A World Health Organization adviser says that colleagues in his field shamed him and anyone else who shared the possibility that COVID-19 could have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. Jamie Metzl shared the theory that Coronavirus came from a lab and was immediately marked as a conspiracy theorist who was pushing right-wing propaganda by other scientists.

Fox News reports:

“The small number of people who were raising this issue early last year were labeled conspiracy theorists—I know because I was one of them,” said Jamie Metzl during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“And yes there were some people who were called right-wing nuts. But I’m not a right-wing nut. I’m actually a progressive Democrat.”

Members of the scientific community, including EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, attempted to shut down “conspiracy theorists” last year.

Daszak spearheaded a letter in The Lancet signed by 27 scientists in 2020 that “strongly condemn[ed] conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” without disclosing to readers that Daszak’s group had funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab through government grants.

Metzl slammed the letter and called it an “outrage.”