House approves amendments that freeze funding for gain-of-function research in appropriations bill

The House of Representatives on Tuesday unanimously approved several amendments to an appropriations bill that would restrict funding for gain-of-function research and cut the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget.

Most of the amendments, which alter the Jobs, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2024, research aimed at creation virus that could cause pandemics, specifically forbidding more gain-of-function research at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories and the revocation of grants that funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), seconds in the Republican Wardrobe. The amendments too cut down funding for the NIH in excess of $3.6 billion and exchange agency funding to Project BioShield, a federally funded effort that investigations cures for contagious diseases.

My amendment to end gain-of-function research funding passed tonight! It’s crazy to use taxpayers’ money to create a project for the next pandemic. pic.twitter.com/3eWPvgZANY

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 15, 2023

Gain-of-function research examines contagious viruses and modifies their genetic code in a lab to analyze how diseases might mutate, seconds at the NIH. It has undergone this type of investigation scrutiny for legislators since the COVID-19 pandemic, which some experts to believe may have been caused by US funded gain-of-function research at WIV.

Although National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden did defended this type of research is needed to “help prevent future pandemics,” the NIH has begun back away from the search for function gains in recent years. the agency yet funds some gain in function experimentshowever, including an ongoing study at a laboratory run by WIV-connected scientists in the United States that examines Ebola in bats

The NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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