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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,676 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYHealth & medicine

Japan’s Nobel Prize winning Professor of Medicine, Professor Dr Tasuku Honjo has claimed that the Coronavirus is not natural and that China manufactured it

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examined a viral social-media message attributing to Tasuku Honjo the claim that the coronavirus was not natural and had been manufactured in China. It reports finding no credible source for that attribution and says Honjo’s recent media interactions did not contain such a claim. To check the attribution, the review describes examining Honjo’s recent interviews. It says he had discussed increasing PCR testing to more than 10,000 tests per day and urged residents of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya to refrain completely from going out. An earlier interview covered a more proactive response by Japanese authorities and Taiwan as a model. The review reports that none of these interactions included the viral claim. The review also checked the message’s biographical assertion that Honjo had worked at a Wuhan laboratory for four years. It says his Kyoto University profile did not mention such work. The article distinguishes the viral attribution to Honjo from a separate claim by fellow Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier about a Wuhan laboratory; it reports that a French presidential official said there was no factual evidence linking the outbreak to the laboratory. Its conclusion about Honjo rests on the absence of attribution in the sources it describes checking, rather than on a claim that the article established the virus’s origin.