The World Health Organization has chosen none other than Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust for the past decade, as its new chief scientist. The announcement came along with the naming of Amelia Latu Afuhaamango Tuipulotu, former minister of health for the Kingdom of Tonga, as WHO’s chief nursing officer.
“As chief scientist, Jeremy will accelerate our efforts to ensure WHO, its member states and our partners benefit from cutting-edge, life-saving science and innovations,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on Farrar’s appointment.
Farrar, by the way, was a leading voice publicly denying the possibility of the COVID virus having leaked from a lab. As a prestigious infectious disease expert, Farrar was in a position to know that lab leaks can, and do, happen, according to award-winning journalist Ian Birrell, who wrote about Farrar’s role in the pandemic in July 2021.
“Yet Farrar was a central figure behind two landmark documents published by influential science journals that played a key role in shutting down discussion of the lab leak hypothesis by branding it conspiracy theory,” Birrell said.
What’s most interesting is that behind the scenes, Farrar was hinting to colleagues that they needed to be “transparent” about the fact that a leak was a possibility.
SOURCES:
STAT December 13, 2022
UnHerd July 22, 2021