OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Amendment No. 2003 to Amendment No. 1502

Floor Speech

By: Rand Paul
By: Rand Paul
Date: May 25, 2021
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Science

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, we may never know whether the pandemic arose from the lab in Wuhan, but we do know that so far no intermediate animal host has been discovered. Thousands of animals at the wet market have been looked at. None of them have carried COVID-19. We have tried to infect COVID-19 into bats. It doesn't grow well in bats. It seems most adapted and suitable for humans. We may not know whether this ever arose out of a Wuhan lab, but I think gain-of-function research, where we take a deadly virus, sometimes much more deadly than COVID, and then we increase its transmissibility to mammals is wrong.

In 2014, NIH stopped all of this research. I am using the same definition to say any gain-of-function research should not be funded in China with U.S. taxpayer dollars. I recommend a ``yes'' vote. Vote on Amendment No. 2003

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