Knowable Magazine
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Farming animals for fur is not only cruel but also provides an ideal environment for viruses to mix and cross over into humans
Jane Qiu
Verified
(She/Her)
As seen in:
MSN UK,
Forbes,
Nature,
The Guardian,
National Geographic,
PBS NewsHour,
The Economist,
New Scientist,
Scientific American,
Substack
and
Covers:
Life science, conservation, environment, geoscience, anthropology, development issues, and science policy.
Award-winning independent writer. Global perspective + 6yrs postdoc. Formerly: fellow @KSJatMIT, retainer @Nature, editor @NatRevNeurosci. @janeqiu.bsky.social
Jane Qiu’s Journalist Portfolio
View as a gridBats might be the next bird flu wild card
Science News
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Finding that vampire bats along Peru's coast carried H5N1 antibodies raises concerns that multiple bat species could become reservoirs for the virus.
The Covid 'lab leak' theory isn't just a rightwing conspiracy - pretending that's the case is bad...
The Guardian
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While figures like Steve Bannon have exploited the issue, scientists have done themselves no favours by shutting down legitimate inquiry, says award-winning science writer Jane Qiu
Exclusive: Inside the thriving wild-animal markets that could start the next pandemic
Nature
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Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose. Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose.
How to Stop the Next Viral Pandemic
Scientific American
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A new combo of climate and habitat crises, along with immune system stress, is driving more bat-borne viruses to afflict us
An animal source of mpox emerges - and it's a squirrel
Nature
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Researchers solve the mystery of a disease outbreak through long-term surveillance of wildlife in Africa. Researchers solve the mystery of a disease outbreak through long-term surveillance of wildlife in Africa.
Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy
MIT Technology Review
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Skip to Content Shi Zhengli has spent years at the Wuhan Institute of Virology researching coronaviruses that live in bats. Her work has come under fire as the world tries to understand where covid-19 came from.
Debate deepens over Wuhan wet market's role in kickstarting the pandemic
nationalgeographic.co.uk
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Most experts believe that the COVID-19 pandemic arose when a virus jumped from an animal to a human, but it's unclear whether that happened at this market or at some point during the wildlife farming supply chain.
Journalistic Objectivity and the Origins of COVID-19: A Dispatch from the Front Lines
AAAS/Kavli
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Who would have thought writing about science could be so intense and disorienting-with taxing effects on my already rather fragile state of mind?
How China's Bat Woman Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus
Scientific American
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Editor's Note (4/24/20): This article was originally published online on March 11. It has been updated for inclusion in the June 2020 issue of Scientific American and to address rumors that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from Shi Zhengli's lab in China. The mysterious patient samples arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at 7 P.M.
Hidden coronavirus infections could be seeding new outbreaks
Nature
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Scientists are rushing to estimate the proportion of people with mild or no symptoms who could be spreading the pathogen. Scientists are rushing to estimate the proportion of people with mild or no symptoms who could be spreading the pathogen.
This scientist now believes covid started in Wuhan's wet market. Here's why.
MIT Technology Review
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Skip to Content How a veteran virologist found fresh evidence to back up the theory that covid jumped from animals to humans in a notorious Chinese market-rather than emerged from a lab leak.
'I can't wait to hold my kids again': Life inside Wuhan's quarantine
nationalgeographic.co.uk
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Photograph by Getty Images The sweating and shivering arrived with Lunar New Year. Wang Zhen was watching festive programs on television with his wife, two kids, and his parents on the outskirts of Wuhan when he became short of breath. Evening was settling over the village, while a knot in the centre of his chest was tightening.
China's 'hardware capital' grinds to a halt amid coronavirus fears
National Geographic
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Yongkang is considered the "hardware capital of China." Buried in the heart of the country's eastern province of Zhejiang, the city's ten thousand or so factories churn out products such as robot arms, automobile parts, and household appliances, spreading $4-billion worth of merchandise across the globe every year.
An AIDS therapy involving parasite injections was discredited. China is reviving it - for cancer
STAT
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Injections of malaria parasites, a discredited AIDS treatment once promoted by the father of the Heimlich maneuver, is being tested in China as a cancer immunotherapy.
U.S. scientist played instrumental role in 'CRISPR babies' project - STAT
STAT
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B EIJING - An American scientist at Rice University was far more involved in the widely condemned "CRISPR babies" experiment than has previously been disclosed. Most notably, STAT has learned that Rice biophysicist Michael Deem was named as the senior author on a paper about the work that was submitted to Nature in late November.
Chinese government may have funded 'CRISPR babies' project - STAT
STAT
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EIJING - Three government institutions in China, including the nation's science ministry, may have funded the "CRISPR babies" study that led to the birth last November of two genetically modified twin girls, according to documents reviewed by STAT.
China creating national medical ethics body to oversee clinical trials - STAT
STAT
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EIJING - A powerful new national medical ethics committee, which will approve all clinical trials involving high-risk biomedical technologies, is at the center of a regulatory shakeup Chinese authorities are planning in the aftermath of the widely condemned "CRISPR babies" experiment, STAT has learned.
Recent events highlight an unpleasant scientific practice: ethics dumping
The Economist
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T HE ANNOUNCEMENT in November of the editing of the genomes of two embryos that are now baby girls, by He Jiankui, a Chinese DNA-sequencing expert-brought much righteous, and rightful, condemnation. But it also brought a lot of tut-tutting from the outside world about how this sort of thing was to be expected in a place like China, where regulations, whatever they may say on paper, are laxly enforced.
A maverick researcher claims to have created GM children
The Economist
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THE SECOND International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong this week, was supposed to be a forum in which the idea of editing the genomes of human embryos could be discussed calmly and soberly. Fat chance of that.
The affair of the gene-edited babies rumbles on
The Economist
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O N NOVEMBER 26TH He Jiankui, a DNA-sequencing expert at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, claimed he had orchestrated the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies: twin girls who arrived in early October.
Environment: Riding on the roof of the world
Nature
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China's railway to Tibet is an engineering marvel or an environmental menace - or perhaps both. Jane Qiu takes a ride to find out. It is a glorious, crispy cold summer morning on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, and already my lips are turning purple.
China: The third pole
Nature
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Published online 23 July 2008 | Nature 454, 393-396 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454393a News Feature Climate change is coming fast and furious to the Tibetan plateau. Jane Qiu reports on the changes atop the roof of the world. The Tibetan plateau gets a lot less attention than the Arctic or Antarctic, but after them it is Earth's largest store of ice.
Trouble in Tibet
Nature
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Kevin Frayer/Getty In the northern reaches of the Tibetan Plateau, dozens of yaks graze on grasslands that look like a threadbare carpet. The pasture has been munched down to bare soil in places, and deep cracks run across the snow-dusted landscape.