The senator says Americans don’t understand that the scientific community in China works hand-in-hand with the ruling communist regime and its military.
It has been four years since patients sickened with unexplained pneumonia started appearing at hospitals in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. However, U.S. policymakers are still investigating how COVID-19 emerged in the country.
To keep it from happening again, the United States needs to suspend gain-of-function research and stop federal dollars from flowing into studies in China, according to Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
“I think No. 1 is we have to have a moratorium on gain-of-function research. Mr. Marshall said in a Jan. 18 interview on NTD’s “Capital Report.” “I don’t see the benefits outweigh the risks at this point in time.
“What Americans don’t understand is the scientific community in China works hand in hand with the Chinese military and with the [Chinese Communist Party].”
The communist regime could use gain-of-function research, in which scientists study ways to enhance the transmissibility of a virus or pathogen, against the United States.
“Maybe they‘ll use it to attack our food sources; maybe they’ll use it to attack our soldiers. I don’t know. But this is way more scary than a nuclear bomb in so many ways,” Mr. Marshall said.
“So we need to stop this type of research until we can get our arms around it and control it but certainly not continue to fund research in China, where they hide and obfuscate from us any information that may be critical, that may be life-threatening to Americans.”
New Evidence
A congressional committee document made public last week shows that a China-based virologist mapped out the sequence of COVID-19 at least two weeks before China’s communist regime released the virus’s genome sequence.
The researcher, Ren Lili, uploaded COVID-19 sequencing data to a U.S. government genetic database on Dec. 28, 2019, according to documents obtained by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
By Dorothy Li and Steve Lance
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