The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is contemplating how to regulate risky biological research in the aftermath of the pandemic, which many Republican members of the panel believe was triggered by exactly that type of experiment. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee’s ranking Republican, has an idea: Setting up an independent body within the government to evaluate such research — often referred to as “gain-of-function” — and decide whether it should receive U.S. funding. Paul introduced a bill to that effect, the Risky Research Review Act, on Wednesday. “My bill not only strengthens transparency, but also ensures that public health decisions are made in the best interest of the American people, free from financial motives and prioritizing national security,” Paul said at a hearing Thursday. The chair of the committee, Democrat Gary Peters of Michigan, stressed the need for lawmakers to strike a balance between fostering scientific progress and minimizing potential harm, at a time when life science research is accelerating globally. “Setting reactionary limits on federal research could have harmful consequences,” he said at the hearing. The four witnesses testifying said more should be done to ensure risky research, the kind that could make pathogens more lethal or more transmissible, is better regulated in the U.S. But their opinions ranged from pausing such research — which former CDC director Robert Redfield called for — to a softer approach including more standards and incident reporting, as laid out by Carrie Wolinetz, a former chief of staff to then-NIH director Francis Collins. Wolinetz left the NIH last year. Kevin Esvelt, a MIT Media Lab professor who conducted an FBI-sanctioned experiment showing how easy it is to recreate the virus that caused the 1918 pandemic known as the Spanish flu, said scientists shouldn’t insist on regulating themselves if they want to regain public trust. Gerry Parker, an associate dean at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M, who is part of a federal advisory committee on biosecurity, said further regulation would strengthen the system and wouldn’t reflect badly on scientists conducting risky research. “I believe that your responsibility to take legislative action to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity with independent oversight is not a condemnation of the scientific system,” he told the lawmakers.
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