Senator Introduces Legislation to Provide Oversight for Gain of Function Research Funding

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul will introduce legislation Wednesday that would provide oversight for gain of function research funding by establishing an independent board responsible for reviewing and approving federal funding for high-risk life sciences research.

The Daily Caller first obtained a copy of the legislation, which is titled The Risky Research Review Act. The bill would specifically create the “Life Sciences Research Security Board,” an independent entity “within the Executive Branch.” The Board would provide oversight over life sciences research funding across the federal government to protect “public health, safety, or national security.” There would be nine seats on the board.

The legislation specifically focused on high-risk life sciences research that “could pose a threat to public health, safety, or national security,” including “gain of function research,” research involving “genetic modification” or “synthetic creation of a potential pandemic pathogen,” and “activities involving the collection or surveillance of” potential pandemic pathogens.

In a conversation with the Caller before introducing the bill, Paul explained that there needs to be oversight outside of the NIH and HHS and that this bill would do just that. Paul also explained how dangerous he believes gain of function research to be.

“The pandemic killed about 15 million people worldwide, about a million Americans. We believe that the evidence overwhelmingly points towards the pandemic being a leak of dangerous research from a lab in Wuhan. We think this research is ongoing not only in China, but in the United States as well,” Paul said. “This research was funded by our NIH, and we think there needs to be more restrictions on taxpayer money going to this type of dangerous research. We think part of the problem is that the oversight has been the NIH policing themselves. But from the get go for more than a decade, probably for 15 years. Anthony Fauci has been an advocate of gain of function research.” (Read more from “Senator Introduces Legislation to Provide Oversight for Gain of Function Research Funding” HERE)

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