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Comment by David Baltimore

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Nobel laureate virologist; former Caltech president
When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.
AI Verified (May 5, 2021)
Source:
David Baltimore, quoted in Nicholas Wade, "The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan?", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 5 May 2021.
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Policy proposals and claims
COVID-19 originated from a lab-related incident rather than natural zoonotic spillover
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Statement relation comments

AI Verified The quote is directly about the article’s central origin question. In source context, it appears in the section contrasting natural emergence with lab insertion of the furin cleavage site, and Baltimore’s remark is presented as evidence challenging a natural origin and favoring a lab-related explanation. That is enough to make a stance on the complete statement substantially more likely and therefore determinable. ([thebulletin.org](https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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AI Verified He treats the furin cleavage site and its arginine codons as a "smoking gun" for the virus’s origin, and the source immediately presents this as making "a powerful challenge" to a natural origin. That strongly implies support for a lab-origin explanation, with the specific idea of an accidental lab incident inferred from the article’s lab-escape framing rather than stated in the quote itself. ([thebulletin.org](https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago

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Quote authenticity comments

AI Verified The Bulletin page dated May 5, 2021 contains the exact sentence and attributes it to David Baltimore; the same site’s June 23, 2021 interview quotes the wording back to Baltimore and he explains/qualifies it rather than denying it. The page also notes that the quotation was added after initial publication, but no reliable public source gives a more precise insertion date, so the stored author, content, source URL, and source date are acceptable as-is. ([thebulletin.org](https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
replying to David Baltimore