Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall will head to the Senate floor Thursday evening to ask for unanimous consent to call up two bills defunding gain-of-function (GoF) research, the Daily Caller has learned.
Marshall will ask for unanimous consent for the Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act and the SAFE Risky Research Act. The former bill was first introduced in 2021 as momentum surged behind the “lab-leak” theory that COVID-19 emerged via a lab accident during GoF work in Wuhan, China.
Dr. Fauci put us all in danger when he funded dangerous viral gain-of-function research in China. No more Viral GoF experiments. pic.twitter.com/5xB7aev2mf
— Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) August 4, 2022
The Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act would institute a moratorium on any federal research funding to organizations conducting GoF research and other work on dangerous viral pathogens. The SAFE Risky Research Act would halt funding to risky GoF research in foreign countries that may threaten national security.
“Despite warnings and past lab accidents, our public health agencies like NIH continue to fund the WMD research, often in China nonetheless,” Marshall plans to remark in a floor speech Thursday. “Shockingly, Congress has minimal insight into the amount of this research that NIH. There is no transparency into their risk evaluation process. There is no proper oversight.”
“This legislation is commonsense. We shouldn’t be collaborating on dangerous research with our adversaries,” Marshall will say regarding the SAFE Risky Research Act. (RELATED: Not Just China: The US Government, Universities Are Hiding Evidence On The Origin Of COVID-19, Experts Allege)
Marshall participated in a Senate hearing Wednesday about GoF research, the first such hearing to be held before the U.S. Congress. Republican senators questioned three expert witnesses about the flaws in the federal government’s GoF oversight process, and the threat posed by the potential of a lab leak as a result of the research.
During the hearing, Marshall highlighted past comments from Dr. Anthony Fauci in which Fauci warned that unregulated GoF research in foreign countries could result in an accidental pandemic.