Transcripts For CSPAN Fmr. 20240705 : vimarsana.com

Preparedness and response under president trump. He talks about the origins of covid19 and whether theres evidence of an accidental leak at the wuhan lab. Thank you eg of you on our video feed. I am david asher, a Senior Research fellow, resident at hudson. I cover a variety of things, everything from financing, sanctions, to nuclear oil agile nuclear biological weapons. I wanted to introduce you to dr. Robert kadlec, a colleague who has done pioneering work in this area going back to his times starting at the u. S. Air force academy and moving into the military for a few decades, and working in high raking roles in health and Human Services. Conceiving and developing our National Defense strategy and executing it in the midst of the biggest threat disaster in history, which was the outrage of covid19. I am here to discuss that with dr. Robert kadlec, and to go over some of the Lessons Learned in his long career. Let us go on and move forward from here. The most important thing i would like to highlight today is the importance of this muddy waters, the origins of covid19. And its report that came out in the Senate Health committee. That report is one of the most important reports about covid19 to have been issued, if not the most important. I would like to introduce dr. Robert kadlec. I dont know if you want to give any background on how you came to get involved in health and Human Services and have you made your way to capitol hill. Dr. Kadlec it is a pleasure to appear with you, and your colleagues at hudson. I want to say thank you for the opportunity. How did i get here . The simplest thing to say is i am a threepeat offender. And with the election of donald trump, then representative tom price to become his assistant secretary for preparedness and response, which is an interesting turn of events. When i first worked for richard burr, we wrote the enabling authorization legislation that created the secretary for preparedness response. It was central to the genesis of work speed during the covid19 pandemic. Mr. Asher i should have credited your work on the hill as well, you have done so many different things. Those are very important effort. The immediate question is, we can talk about it later, what happened . We had the appropriate architecture that you had health developing for the government. I do not think it failed us. People underrate the work you have done with a small group of colleagues in creating operation warp speed and the ability to manufacture mrna vaccines. It would be great to get your full review of the report you did called muddy waters, about the it is the most enlightening report i have read. You were doing this for senator burr and other republican members of the health committee. If you can explain about how you got into it, what motivated you, and what you learned along the way. Dr. Kadlec it was a task that was assigned to me in 2021, my second day back on the hill. His intent with chairman patty murray, the ranking the chairwoman for the health committee, was to create a bipartisan investigation using only open Source Information to determine if possible the origins of the covid19 pandemic. That task was focusing for 20 months, during my tenure, to look at two different hypotheses. One, whether or not the virus emerged from a zoonotic event, or some intermediate species, or was this a consequence of some kind of Laboratory Research that was being conducted in on my possibly at the time visited of the approach we took was simple. Looking at and a valuation of plausible hypotheses. Is it conceivable that under each of those two headings could there be reasonable or possible events that could result in a pandemic . We found three subtypes for each of those categories. We conducted a investigation with a team of teams. We created a team a and team b, and they led the effort to accrue evidence from organ source materials validating the Material Information as we could that would align to either a zoonotic origin or a Left Research origin. That is how we proceeded, we were backed up by a fairly extensive technical team, people that we solicited for their insights, many of them who offered their time freely, willingly and free to provide us technical insights as it relates to biosafety, molecular biology, epidemiology, medical infectious diseases. We had another dozen people outside of the six or seven that we had dedicated to the effort. I met several of your team members early on. I was very impressed by them. A highquality group of people they have on capitol hill to take time to do and effort that was unpopular at the time. No one was people may have been interested in knowing the origin, but the government, the executive branch, was not interested in sharing information related to that. It was extremely difficult, to do it in a way that was not biased, one team that was po rlab leak, and another team that was focused on natural origin, and trying to other evidence for each hypotheses was grueling. You certainly did a great job, i read the report, which is 200 pages of text, and what you sayf the things that you learned regarding the origin that really changed or shaped your view in the course of doing the report . In the context of the government and from other sources that are available. I noticed that you did dwell on this right sharp increase in influenzalike illness in china in the fall of 2019 can you give us a few minutes of detail on that . One of the things that we did differently from the Intelligence Community, we were beneficiaries of the slide report by the office of director of National Intelligence. We did get access to the other report. We open the aperture of our investigation that preceded well beyond the timeframe that the dni did. For example, we looked well beyond the fall of 2019. And going back into the fall of 2018, and even earlier to evaluate what we would say the trajectory of Coronavirus Research in china, particularly at the Wuhan Institute. Recognized that it is not the only institution in wuhan that does this kind of research. There are a number of colleges, universities, veterinary schools, that participate. It was really to understand what was the kind of baseline. What we learned through this kind of temporal evaluation that began literally in 2017 the construction of the Wuhan Institute of virologys Biosafety Laboratory was completed, was that there were challenges that they were confronting from the very beginning in terms of act guessing materials, expertise, and particularly operationalizing what is a High Containment Laboratory of bso for. China had very little experience in dealing with this or managing. As you go forward, you realize that in november 2018, this was something the state Department Recognized as well that they reported on the fact that there were a lot of concerns from the chinese as well as from outside of hurts, including United States scientists, then indicated that there could be a risk to what china was doing as it related to some of this Cutting Edge Technology and research with coronaviruses and the possibility of not having the highest level of biosafety. The consequence of not only constructing a new facility but operating and maintaining this facility. So, coming to your point about what happened, we found some early indicators that there were concerns around biosafety going into the spring of 2019 at the Wuhan Institute of urology. Virology. There seem to be even greater concerns as it related to the nature of some of the research that was being performed, particularly some of the research that was seeming to be performed at a lower level of biosafety than typically encountered in other laboratories around the world, particularly the United States. Just to give you a little flavor of what we found, this leads to what happened in the fall of 2019. Every spring and summer, the Wuhan Institute would go on field expeditions to Southern China where coronaviruses were found. This is found in nature, they would go into caves, capturing bats, recovering samples from bats, and taking the samples and sometimes the bats themselves back to wuhan, into the institute where they would process the samples, oftentimes at a biosafety two laboratory level, which is like your dentist office. We recognize that some of the risk was when they would retrieve these bad and process the samples, oftentimes were lower than acceptable levels of biosafety, that could be a risk. The second part was, they would actually do some genetic manipulation of these viruses, oftentimes in low biosafety levels as well. This is documented both in public literature, dissertations that were released, and the bat lady. When we get to the fall of 2019, we see that there is this research that is ongoing. There is this explosion of cases of influenza like illness that begin probably in late october, early november. Probably the most compelling observation was made by u. S. Diplomats in the wuhan consulate who report both to their colleagues in beijing and it filters back to the u. S. There seems to be a vicious flu outbreak occurring in late october, early november of 2019. This information is further corroborated by the fact that there are some studies that were done by harvard that indicated there was increased hospital traffic, increased searches on the Search Engine for symptoms that compared to what covid19 was at that time, as well as other reports from our state department that indicated possibly researchers became sick with covid like systems symptoms in early november. The south china post releasing a china cdc report that the first documented case of covid may have happened as early as november 17. All these things coalesce to a report that was done by a chinese epidemiologist that was published they are in 2020 that showed this very large spike of influenza like illness. China itself released information to the w. H. O. In april 2021 that indicated there was a surge in early november but we are not associating with testing for influenza. You have this whole mass of events that say, hey, it is possible and probable that cases that were occurring of this influenza like illness that a word in early november were likely associated with covid first divergence. That is something i have seen as a lead investigator. We saw that spike, it was captured in chinese statistics. We saw a lot of anomalous data, totally unclassified, coming off of social media in china in late november of 2019 that was parallel to the increases in i o i, influenza like illness. I am a detective, so we are used to talking about it. This doesnt make any sense. We havent seen something. I will always be a little bit cautious, there are certain things we dont know. But, we know a lot if you put together the mosaic. There are pieces missing from the picture. The picture is pretty incriminating. Can you comment on what evidence you found that there was a national origin, if any . Did you see patients coming out of china that discovered something . Did you see them acting in a way that wasnt panicky regarding the origin . Or was panicky. Something about the behavior you observed that convinced any of your team that they didnt know where this thing came from . It is interesting that you say that. The benefit of doing the investigation that they did where we had a team a and team b, was trying to crew all the evidence that we could from all sources that were published or otherwise that would provide at least some reason to believe that this could have been a zoo nautica event coming from an animal. What we found, quite strikingly, even though precedents favors that answer, there was no documented information or evidence that would support that. For example, when sars originally occurred in 2002 in china and was also subject to a coverup by the chinese government, able to ascertain is that they were able to identify fairly rapidly a host that was being sold in wet markets, this was a food source. The animals would be slaughtered by the animal handlers and interestingly enough, typically, animal handlers were some of the first people to get sick with sars in two and 2004. Fastforward to 2019, we dont see any evidence, and china has not been able to produce an intermediate host for this. There is a lot of reason to do about a raccoon dog, none of those animals were found to be infected with sarscov2 no more nor were any animal handlers found to be infected with that. There was a study published in the spring of 2020 that indicated that they were doing longitudinal surveys of seven wet markets in wuhan three years prior to the pandemic. They werent looking for sarscov2, but two things were notable. First of all, animals that were susceptible like the raccoon dog , no bats were sold there. The bats were a very important source of the virus in Southern China, the bats and susceptible animals were brought to the wet markets together where they were sold as food. Interesting enough, they are not a food source in wuhan. It is a local delicacy, not one in wuhan. It is kind of an anomaly to see it. We could say that at least from the standpoint of historic precedents, evidentiary data, the key connections that would normally be found in historic cases of sars transmission documented previously were absent in wuhan at that time. What was really interesting is that we showed evidence, particularly in the early november timeframe, of what would have been concerted government activities that would suggest something did happen, likely at the Wuhan Institute of virology and put also at the wuhan university, the institute of animal models. We found some reports that would indicate that at the same time, there were publications, probably deceptive in nature, that were trying to cover the tracks of the involvement of the Wuhan Institute. And the wuhan university. The second thing is, we had a high level chinese official come from chinas academy of sciences on november 19 where he did a couple of interesting things. His day of arrival was notable because he was the subject of an internal posting on the virology website that indicated that he ran what was likely a p sure, a chinese mechanism of reporting that often goes through the political channels to the highest level that is needed to resolve an issue or problem. That individual sends back down instructions. It appears that this chap from beijing was carrying orders from xi jinping himself that indicated there were concerns around by security around the wuhan and the two of virology and in fact that he was lecturing them about issues that were a matter of national concern. We do know on the 19th of november a senior official from the Chinese Academy of sciences, the lead bio security official came down and met with Senior Leadership and brought with him a p sure, which is orders from high level senior officials, in this case, the official from beijing on instructions directly from xi jinping related to the issues around bio security at the Wuhan Institute of virology. He also led a 2. 5 day remedial biosafety Training Program the next day for members, as well as with some other institutes in wuhan, indicating something may have happened. Coincidentally, the same day he arrived on the 19th of november, the Wuhan Institute of virology issued a short notice for a device that would be added to an auto wave exhaust pipe called an air incinerator which is quite an unusual activity and would suggest possibly there was some kind of infectious release from an autoclave. Autoclaves are used to sterilize infectious waste. Often times by the use of steam pressure and temperature over time, that renders whatever infectious material is inert or uncontaminated. For some reason, on the date this gentleman came from beijing, they had to order a special device that would augment the sterilization capacity of this autoclave. There is circumstantial evidence in my mind that there may have been some kind of event that preceded his arrival, that required the response of a highlevel official, awareness by the senior government, as well as these remediation efforts that were taken. I want to add something that has not been noted in publications or in the media. We noticed that hudson, in our research, dr. G chen zhang, the official who is quite important, we sent this leadership from beijing to wuhan is now the head of biosafety and institute of virology. Only on the chinese website. Not in english. The guy who was dispatched to apparently [indiscernible] has been put in charge of biosafety itself. This is more than an anomaly. Somebody has been on a detective i have been a detective. Other types of work against proliferation and criminal networks. This is something that i find almost unbelievable and that the guy who is really the top person in the chinese scientists in beijing is now at wuhan, i cant imagine he is there for no reason. That was a bit of a revelation when you said that, i have to omit, that is an important additional finding. If you consider, as we have looked longitudinally, this is a little different than our colleagues in the Intelligence Community, that we were able to document things that occurred a year after the day of what we believe was the timeframe when we think something happened that you would still find evidence of remediation activities. For example, the Wuhan Institute of virology issued a patent to reformulate its disinfectant that it found to be extraordinarily corrosive to sensitive biosafety equipment that at least according to a description of the patent, may have resulted or contributed to the escape of hilo pathogenic highly pathogenic microorganisms. It was specific to the idea that these events could have Significant Impact on the loss of lives, the effect of social order, as well as the risk to the globe. I wanted to ask you, as someone who has a long and distinguished background in biology and virology, you are a practitioner and someone who has worked in the field for the u. S. Military, chasing these pathogens and also training to prepare for them, when you looked at the sequence did you see irregularities the way some of my colleagues had . Our medical director thought there was something very strange about the cleavage site. Once we had a sequence that we looked at, what i heard from some of the national laboratories, there were signature elements that indicated bioengineering. A lot of goes back to the information related to covid. And as dr. Redfield explains [indiscernible] spreads to human transition . It is a significant finding and quite frankly, in our study of this, this is the first sars like coronavirus. They are very different sub gene as is of this virus, but the ones that belong to sars, particularly sars 1 and sars 2 that do not have a cleavage site. That is the secret sauce that really gives this virus unusual qualities to not only grow extensively in human lung tissue but also kind of facilitates its spread, its transmissibility. To dr. Redfields comment, yes, this is a highly human transmissible virus that is kind of at odds with what huey historically know or see in sars related viruses previously. The existence of a cleavage site, as to be described by a group of researchers at mount sinai who are in the midst of publishing the results, feel that the existence of the cleavage site is a remote probability event. It is not impossible, but certainly very remote in likelihood as it relates to this kind of virus. It is one thing that dr. David baltimore said that to him constituted the possibility of being the smoking gun. What makes it even more compelling is what we were able to discern in our investigation that had to do with a proposal that was submitted by Ecohealth Alliance funding for a number of u. S. And chinese investigators that in march of 2018 wanted to do further collection of sars like viruses in the wild but specifically mentioned and intended to insert human cleavage sites to evaluate their impact on the potential pandemic value or possibility of a sars related virus. You have this kind of odd set of circumstances when you talk about the remote probability of this occurring in nature, you have a year prior of the desire even though it wasnt funded by darpa, it has been suggested that the fact that it was conceived as a possible experiment was more likely than not something that was ongoing or completed at the time that puzzle was submitted to darpa. The third element is that there are other factors in the virus that just seemed to optimize its ability to infect humans in a way that quite frankly is kind of unusual, regardless. This virus almost has a mind of its own. I wont say it is artificially intelligent, but it certainly has enabled vaccines that we developed initially and has repeatedly developed variance over time that seem to challenge us and make this a persistent threat in many cases where usually pandemics kind of die out and go away, this one kind of gives us the gift that keeps on giving. I know you know dr. Ralph from university of north carolina. I dont think anyone doubts his brilliance. Especially, given his brilliance, i think it is important to reflect on the fact that he [indiscernible] he was going to invest in the cleavage site artificially in to the coronavirus backbone. The fact that it occurred naturally, i dont really see a reason, especially given the knowledge of coronaviruses that dr. Barrick has, if it could be done, even through just passing a blunt from a monkey a bat to a monkey or backandforth, why would you have to artificially insert it . If they thought that could happen naturally, they wouldnt be in the business. That is just my. I do want to get at the issue of Synthetic Biology as part of this, because i think that people are underestimating National Bio Defense strategies. They proceeded covid19 and did suggest that the loud leak is an origin of a bio defense threat that can terrorize and affect our country. Could you talk a little bit about Synthetic Biology and the upsides and the downsides and what theyre doing in wuhan . First of all, the idea of Synthetic Biology has been something that has been of a matter of fascination going back into the 1950s when dna was first discovered and the possibility of manipulating the genetic code to get some kind of favorable event. In todays world, Synthetic Biology offers some really promising opportunities to provide new food sources, better medicines, remediate the environment, provide new sources of energy. These are all classes that gain a function Like Research could result in. When you talk about pathogenic organisms like coronaviruses or influenza, it certainly offers the opportunity to do as we think could have happened. People say it happens naturally, it does, but do so in a way that quite frankly we want to anticipate nature, but is also doing things that nature has not yet demonstrated itself. That is the divergence i think of what you can do with science and what you should do. I think the challenge that we think may have been confronted or encountered by the chinese is that they were doing research, in some ways collaborating with the United States and in some ways getting funded by the United States where they were trying to do cuttingedge research where there means to protect themselves and protect maybe others and the world may have been jeopardized either by their interest to do this science or the zeal to show progress or to demonstrate the superiority that could have resulted in this kind of outcome. From a standpoint of Synthetic Biology, you would like to say, it is generally good until it goes bad. With that, i think it is the necessity for policymakers here in the United States to realize that there are a lot of good things we can derive from it, but we need to be especially sensitive and concerned about where bad things could occur. That could be based on the fact of pursuing gain of function like experience that quite frankly are novel and may be unique for scientific publication, but the need to know these things could be representing a proliferation risk to your earlier comments about the proliferation of this technology that quite frankly, as it emerges, is something that a much anybody could do. If you cant put safeguards around what should be done either by preventing funding of this kind of research or ensuring the safety of this kind of research or evaluating is doing it, the endusers, what are their intentions . Good, bad, or malicious . I think we are setting ourselves up for another repeat of this kind of event. I agree, as someone who oversaw these investigative efforts and worked very closely with the director of National Intelligence and secretary of state. To try to get information regarding the origins that have been collected in the fall of 2019 that never disseminated. You and i both were at 9 11, i think, but it was a when i saw the initial information that have been been pushed out from certain Intelligence Community partners, about workers falling sick in the lab, the military Funding Research that was classified, that had been going on since at least 2017, into advanced coronaviruses, and it appeared, creating new types of coronavirus variance that could be lethal and highly pathogenic, that was part of systematic employment of what we believed to be Synthetic Biology in large part. Also, experiments on animals that would be in the primate category. Animals that were very, like paying villains. They highly likely in the existing inside laboratories and most likely university who has a huge Animal Husbandry program. When we saw that, it caused us to say, oh my god, this may have come out of a lab leak. That bothered us. The lack of transparency in china. But, the coverup of Everything Associated with what happened in wuhan, and something you exposed in the report with your colleagues, they started to marshall their resources for pandemic preventative equipment. They stopped exporting stuff in the United States and elsewhere, they started buying ppe. In this case, we really have to ask ourselves, is the coverup worse than the crime . Our lack of intelligence that was at least immediate in writing on that was probably one of the biggest failures if not the single biggest failure in the history of intelligence. I just wanted to ask you, someone who cares deeply about the work we do, what happened . Is a great question. Quite frankly, we both lived through the iraq intelligence debacle. Obviously, that had a searing impact on our u. S. Intelligence community, particularly in these areas. What really kind of gets my gander particularly about your question is that we know that u. S. Diplomats in wuhan knew something was happening in late october, november, that was transmitted to aging. There were two u. S. [indiscernible] at the time, and we spoke to the junior person whose responsibilities included being the coordinator for pandemic preparedness who was totally unaware of anything occurring in wuhan or in china as of late december. That, to me, is one of the things that i find most outrageous not in some ways, the Intelligence Community, for all its benefits and limitations cant do everything. Here is a group of individuals who are assigned to the cdc whose responsibility was for working with the chinese colleagues, inc. The eyes and ears for the u. S. Government, not knowing anything that was going on. The first word that dr. Redfield got was not old in beijing, but from the director of the chinese cdc. That, to me, is something that i personally have a lot of intense emotion about. My job was to prepare and respond as events, and i found out on the sixth of january. We lost 60 days of indications and warnings about an event that we could have been aware of . The reason why this is important, i will just use an example from my personal asked arians is that in september 2020, i traveled to taiwan. One of the individuals we met with was the Vice President who was a medical epidemiologist who shared with me the fact that taiwan understood something was going on in wuhan in november. A mysterious pneumonia. In the case of taiwan, they instituted, in early december, travel screening, travel restrictions, and masking. And by the way, their first cases of covid19 did not occur until april 2022. Two years and three months after it emerged in wuhan. My question to you is, does Early Warning and intelligence matter . Yes, it does. We had people there whose job it was to keep an eye on the risk of pandemics emerging from china. I dont know if they were asleep at the switch, or what, but that is something that has to be run down. This brings me to the national bio Defense Strategy of 2018, which i believe you were deeply involved in. I just wanted to note that you looked at two potential origins from a possible pandemic, one was natural, we will call it supernatural. What happened to that document in terms of i dont want to be critical, what you did was operation warp speed, was absolutely unbelievable. In partnership with some incredible people. We had, thanks to your work, a bio Defense Strategy that if implemented, including intelligence and Early Warning, it was supposed to be there. We know some of the intelligence was downgraded, it wasnt by you. Do you have any idea what happened . Two things. I just want to allot the effort that was done with that national bio Defense Strategy which really represented consolidation of a number of president ial directives and strategies that were first drafted by george w. Bush i happened to be the scribe for different strategies that were a precursor. As well as several that were done later. What you are holding up was the pinnacle of what our thinking was. Like every great thought, if there is not effort and action to make it real, that is where the challenge is. That started in 2018. The effort was to really review what was being done. That was done. Then there was the issue this gets to the partisan nature of what i think challenges us and quite frankly, i can wait to work speed as an example. It used to be said that Foreign Policy at our domestic chores. We were unified in our view of the threat. That document and the purpose behind it was not necessarily had the bipartisan buyin from the democratic colleagues that i think really did inhibit our ability to prepare for that. I made several forays to the hill to talk about strategies and the resources that were needed, and that was a challenge , to say the least. Then you see that as a result of work when highly successful as that was, it was like it didnt exist when the new administration came in. They took it apart, put it in the closet, and most recently have said, maybe we need and again and they are calling it nexgen. I dont care if you call it ham sandwich, the fact that they stop the program literally cost americans lives. It is a very troubling that strategy, their intent to put a new strategy out which is their own, i guess that is the right of every president to redo that, but the document that you held up was a very good document that reflect did the efforts of two previous administrations, bush, and obama, to draft that. For some reason, it is not good enough now and we have to get rid of it and do away with it. The problem is, the polity station has been argued to be loaned to one side and out the other, but it is evident that partisanship has really undermined our ability to manage this pandemic. If we cant get our act together, it will affect future efforts against this threat, particularly what could have been an accidental event, which is something that this administration seems to be hard to get their attention to. I do find it incredible. Objectively, it is wellknown that everybody who has any background in biology and the government preparedness for biological events, be they natural or supernatural, it is obvious that you can reverse engineer covid19 based on a sequence. It was posted the second week of january or Something Like that. We didnt have access to covid19. We printed that sequence of dna and managed to recreate it. So we could create a vaccine against it. Your efforts were monumentally significant in attaining that. If you can reverse it in Synthetic Biology, you can create it. Covid 2025, is just around the owner. You and i post both work on the fact of bioterrorism. The ability to print genetic material is something that Even High School students are learning how to do. I dont know if you have thoughts on that issue as we look ahead, we have a few minutes left. You literally know more about this. One last point. Funding for bio defense, 30 8. 5 billion since 2002. We will be issuing a report in the coming weeks about this. Initially, great impact. Over the years, things have been with an ice cream cone. What defense do they do except create bio threats . How do you fix that . I think you have touched on a number of issues. One i would like to say is there needs to be accounting of what worked and what didnt work. I think you have highlighted a couple of them early on with Early Morning missed opportunities and Early Warning links with the failures to institute timely interventions. President trump was very quick to invoke when he did, the travel restrictions. Had that been done 60 days earlier, that could have been all the difference in the world. We had success with warp speed, but the thing is, we do need to understand that in the era of Synthetic Biology, who we give grants to and for what we give grants to do deserve greater scrutiny. I think that is something that in our investigation, we identified that the oversight of those kinds of grants and those kinds of research and not validating the enduser, who was using it . And how they were doing it, in terms of biosafety, i think there was plenty of opportunity to say, no, that probably contributed. Money is fungible, techniques are fungible, in this kind of biosynthetic world, we need to do better. We also need to clean up our house at home. There was a book published by Allison Young that is called andors problem or paradox, it really does highlight the nature that we are subsidizing research in our own country today that is risky, and we need to acknowledge it. Some of it has to be done, but clearly the Due Diligence around who is doing it and how it was being done, one that occurred on my watch i didnt realize there were biosafety problems historically with the institution that was involved. That was a grant given by nih who knew that deficiency and then when there was an incident, nih found out about it and didnt tell anybody. There is this issue of transparency. There is a lot we can do across the spectrum. We have to clean up our own house initially, set the standard for the rest of the world, and need to gauge countries like china and others hopefully collaboratively, but if not, we need to do what is in our best interest and realize that in todays connected world, we are going to need to be prepared for the next accident as well as natural outbreak. That is a very important point. It could happen in the United States, too. We could easily create a massive potential pandemic pathogen in a u. S. Laboratory any major university. If it got out, it would be our responsibility to warn about it help defend against it, and basically stop it. This is not just about china, this is a global problem. I say, having investigated the chinese role and likely begin of covid19 my view was it is in an accident, but also the cover up. You very clear, one of the most telling elements is taiwan, which is across the street from china, shut down its borders on january 2 shut down well before that, as you pointed out. They had bio threat intelligence. We obviously did not. Or when we did have intelligence, we didnt disseminate it. There are so many things that can be learned from this. One of the biggest things is why the nih is Funding Research in countries that are essentially declared adversaries of the United States. China does not hide its ambitions. Why we are providing money to programs that as we uncovered at the state department, were in part being funded by people from [indiscernible], it is ridiculous. We are providing material aid to an adversary. Whether they wanted this for bio weapons are not is the question. My final question to you is, how do you define bio defense . We know that there is a potential to create pandemic pathogens, if they get out, which should be the ramification . What do you think the ramification should be for china looking ahead to my for having covered up covid19 . Lets say 99 , the coverup was much worse than the crime. The two things that come to mind, one is the prohibitions under the biological Weapons Convention which allows companies countries to do things that are for peaceful and prophylactic purposes. In our investigation, what we found was that the events may have been associated with a vaccine related research is one part of the issue that says, that is ok. The International Health regulations, which require countries and china is one of the signatories to that, to make a special mention of sars as being one of those things that you absolutely positively should notify the world about within 48 hours was clearly something that they did not abide by. We can quibble over, when did they know what in terms of what may have happened, one of the intriguing things we found is that maybe the initial coverup was from local provincial authorities, but yet, that would be disputed by the one fact that we had where the representative from beijing came down, the bio security expert, invoking the name of xi jinping and mentioning of ap sure. It does point out that there is kind of an obligation by every country to abide by this. I think probably the one leg that is missing from the stool is internationalizing the requirement for biosafety and also bio security around this kind of risky research, period. Clearly, it was a matter of concern in china, they actually passed drafted legislation prior to the pandemic in september of 2019 that outline the requirements to do this kind of research which, to me implies that there may have been some earlier event that made them aware of the dangers of this kind of research. They were trying to either fix the problem or may have been trying to keep the lid on what was a potentially emerging event earlier than we knew. It does require all countries, including china, to be transparent. It does require them to be accountable as we would be. We have room for improvement and we need to make those improvements sooner rather than later because we are kind of whistling in the dark if we dont think this can happen here. Thank you, we really appreciate the opportunity to discuss the origins of covid19 and your work on bio defense over several decades. Cheers today. I hope we will have a chance to continue the conversation in the future your, develop a more focused review in support of the Congress Investigation of the origins. We definitely want to tap into your Incredible Knowledge and variance and capabilities as a scholar, not just as a practitioner. Here are very grateful for your time today. Thank you, really appreciate the opportunity to t house lawmakers today will be working on Financial Services related bills. Votes are expected at about 6 30 p. M. Eastern. Later this week, theyll work on a couple bills protecting gas stoves. The house is now in recess. When members return watch live coverage here on cspan, online california span. Org and our free cspan now video app. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded guy these Television Companies and more. Including charter communications. Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. We are just getting started. Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. Charter communications supports cspan as a public service, along with these other television providers. Giving you a front row seat to democracy