Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Monday led a bicameral letter sent to House and Senate leadership calling for an end to taxpayer funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory. It is believed that the Wuhan coronavirus started in the lab, despite lab director Yuan Zhiming denying such claims.
Below is the full letter (emphasis mine):
Dear Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Schumer, and Minority Leader McCarthy:
Thank you for your leadership to confront the threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic. We are writing to urge you to ensure that no stimulus funding is sent—directly or indirectly—to China’s controversial bio-agent laboratory the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
We were troubled by recent media reports that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been funding secretive and dangerous laboratory research at the WIV for many years. According to the NIH’s website, the WIV is currently authorized by the NIH to receive taxpayer funding for animal research (Assurance ID# F16-00279).
You may be aware that the WIV is the only facility in China designated as a biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, meaning that it handles extremely deadly pathogens and biological agents. According to peer-reviewed research publications, the NIH has funded research at the WIV in recent years that involves capturing and handling coronavirus-infected bats from the same caves COVID-19 is believed to have originated from. In some cases, infected bats were killed and transported to the WIV for lab experiments. The research studies state that they were funded by an active NIH grant that has received $3.7 million in taxpayers’ money to date.
To make matters worse, a highly disturbing new report indicates that U.S. State Department cables from 2018 warned of “a SARS-like pandemic” risk related to the WIV’s treacherous and sloppy coronavirus research on bats.
We’re sure you agree that taxpayers’ money should not be sent to a dangerous Chinese state-run bio-agent laboratory that lacks any meaningful oversight from U.S. authorities and is run by adversaries with a history of lab leaks, including SARS, and deception about the causes and extent of deadly disease outbreaks, including COVID-19. 8 Although President Trump has stated that his administration “will end that grant quickly,” we hope to ensure that WIV will not receive federal funds in any future spending packages.
Thank you for your efforts and assistance in this matter. We look forward to working with you to ensure stimulus funds intended to help American taxpayers and businesses recover from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are not misspent. If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact Ed Kim in Senator McSally’s office at 202-224-2235, or Devin Murphy in Rep. Gaetz’s office at 202-225-4136.
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In addition to McSally and Gaetz, the letter is signed by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), James Lankford (R-OK), and 48 additional representatives.
China lied about the Wuhan coronavirus. They did everything in their power to protect their image instead of lives around the world. They could have alerted everyone but, instead, the regime waited almost a week before they said anything.
Millions of Americans are out of work. They're struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. The last thing we should be doing is funding the very regime that lies to the world or the lab who gave us this horrible virus.
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