Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to make funding for certain vaccines illegal

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to make funding for some vaccine labs illegal.

Greene, a member of the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, made her committee’s goals clear on Wednesday, telling lawmakers in a post on “We urge them to outlaw the scientific laboratories that create them.” The man had created a deadly virus. ”

House committees have been investigating the origins of the coronavirus, including the lab leak theory, and the U.S. response to the pandemic, including vaccine mandates and government-overseen programs. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as the nation’s top infectious disease expert until he retired last year, held a 14-hour closed-door meeting with the committee earlier this month.

“Every committee has a legislative purpose. Our @COVIDSelect committee will support funding for labs that create viruses to kill people or develop vaccines as treatments for man-made deadly viruses. We should pass legislation to ban it,” Greene wrote. “That’s not science. They’re biological weapons. This should be illegal.”

It’s unclear which labs would be included in Greene’s proposed ban, but hundreds of laboratories were involved in the development of coronavirus vaccines.

Paul Offit, an internationally recognized immunology expert and director of the Center for Vaccine Education at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said, “There was a laboratory that produced this vaccine, or a study that produced this vaccine. “Even the idea that there were some places is not correct.” , Said newsweek. “It’s built on a mountain of work.”

Funding for coronavirus vaccines will come from Warp, a federal effort originally funded with about $10 billion from the CARES Act, which former President Donald Trump signed into law on March 27, 2020. It was first given by the Trump administration as part of Operation Speed.

The vaccine is being developed by several infectious disease experts and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, including labs at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and labs at Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis. laboratories contributed. Center William Schaffner said: newsweek. He added that Europe also had institutes that helped provide “the basic science backbone that leads to vaccines.”

But Schaffner said he believes Green’s proposal focuses more on “gain of function” research. This includes a laboratory where researchers can create potential pandemic viruses to study how to prevent and treat future pandemics. newsweek Mr. Greene was contacted for comment via email.

Nevertheless, Offit said restrictions on what research can be done in the lab could have a more negative impact on the scientific community, where discoveries and innovations depend on science’s ability to “roam free.” he warned.

“I was fortunate to be part of the team that developed the rotavirus vaccine. It was a 25-year effort involving probably 200 laboratories around the world,” Offit said. “Like what’s happening here with mRNA technology, we’ve had international conferences where people from different countries have been sending in data and trying to understand this until eventually there’s a vaccine.

“You can’t stop it unless you just want to stop the entire scientific process,” he says.

Greene’s proposal comes after a months-long investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services found that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was “not in compliance with federal regulations” in July. This comes months after the federal government cut off funding to the U.S. government.

Details of Fauci’s testimony have not yet been made public, but committee chairman Brad Wenstrup issued a statement after the meeting, saying that Fauci “signed every domestic and international research grant without considering the proposal.” He admitted that he did not know whether NIAID conducted any supervision.” of the labs they fund.

“It is also concerning that our nation’s response to the world’s worst public health crisis does not ‘remember’ important details about the origins of COVID-19 and pandemic-era policies,” Wenstrup said.

Greene also accused Fauci of “hardening the virus” to create a therapeutic vaccine and called for the doctor to be jailed following his testimony before the panel.