AFP

Battered by coronavirus, Bali hopes for uptick in tourism over holiday season

An empty beach in Bali. The island saw a surge in domestic holidaymakers during a long weekend at the end of October, which lifted occupancy at luxury hotels to 30 per cent that week. Photo: Reuters

News

China

Science


Study by oncologists stating there was evidence of Covid-19 in Italy in September last year has been dismissed by some virologists
But Chinese cancer researcher says Italian results may need further verification but suggestions the team was unqualified were ‘nonsense’



Study by oncologists stating there was evidence of Covid-19 in Italy in September last year has been dismissed by some inside the science community.


Coronavirus China

Coronavirus pandemic: All stories