Both authors had an enormous amount of help, support, encouragement and advice from a range of people: confidential sources, senior scientists, junior researchers, intelligence officials, anonymous investigators, journalists, politicians, businesspeople, colleagues, literary agents, publishers, friends and family members. Because it would be unwise and unhelpful, possibly even dangerous, to name some of them, we have taken the unusual decision to name none of them. We hope those who would not mind being mentioned can forgive us, but we sincerely thank all of those who helped us so much with this extraordinary project, often going out of their way to do so.
Dr Shi Zhengli, Dr George Gao and Dr Peter Daszak, among others, were given the opportunity to respond to a series of questions relating to their portrayal in this book but chose not to respond to the authors in the requested time period.