Senate Republicans are demanding that the White House pause all federally funded gain-of-function research, which they say may have been responsible for the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital.
Five senators sent a letter to Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, on Tuesday, detailing a need to further evaluate the risks of gain-of-function research, which often includes intentionally altering viruses to be more pathogenic or transmissible as a means to develop preemptive treatments for deadly diseases.
The former Obama administration paused new funding of gain-of-function research in 2014 to "assess the potential risks and benefits." However, it was reinstated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2017, and the senators argue in their letter that a pause is again necessary after the recent COVID-19 outbreak, which they say may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.