Senate opens probe into how high-risk research poses national security threats

Lead­ers of the Sen­ate Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Gov­ern­men­tal Af­fairs Com­mit­tee late Wednes­day an­nounced a new bi­par­ti­san in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to risky life sci­ence re­search, amid on­go­ing ten­sions with Chi­nese bio­phar­ma ser­vice providers with a new bill tar­get­ing the com­pa­nies mak­ing head­way in both the House and Sen­ate.

Sens. Gary Pe­ters (D-MI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) said they plan to hold hear­ings and dig in­to every­thing from “high-risk life sci­ence re­search, biode­fense, syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy, biosafe­ty and biose­cu­ri­ty laps­es,” to “ear­ly warn­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties for emerg­ing out­breaks or pos­si­ble at­tacks, and po­ten­tial ori­gins of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

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