How Do We Know If a Virus Is Bioengineered?

Detecting bioengineering is a fraught task for any organism

Sarah Scoles
Future Human
Published in
9 min readAug 5, 2020

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Virus illustration.
Photo: vchal/Getty Images

Almost as soon as the coronavirus appeared in the news, so too did speculation that it was purposefully engineered, the result of experimentation at one of several Wuhan laboratories. The idea that the virus, whether natural or engineered, came from a scientific facility was pushed by some…

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Sarah Scoles
Future Human

Freelance science writer; short-fiction lover; trail runner; dog embracer. Views here are my own.