Rep. Mike Turner unveiled legislation on Monday that would impose surprise inspections on those receiving federal research grants from the National Institutes of Health.
The Ohio Republican said his bill, which would “provide critical oversight and full transparency of all grantees and subgrantees receiving federal funds for research grants from the [NIH],” is in response to China‘s alleged mishandling of the early COVID-19 outbreak and recent revelations that the NIH gave research funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“The U.S. had blind faith that all federal dollars for health research went to fight disease. However, the pandemic exposed how American taxpayers might have unknowingly funded dangerous research that put global health at risk. My bill, the EMPOWER NIH Act, would create necessary oversight, transparency, and accountability measures to the federal grant process. … We have a responsibility to protect our researchers, our institutions, our citizens, and our nation, and this legislation takes an important step to safeguard our future,” Turner said.
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Turner’s bill would prompt annual in-person surprise inspections for every recipient of a federal research grant and require the NIH to submit a report annually documenting such inspections and full grant proposals of each research project.
The bill would also disqualify a grantee or subgrantee who failed the inspection from being eligible to receive grants for five years. Those who intentionally obstruct the inspection process would lose their eligibility for at least 15 years.
In May, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted that the NIH had sent at least $600,000 to the Chinese research firm to help study whether bat coronaviruses could be transmittable to humans. New evidence has since suggested that COVID-19 may have originated in the Wuhan lab, and President Joe Biden has directed officials to spend 90 days investigating the virus’s origin.
House Republicans have been taking steps to hold China accountable for COVID-19, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy introducing an eight-step plan to get to the bottom of how the virus came to be.
Among the initiatives McCarthy unveiled last week was restricting gain-of-function research funding for governments deemed to be U.S. adversaries, pursuing more investigations into COVID-19 origins, and pursuing economic sanctions on those associated with the Chinese government.
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The U.S. has experienced more than 33 million cases of COVID-19, with more than 604,000 deaths attributed to the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
The NIH did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
