WASHINGTON — Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall introduced a bill that would prevent the government from funding a controversial type of research scientists sometimes use in an effort to better understand diseases.
The bill, which would bar what is known as gain-of-function research, is Marshall’s latest attempt to draw attention to the uncertain origins of COVID-19. The issue has become a centerpiece of his legislative priorities in his first year as a U.S. senator.
In gain-of-function research, scientists make a virus more powerful. It can be used to understand how a virus mutates, which could then reveal a path to preventing future pandemics. But such work can be dangerous; a lab accident could result in releasing a deadly virus.
Because the scientific and intelligence communities have been unable to determine the exact origins of COVID-19, the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China cannot be ruled out, Marshall contends.
“Until we get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19, the federal government should not provide another dime in funding for viral gain-of-function research in the name of global health,” Marshall said in a press release.
It is unlikely that the bill would be able to make it through Congress. While investigating the origins of COVID-19 is a bipartisan issue, the bill has only Republican sponsors and Democrats narrowly control the Senate.
Still, the bill marks a core tenet of Marshall’s interest in investigating the origin story of the virus that has killed around 724,000 Americans. In an interview with The Kansas City Star earlier this year, Marshall said he was concerned that the United States had funded research that led to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Scientists have not come to a consensus on how COVID-19 originated. But a majority of the scientific community believes it jumped from bats to humans through another animal sold at a market in Wuhan. Because they have not been able to confirm the exact path of the virus, scientists have not ruled out a theory that the virus infected someone at the Wuhan lab that was researching different coronaviruses and then spread to the rest of the community.
In August, President Joe Biden declassified a report from the intelligence community that was inconclusive about how the virus originated.
The National Institutes of Health paused funding for gain-of-function research on influenza, MERS and SARS viruses between 2014 and 2017, when it put in place a process for approving funding for certain projects.
That process has been criticized by some in the scientific community for a lack of transparency.
Marshall has been critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and has said he does not trust the scientific community to determine whether gain-of-function research should be funded.
“I just don’t have much confidence in the CDC right now,” Marshall said in September. “They’ve not been transparent with America, with the press. They’ve not said we don’t know when we don’t really know.”
