The leading medical journal The Lancet has turned down a request to provide evidence to the US Senate about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, its editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, told Reuters in an interview today.

“We have received a request to come and give evidence to a Senate inquiry, which we are not going to do,” Horton said during the Reuters Pharma event in Barcelona.

Horton said the magazine would not work “with an administration that has attacked some of the most important scientists of our time”, referring to the treatment by President Donald Trump‘s administration of former top US health official Anthony Fauci, who led the country’s response to the pandemic in a controversial way.

In February, Horton revealed that he was asked by the Lancet in December 2025 to provide all records related to coronaviruses from 2018 to 2022, including emails, notes and studies. A similar request was made to the journal Science, according to a post on its website.

Horton was referring to the investigation being conducted by Republican Senator Rand Paul, who is looking into U.S. funding given to a virology lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the Covid-19 pandemic began in late 2019. Paul is the ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Paul’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“They are still standing by Wuhan and what happened there at the end of 2019,” Horton said trying to justify his suspicious denial to cooperate with the US Senate.

The World Health Organization argue that the virus’ natural origins are the most likely cause of the pandemic although the evidence they scarcely provide is quite weak.

On the contrary, investigations have been hampered by a lack of data from China and U.S. intelligence agencies said last year that a laboratory leak was likely the cause.