A proposal moving through Congress to bar the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding research laboratories in China is sparking concern among scientists. If signed into law, the measure could cut off millions of dollars of U.S. funds flowing to collaborative research projects in several areas, including HIV/AIDS, cancer, mental health, and flu surveillance.
The proposed ban, part of a 2023 spending bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations on 30 June, grew out of suspicions among some lawmakers, so far unsupported by evidence, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China released the coronavirus that started the current pandemic, as well as objections to other potentially risky biomedical experiments involving animals.
Some scientific organizations are concerned by the proposal’s expansive scope. “It seems a bit extreme,” says Eva Maciejewski, spokesperson for the Foundation for Biomedical Research, which advocates for animal research. “In theory it’s good to have oversight over biosafety and animal welfare, but in practice there may be better ways than blocking all NIH funding to foreign countries.”
The microbiology community is also troubled, says Mary Lee Watts, director of federal affairs for the American Society for Microbiology. “International collaboration is essential to allowing our scientists to … understand disease threats wherever in the world they exist, in order to protect public health,” Watts says.An NIH spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending legislation.
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