EX-CDC chief calls for curbs on virus studies
House hearing probes origins of COVID-19
The Trump administration’s top infectious disease official urged lawmakers during a hearing on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to ban research that enhances a pathogen’s ability to spread or cause disease.
Robert Redfield, who served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the outset of the health crises, has maintained that COVID was probably caused by a lab accident in Wuhan, China.
“I’m of the point of view that we don’t need to make pathogens more transmissible or more pathogenic in order to get ahead of the curve,” Redfield testified Wednesday to a House subcommittee on the pandemic.
His view is disputed by other scientists who believe high-risk research is necessary to develop vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for the prevention of pandemics.
Research involving dangerous pathogens has become a hot-button debate in the U.S. Though much of the scientific community maintains that the pandemic began when the coronavirus leaped from animals to people, the FBI and Energy Department have amassed intelligence suggesting that COVID most likely started via a lab accident in China — conclusions that Beijing contests.
Republicans have been pressing the Biden administration to release classified intelligence to inform policy decisions on how the U.S. conducts and funds high-risk research.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Democrats and Republicans both underscored that there isn’t a “smoking gun” to settle the origins debate and bemoaned the politicization of the investigative process. Members from both parties called for a nonpolitical approach to understand how a pandemic that has taken more than 6.8 million lives globally first began.
“Discovering the origins is vital,” said Ohio Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup, who chairs the subcommittee.