and another comment by Niman, and I found his HarvardMEsSchool email address, which I am not posting for the obvious reasons, when I clicked on his name on the Agonist site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2999400.stm The possibility that the source may be another animal still exists. The likelihood that the civets were infected by humans is almost zero. I'm surprised that WHO is still putting out that story. The civet sequences have the 29 nt seen in GZ01. All other 17 published human isolates of SARS CoV are lacking those sequences which has a significant effect on the encoded proteins. Instead of one protein of 122 aa, the delection creates two proteins of 39 aa (orf10) and 84 aa (orf 11). The 122 makes sense biologically and structurally. The decapitated protein made via the 29 nt delection does not.
Lexis-Nexis shows only one house for him and it is in a little town near Pittsburgh. How does that factor in?