Senator Marshall: Americans Deserve Real Science

Senator Marshall Questions Witnesses at Senate HELP Hearing on Gain-of-Function Research

Washington - On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), questioned the Hon. Jayanta Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health, at the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Hearing, focused on modernizing the National Institutes of Health. Senator Marshall focused his questioning on gain-of-function research-which is most likely the origin of COVID-19.

Click HERE or on the image above to watch Senator Marshall's full exchange.

Highlights from the hearing include:

Senator Marshall: "Right. Thank you, Chairman, and welcome, Dr. Bhattacharya. I'm glad to see you again. Let's talk about gain-of-function research. To start with, I think it's now very well established that covid was a result of gain-of-function research partially funded by Dr.

Fauci American dollars. The vast amount of evidence supports that gain-of-function, in my opinion, is a greater threat to Americans than nuclear warheads are. Right now, can you tell me what you're doing to try to end gain-of-function research?"

Dr. Bhattacharya: "Thank you for that question Senator Marshall, first, I want to assure the American public that's listening, that we have ended any support for dangerous gain-of-function at the NIH we will not be supporting any such projects but the problem is broader than just the NIH and I've been working very closely with White House partners in developing a framework for making sure that this sort of research is never supported again by the American government. And I think the key idea is that we must take a risk-based approach. The old regime used to look at a list of agents and say, okay, is it are you working on something that's like Ebola, or something that might be if you make it more dangerous, more transmissible? Now, but for that approach, even the virus that came out of the Wuhan, the bat caves would never have been on that list. Now we have a risk-based approach to make sure that there's an independent evaluation of every single project that has the potential for causing gain of function, dangerous gain of function, and so we don't support that ever again."

Senator Marshall: "Congress needs to codify that plan eventually, as well, in my humble opinion. Let's talk about long covid for a second. 20 million, 10's of millions of people suffer from long covid. [In the] previous administration, we gave them almost $2 billion made no progress, and certainly we've formed committees. We prayed about it. Tell me the progress you're making on long covid. I think that there's now some studies out there supporting that this is probably more of a venous inflammation. Maybe it's a lymphatic inflammation. There are actually some good tests out there you can do to identify long covid."

Dr. Bhattacharya: "So Senator, I've been working with private partners, and had Secretary Kennedy's organized round tables where you were so kind to join and contribute. I'm tremendously hopeful. For the NIH is part, we have refocused our investments to evaluate treatments that people are receiving and promising new treatments, rather than just trying to find a biomarker. Seems like there's lots of progress that's been made in the private sector for this, and for the NIH is part, we will continue to make investments. It is very important that we have an answer for so many Americans that are suffering from long covid as well as so many other conditions that where we don't have great science, we're going to at the NIH, have replicable science focused on these problems. And with your partnership, I'm really grateful that we can make this progress."

Senator Marshall: "If there's people that are listening to this hearing right now with long covid, is there something on the website that you would say, here's a starter spot?"

Dr. Bhattacharya: "Yeah, there's called the Recover Initiative at the NIH, and folks can go look there for the sort of the latest information that we've shifted the portfolio away from trying to find a set of biomarkers that are absolutely perfect, because if you have long covid, you know what's happened to you. The key thing is answers for long covid patients validated treatments. There's a lot of treatments that are proposed out there. What people really need is great, randomized, high, rigorous, scientific evidence, so that they know what they're doing."

Senator Marshall: "Okay, let's finish up with antimicrobial resistance. You know this issue better than I do. What are you guys doing to study antimicrobial resistance?"

Dr. Bhattacharya: "Antimicrobial resistance is a huge problem as so many of the newest antibiotics, tends are causing, causing evolution, but in bacteria that become resistant, we've shifted the portfolio of antimicrobial resistance to think not just about because it's not just whether you have a bug that's evolved and that in the lab is no longer susceptible. It's within patients. So, it's a patient-centered antimicrobial resistance-focused research agenda, and the folks who are working on this are very hopeful that with this new paradigm, we can sort of solve the problem in a way that's not we're not just racing against the latest bug."

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