Wuhan Lab ‘Bat Woman’ Shi Zhengli Denies Lab Kept Live Bats on Premises

The Wuhan Lab’s so-called “bat woman,” Shi Zhengli, denied Monday the Wuhan Institute of Virology kept live bats on the premises that a video released Sunday allegedly shows.

“How on Earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?” she told the New York Times over text message. “I don’t know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist.”

According to the World Society of Virology, “Shi is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology” and was instrumental in discovering “diverse novel viruses/virus antibodies in bats, including SARS-like coronaviruses… in China.”

Director Shi’s denial comes as Sky News Australia revealed Sunday an alleged Chinese Academy of Sciences’ video which confirms the Wuhan Institute of Virology did keep live bats on its premises, opposing the World Health Organization which has always claimed such suggestions are a baseless conspiracy.

Sky News Australia reports the Chinese Academy of Sciences video was discovered by researchers investigating the origin of the pandemic who call themselves DRASTIC.

Incidentally, the Chinese Academy of Sciences honored Shi in 2021 as an “advanced worker” of the Academy.

The Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda outlet, wrote the award was due to Shi’s “years of research and achievements in research with bats and viruses,” along with “adhering to the scientific values of innovation, serving the country and benefiting people,” who “fought hard and never flinched in the face of difficulties and challenges.”

Meanwhile, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Feith, who investigated the lab leak scandal, stated June 2 that governments, educational institutions, and companies cannot be sure that they are not unknowingly working with the CCP’s military if they are doing science and technology exchange in China.

When former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was questioned in March if he could say the U.S. believed the Chinese military was involved with research at the Wuhan Lab, Pompeo replied, “That’s correct, and it is a high-confidence assessment that that’s the case.”

The CCP’s militarization of science is supported by a State Department fact sheet released January 2021:

Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.

Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.