House Committee Approves Ban on Funding Wuhan Lab at Heart of Leak Controversy

The House Appropriations Committee has approved a ban on sending funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab at the heart of controversy over the origin of the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a June 30 voice vote, members of the Committee adopted a fiscal 2023 budget amendment (pdf) that explicitly precludes any funding to the Wuhan lab, which some U.S. lawmakers argue is where the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19, originated.

“None of the funds made available by this Act may be made available to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or any other laboratory located in a country determined by the Secretary of State to be a foreign adversary, including China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” reads the amendment, which was proposed by Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).

The House Appropriations Committee later approved the fiscal year 2023 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill, which is to feature the amendment, on a 32–24 vote. The bill now faces a vote in both chambers before heading to the presidential desk for a signature.

While the committee said in a statement that DeLauro’s amendment made “technical and noncontroversial” changes to the bill, the inclusion of the Wuhan facility is noteworthy as it sends a signal that lawmakers are attuned to the controversy surrounding American taxpayer dollars being channeled to the lab.

The move was praised by the White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a nonprofit, which said in a statement that this “historic legislation” was in part thanks to the WCW’s lobbying and investigative efforts into what it described as “cruel and wasteful animal experiments in countries deemed ‘foreign adversaries.’”

The nonprofit also said that “an overwhelming majority of Americans want to defund animal labs run by our adversaries,”