At least seven Democratic Congressmembers are pledging to cross party lines and work with Republicans to investigate the lab-leak theory of COVID-19 origins, according to one new survey by a pro-animal rights PAC.
Six of the seven lawmakers, who are all up for re-election and primarily in competitive races, said they’d support an investigation in response to the White Coat Waste PAC (WCW) 2022 candidate questionnaire. A seventh, Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, tweeted that it was important to get “to the bottom” of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highly recommend this @VanityFair piece. Getting to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19 is crucial if we are going to prevent the next coronavirus. https://t.co/9uy2AHK1TA
— US Rep Brendan Boyle (@RepBrendanBoyle) October 30, 2022
WCW, which supports candidates opposed to harmful animal testing, sent its questionnaire to more than 100 candidates in competitive races, including members of both parties, WCW board member Justin Goodman told the Daily Caller. Eight Democrats responded, six of whom said they’d investigate a lab-leak, one who didn’t, and one who abstained.
Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright, New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Elaine Luria of Virginia and Eleanor Holmes Norton of D.C. answered yes, while Pennsylvania Lieutenant Gov. and Senate nominee John Fetterman answered no.
Until now, investigation of the lab-leak theory has been an almost exclusively Republican endeavor. Members of the House and Senate in the GOP have held hearings on the subject and accused the Chinese Communist Party of covering up a lab accident that may have released the coronavirus into the population.
The Biden administration has taken a dovish stance on the subject, opting not to press China over the origins of the pandemic and deferring all recent questions to an intelligence community report released last year, which found that a lab-leak was possible but not a particularly likely source of the pandemic. (RELATED: Research Org That Worked With Wuhan Lab Receives Massive Government Grant)
Proponents of the lab-leak, including Senate Republicans on the HELP Committee, argue that it’s too coincidental for the pandemic to have broken out just miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Chinese researchers were genetically modifying bat-based coronaviruses in the years prior.
White Coat Waste has been a frequent critic of gain-of-function research, which makes pathogens more dangerous and transmissible, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has supported and funded that research through his career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).