Matt Ridley

Has the lab leak theory really been disproved?

28 July 2022 1:19 am

The BBC carried a story this week with the headline ‘Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market’. Bizarrely…

Could a vaccine for cancer be within reach?

25 June 2022 9:00 am

Have we reached a new stage in the war against cancer?

China may be facing its greatest Covid crisis yet

26 March 2022 9:00 am

China appears not to have defeated Covid after all

Breathe easy: how respiratory viruses evolve to become milder

26 February 2022 9:00 am

How respiratory viruses evolve to become milder

Letter from Kenya

8 January 2022 9:00 am

My wife and I were lucky to escape for a long-delayed birdwatching holiday in Kenya over Christmas. To have been…

Don’t blame deforestation for the pandemic

29 December 2021 9:09 pm

With a laboratory leak in Wuhan looking more and more likely as the source of the Covid pandemic, the Chinese…

The Covid lab leak theory just got even stronger

20 November 2021 9:00 am

The lab leak theory just got even stronger

The Covid lab leak theory just got even stronger

20 November 2021 6:20 am

Two years in, there is no doubt the Covid pandemic began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. But there is…

China is using the climate as a bargaining chip

9 October 2021 9:00 am

For China, the climate is a useful bargaining chip

Dismantling the environmental theory for Covid’s origins

28 August 2021 9:00 am

Dismantling the environmental theory for Covid’s origins

A volte face over what caused the pandemic needs explaining

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Sir Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, writes that ‘the last year has been an eye-opener for me.…

Organic food isn’t better for us – or the environment

24 July 2021 9:00 am

The case against organic food

The Covid lab leak theory is looking increasingly plausible

29 May 2021 9:00 am

What was once a Covid conspiracy theory is looking more plausible

Britain is in danger of repeating its post-war mistakes

17 April 2021 9:00 am

What we can learn from Britain’s rationing mistakes

Stresses and strains: the evolution of Covid is not random

6 February 2021 9:00 am

The evolution of the virus is not random

Why mRNA vaccines could revolutionise medicine

19 December 2020 9:00 am

Why mRNA vaccines could revolutionise medicine

Was Covid beginning to peak before the second lockdown?

24 November 2020 9:46 am

‘I don’t think that word means what you think it means,’ says the Spaniard Inigo Montoya in the film The…

Temper your excitement about the Covid vaccine

14 November 2020 11:59 pm

Ever since Giacomo Pylarini, a physician working in the Ottoman Empire, sent a report to the Royal Society in 1701…

Students who catch Covid may be saving lives

17 October 2020 9:00 am

Students who catch Covid may be saving lives by building up immunity

Could the key to Covid be found in the Russian pandemic?

6 June 2020 9:00 am

What we can learn from the Russian flu pandemic

The growing evidence on vitamin D and Covid

18 May 2020 11:32 pm

The argument that vitamin D deficiency may contribute to more severe cases of Covid is gaining ground. It is now…

We know everything – and nothing – about Covid

9 May 2020 9:00 am

There’s no such thing as ‘the science’ – but facts are emerging from the Covid fog

The contenders – and challenges – in the race to cure Covid

24 April 2020 11:00 pm

The contenders in the race to cure Covid

The curious age discrimination of coronavirus

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Why does coronavirus affect the generations differently?

We are about to find out how robust civilisation is

21 March 2020 9:00 am

I had believed this kind of infectious pandemic could not happen today