It is nine months since the World Health Organisation (WHO) dismissed the possibility that the Covid 19 pandemic could have originated in a laboratory leak, calling it ‘extremely unlikely’. Since then, much scientific opinion has been moving in the direction that it is at least a possibility – especially given that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been accused of engaging in ‘gain of function’ research into coronaviruses, involving manipulating the viruses into making them possibly more transmissible.