Source: United States Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a letter to the White House, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kan.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), and Marco Rubio (Fla.) demanded that the federal government implement a government-wide ban on all ongoing and new viral Gain-of-Function (GoF) and Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) studies in the life sciences involving all enhanced pathogens of pandemic potential (ePPP) due to the current lack of research oversight, clear guidelines, and potential risks of outbreaks from laboratory accidents.
“The American public is still awaiting the truth behind COVID-19’s origins and gain of function research. We need answers from administrators and researchers who reportedly failed to properly oversee these dangerous projects. Until oversight is improved and safety guardrails become a guarantee, the White House must halt Gain of Function research and Dual Use Research of Concern,” said Senator Blackburn.
“For too long, a select group of individuals within American public health institutions and the scientific community have manipulated the research rules to pursue dangerous studies. These individuals operate without consequence for their actions that jeopardize public health in the United States and around the world,” said Senator Marshall. “That is why we are calling on the Biden White House to join our efforts in Congress to prevent the next pandemic by pausing viral Gain-of-Function research and Dual Use Research of Concern studies. Until better guidelines are in place and the federal oversight process is reformed, our government should not allow any of these risky research projects to move forward.”
“Transparency brings accountability. We still have neither from our public health agencies and officials who’ve overseen potentially risky and dangerous gain of function research. The American people are still in the dark about the origins of COVID-19 and the federal government has used taxpayer money to fund and sponsor high risk research activity. The taxpayers are entitled to know exactly what’s being done with their money and that the government has implemented robust oversight mechanisms. Until that time, there should be a moratorium on this type of research,” said Senator Grassley.
“The NIH still can’t answer questions about the dangerous experiments with coronaviruses that Dr. Fauci was funding in China’s Wuhan Institute, and the agency wasn’t even aware it was sponsoring risky research enhancing coronaviruses at Boston University. What other dangerous studies are being funded by the NIH and other government agencies, and where are those occurring? We need answers now. Until we know, and measures are put in place to guarantee safety and transparency, it is imperative that a moratorium be enacted immediately on this risky research,” said Senator Ernst.
The letter, addressed to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director Dr. Arati Prabhakar, details concerns about the ambiguity of the existing guidelines for this dangerous research. The letter also outlines recent examples of GoF and DURC projects in the United States that were sponsored by NIH and could start another pandemic if a laboratory accident occurs. A prior government-wide OSTP ban on GoF and DURC involving certain ePPP’s was implemented during the Obama Administration from 2014 through 2017.
The GOF/DURC research techniques may have increased the virulence or transmissibility of a coronavirus pathogen during experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which possibly contributed to the initial COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
The Senators wrote, in part, “These experiments pose extreme threats to public health if the altered pathogens are accidentally or deliberately released… We ask for the moratorium to include studies that enhance the virulence or transmissibility of any pathogen to produce an ePPP and studies that confer efficient human transmissibility on a pathogen of even modest virulence… U.S. laboratories are not exempt from laboratory accidents. Hundreds of laboratory accidents reported to NIH, previously concealed from the public, have been revealed in thousands of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests… An intrinsic threat that powerful ePPP viruses can escape from high-containment, high-security laboratories and spark an outbreak with much greater lethality than the world just experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic is plausible… Until clear ePPP research policies are implemented, it is critically important for the OSTP to immediately institute increased protections for the public from these potentially lethal pathogens…”
Click here to read the Senators’ letter to the OSTP.
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