After grilling Fauci on Covid origins, House Republicans want to consider new rules for foreign research

WASHINGTON — House Republicans want to explore tighter inspection and safety requirements for infectious disease work done in foreign labs, following a two-day grilling of former top health official Anthony Fauci.

The closed-door briefing — which GOP representatives have clamored for since taking control of the House in the 2022 election — comes just over a year after Fauci stepped down as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. His retirement did not placate GOP lawmakers, who have demanded answers about Covid’s origins and the societal impact of early shutdowns.

That included lengthy interrogations about federal oversight of foreign labs that received U.S. funding, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese research establishment that has been central to unproven theories that the virus was leaked from a lab rather than spread to humans from animal contact. In April 2020, President Trump ordered the National Institutes of Health to terminate a coronavirus-focused research project by EcoHealth Alliance based at the Wuhan lab.

GOP lawmakers told STAT they were unsatisfied by Fauci’s answers on those grants and the agency’s requirements for funding infectious disease research abroad.

“We need to make it clear that we need to do a better job monitoring our grants,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who as chair of the Energy & Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations panel, has jurisdiction over these issues. “As the representative of the group that actually gets the policy down the road, Energy and Commerce, I’m listening for things that we can do better.”

Those potential improvements include a “better vetting process” for grantees working with labs outside the U.S., and ways to hold them to higher biosafety requirements like properly ventilated spaces, Griffith said.

E&C leadership has held multiple hearings on the government’s pandemic measures, biosafety standards, and controversial research involving altering viruses to understand their transmission, known as gain-of-function research.

Asked about whether she would support legislation on these requirements, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), also an E&C oversight subcommittee member, told STAT, “the thing that’s hanging out there right now is the failure to reauthorize [the Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act], then dealing with any of the harmful decisions and cuts to public health right now. I would hope that would take precedence.”

The E&C committee advanced the PAHPA legislation last summer but it has stalled without a floor vote.

Castor and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) also criticized Republicans’ characterizations of Fauci’s answers over 14 hours of questioning and pressed leadership to make the full transcripts of the testimony available to the public promptly.

The committee “plans to make the transcript public at some point in the future” and is “evaluating the best way to go about sharing the information,” a spokesperson said. “But rest assured, the American people will have the chance to view Dr. Fauci’s testimony word for word.”