By RYOSUKE NONAKA/ Staff Writer
April 30, 2020 at 17:01 JST
Nobel laureate Tasuku Honjo refuted stories circulating online originating outside Japan that he said the new coronavirus was “made in China.”
“I am greatly saddened that my name and that of Kyoto University have been used to spread false accusations and misinformation,” said Honjo, 78, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2018, in a statement posted April 27 in English on the university's website.
Stories alleging that Honjo “used to work at a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan for four years” and that he said “the new coronavirus was artificially made in China” have gone viral in several languages, including English and Hindi, mainly on social media.
Honjo proposed increasing the number of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests conducted in Japan on the website of his lab, but has never publicly provided information about the origin of the virus.
Numerous organizations around the globe that fact-check fake news and false rumors also dismissed the online stories regarding Honjo as falsehoods.
In his statement, Honjo lamented that the rumors had attracted so much attention.
“We cannot delay one moment in this effort to save the lives of our fellow humans,” Honjo said. “The broadcasting of unsubstantiated claims regarding the origins of the disease is dangerously distracting.”
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Tasuku Honjo, a distinguished professor at Kyoto University and a Nobel laureate (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
