United States Senate on Tuesday (25 May) passed the amendement to permanently ban funding for the 'Gain of Function' research in China.
The 'Gain of Function' research aims to enhance the infectiousness or severity of a virus.
The amendment was proposed by Libertarian-leaning Republican Senator Rand Paul and was co-sponsored by other Senators including Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall and Mike Braun.
“We don’t know whether the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or evolved naturally,” Paul said in a statement.
“While many still deny funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, experts believe otherwise. The passage of my amendment ensures that this never happens in the future. No taxpayer money should have ever been used to fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and now we permanently have put it to a stop," he added.
Senate Amendment 2003 bans the National Institutes of Health and any other US agency from funding any gain-of-function research in China.
The amendment defines gain-of-function research as “any research project that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity or transmissibility in mammals.” This is the same definition the NIH used when implementing a funding moratorium on gain-of-function research in 2014-2017, the statement added.
During a Senate hearing on 11 May, Senator Paul specifically asked Dr Anthony Fauci, NIAID Director and chief medical advisor to US President, about the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the potential link between the COVID-19 outbreak and the lab itself.
#VirusResearch #USChina
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