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Comment by David Relman

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Stanford microbiologist and biosecurity expert; advisor to the U.S. federal government on biological weapons threats
All scientists need to acknowledge a simple fact: Humans are fallible, and laboratory accidents happen - far more often than we care to admit.
AI Verified source (May 20, 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 Relevant: on the source page, this sentence appears within Relman’s explanation of the lab-origin scenario and is offered as a reason that a laboratory accident is plausible; elsewhere in the same article he says both lab accident and natural spillover remained plausible and warranted investigation. So the quote is directly tied to the complete statement and gives enough context to infer a determinate stance on that statement, even if the eventual vote may be abstention/uncertainty rather than support or opposition. ([med.stanford.edu](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/david-relman-on-investigating-origin-of-coronavirus.html)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
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Vote answer comments

AI Verified The quote argues that lab accidents are a real possibility, but the source article presents Relman as explicitly undecided: it says it was "still unclear whether the virus ... emerged naturally or was the result of a laboratory accident" and that "neither cause could be ruled out." So he treats a lab-related origin as plausible, not as established over zoonotic spillover. ([med.stanford.edu](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/david-relman-on-investigating-origin-of-coronavirus.html)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago

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Quote authenticity comments

AI Verified The Stanford Medicine page dated May 20, 2021 contains the exact sentence, and it appears in a passage explicitly labeled as Relman’s answer (“Relman:”), so the quote is verbatim on the cited page and correctly attributed to David Relman. ([med.stanford.edu](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/david-relman-on-investigating-origin-of-coronavirus.html)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
replying to David Relman