Republican legislators warn it could spark the next global pandemic on US soil.
Some Republican legislators are concerned about the project and say it could spark the next global pandemic on US soil.
The Daily Mail reports that the project is a collaboration between Dr. Anthony Fauci's former department at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Colorado State University (CSU), and EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), a research organization that found itself at the center of the Covid lab leak theory. The project will reportedly cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
Researchers involved in the project boasted about its potential, according to the outlet, and said the lab would increase the United States' "ability to study the role of bats in disease transmission and help us become even stronger in researching emerging zoonotic pathogens."
Proposals show that the most transmissible pathogens in the world such as Ebola, Nipah virus, and COVID-19 could be studied inside the 14,000-square-foot facility, the outlet reports. Construction has not yet started but the proposal states it is set to be completed by 2025.
The laboratory, which will be called the Chiropteran Research Facility, will be constructed on the Foothill Campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, which is located approximately 60 miles north of Denver, Colorado, and is home to around 168,000 people.
Dozens to hundreds of bats will be imported, housed, bred, and utilized in laboratory experiments. The laboratory is designated as a biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) research center on the CSU website, according to the outlet.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) sounded the alarm on the facility and told Daily Mail: "We cannot allow any batty experiments of pandemic potential to be unleashed on our own shores."
"Americans have suffered enough from Fauci-funded risky research, which is why I am working to defund EcoHealth that funneled taxpayer dollars to the Chinese state-run Wuhan Lab," she said. "The world cannot afford another lab leak, especially one on U.S. soil or near our military bases."
Documents obtained by the outlet show that scientists wanted to infect the imported bats with COVID-19, Ebola, and Nipah virus.
In December 2022, CSU researchers submitted a document that states: "We will infect horseshoe bats with SARS-CoV2 and a SARSr-CoV detected in these bats."
Plans for the facility were initially proposed in 2019 but the project was denied funding. However, CSU secured a $6.7 million grant for the project from the NIH in 2021.
An initial $8 million budget was planned, of which $6.7 million came from the grant and the remaining amount will come from CSU.
Now, the budget has grown to $11.83 million, with CSU contributing $5.08 million instead of its original $1.25 million, the outlet reports.
The construction process was originally planned to commence in the summer of 2023 and conclude around a year later. However, construction has not yet commenced, and the revised anticipated commencement date is September 2025.
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