Two Republican congress members introduced legislation to pressure China to reveal everything the country knows about the origins of COVID-19, after the US said it couldn't determine whether it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Elise Stefanik, of New York, and Rob Wittman, of Virginia, put forth The World Deserves to Know Act, which would sanction Chinese officials suspected of suppressing the truth. The Act was introduced after U.S. investigators claimed China failed to cooperate with parts of the investigation and blocked critical information.
'It leaves all of us asking: What is China hiding,' Stefanik and Wittman wrote in an opinion piece for Fox.
'We know the Wuhan Institute of Virology was performing potentially dangerous research on coronaviruses. As early as 2018, concerned diplomats warned the Department of State of significant safety issues at the Wuhan lab.'
U.S. Representatives Elise Stefanik, left, and Rob Wittman are pushing for the U.S. to get definitive answers regarding the origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was subject to multiple investigations by the U.S. government and the World Health Organization this year
Medical staff are seen with a coronavirus outbreak in the pandemic's origin city of Wuhan back on January 25, 2020
The bill would also prohibit American taxpayer dollars from being sent to China for potentially dangerous research.
In 2014, The U.S. had granted $600,000 to the Wuhan lab through the National Health Institute to study whether bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans.
But White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed that the funds were not used for gain-of-function research. The National Institutes of Health - where Fauci serves as director, and which has ties to the WIV - has also denied it funded the research.
Gain-of-function research, a controversial practice that involves altering a virus or pathogen in order to potentially make it more infectious, to study the development of new diseases and their transmission, is feared to have been a potential cause of the COVID outbreak.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was a biosafety level 4 lab, meaning it was approved to conduct gain-of-function research.
During a hearing with congress in May, Fauci said that the Chinese scientist at the lab were 'trustworthy,' but admitted they could have been lying about what the funds from the U.S. were being used for, NBC reported.
The grants to the Wuhan lab have ceased.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul, who was widely mocked and dismissed for adopting the theory early on that COVID could have originated in the Wuhan lab and leaked from it, accused Fauci of lying and claimed he knew that the funds were being used for gain-of-function research.
The two had a heated back-and-forth debate at a hearing in July.
'Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11 where you claimed the NIH [National Institutes of Health] never funded gain of function research in Wuhan?' Paul asked of the nation's top immunologist and Joe Biden's top COVID advisor.
'Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement,' Fauci shot back in the exchange on Capitol Hill during a Senate Health Committee hearing.
When Paul asked Fauci if taking an animal virus and increasing its transmissibility to humans is not the definition of 'gain of function', Fauci said: 'That is correct.'
'And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are
