{"id":640893,"date":"2021-08-13T13:05:22","date_gmt":"2021-08-13T17:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=640893"},"modified":"2021-08-13T13:05:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T17:05:29","slug":"gop-senators-put-nih-on-notice-for-complete-disregard-for-congressional-oversight-surrounding-risky-virus-research-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gop-senators-put-nih-on-notice-for-complete-disregard-for-congressional-oversight-surrounding-risky-virus-research-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Senators Put NIH On Notice For \u2018Complete Disregard For Congressional Oversight\u2019 Surrounding Risky Virus Research In China"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">36<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgop-senators-put-nih-on-notice-for-complete-disregard-for-congressional-oversight-surrounding-risky-virus-research-in-china%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=640893&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><ul>\n<li><strong>National Institutes of Health\u2019s (NIH) refusal to cooperate with congressional oversight on risky overseas virus research is unacceptable, GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter Thursday.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>\u201cCongress and the American people have a right to know the complete truth about NIH\u2019s role in funding potentially risky gain of function research,\u201d&nbsp;the lawmakers wrote to NIH Director Francis Collins.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>GOP lawmakers said previously that numerous federal agencies, including the NIH, have refused to comply with oversight requests that invoke a federal law compelling them to do so.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The National Institutes of Health\u2019s refusal to cooperate with congressional oversight on risky gain of function virus research in China is unacceptable, a group of seven Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter Thursday obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>The lawmakers, led by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, railed against the agency\u2019s director, Francis Collins, for blowing off their previous May 20 letter demanding answers to 17 questions related to gain of function research, noting that the NIH\u2019s response to that request was nearly identical to the response provided to Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who had asked a completely different set of questions about its funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour refusal to provide detailed responses that fully address each oversight request is unacceptable,\u201d the GOP lawmakers <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-12-Letter-Follow-up-to-NIH.pdf\">wrote<\/a> to Collins on Thursday. \u201cNIH\u2019s lack of response to the May 20 letter shows a complete disregard for congressional oversight and transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongress and the American people have a right to know the complete truth about NIH\u2019s role in funding potentially risky gain of function research,\u201d the letter added.<\/p>\n<p>The National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the NIH subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, provided $600,000 to the WIV prior to the pandemic to study bat-based coronaviruses in China. The taxpayer funds were funneled to the WIV in the form of pass-through subgrants provided by NIAID awardee EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit group.<\/p>\n<p>Experts previously told the DCNF that the grant described gain-of-function research experiments and as such \u201cunequivocally\u201d required review under the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phe.gov\/s3\/dualuse\/documents\/p3co.pdf\">Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight<\/a> (P3CO) Framework, which was created in late 2017 following a three-year funding pause on such experiments due to fears that it risked leaking supercharged viruses into the human population. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/04\/04\/nih-gain-of-function-anthony-fauci-review-board-wuhan-lab\/\">(RELATED: US Grant To Wuhan Lab To Enhance Bat-Based Coronaviruses Was Never Scrutinized By HHS Review Board, NIH Says)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Collins informed Grassley in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/national_institutes_of_health_to_grassley_-_covid_origins_grant_oversight.pdf\">July 28 letter<\/a> that the EcoHealth grant was not flagged for review by the P3CO Framework because the coronavirus experiments \u201cwere not reasonably expected to increase transmissibility or virulence of these viruses in humans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Collins added that the NIAID revised the terms of the EcoHealth grant so that if their experiments in China ended up creating a virus with \u201cenhanced growth by more than ten times compared to strains found in nature,\u201d the group must notify the agency immediately so that further research would be subjected to P3CO review.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson\u2019s letter Thursday demanded Collins to disclose whether the NIH ever independently evaluated EcoHealth\u2019s research in China to see if it ever yielded a virus with a gain of function.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7260225\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"37\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7260225\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-7260225 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-scaled-1.jpg\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-scaled-1.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-180x120.jpg 180w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-620x413-1.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-768x512-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ron-johnson-committee-2048x1365-1.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-7260225\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) delivers opening remarks during a hearing about the recent OPM data breach in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill June 25, 2015, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Republican lawmakers, now in the minority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, have struggled to receive straight answers from the NIH about its funding of research in China prior to the pandemic, even though <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/5\/2954\">federal law<\/a> compels executive branch agencies to comply with information requests submitted by any seven Representatives or five Senators that serve on congressional committees that oversee the agency.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ronjohnson.senate.gov\/2021\/8\/sen-johnson-there-is-nothing-partisan-about-congress-ability-and-responsibility-to-get-information\">informed<\/a> the Senate Homeland Security Committee\u2019s Democratic chairman, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, in a July 29 letter and during an Aug. 4 committee business meeting that the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services have refused to comply with multiple requests that invoked the federal law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe administration just feels like they\u2019re completely immune from complying. Even though all the nominees all come in here and say, \u2018Yes we\u2019ll all comply with oversight and give you anything you need,\u2019 and then they never do,\u201d Johnson told Peters during the Aug. 4 business meeting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo this is a moment to take a stand and I think we need on a bipartisan basis to make that stand, or else, again, congressional oversight will continue to be a joke,\u201d Johnson added. \u201cYou simply can\u2019t do anything, and that\u2019s not fair to the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Peters said in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hsgac.senate.gov\/08\/04\/2021\/business-meeting-\">response<\/a> that the law is distinct from the committee\u2019s authority to issue subpoenas, but he added that he was willing to work with Johnson to compel federal agencies to respond to oversight requests.<\/p>\n<p>The NIH did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact <a href=\"mailto:licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org\">licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Institutes of Health\u2019s (NIH) refusal to cooperate with congressional oversight on risky overseas virus research is unacceptable, GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter Thursday. \u201cCongress and the American people &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}