Why We Need Legislation to Reduce the Risk of Lab-Generated Pathogens: Dr. Bryce Nickels

“We have a problem, just generally, that the scientific community is not actually set up to protect the public from the risk of accidents in labs.”

Dr. Bryce Nickels is a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and the co-founder of Biosafety Now, an organization that aims to reduce the public threat of lab-generated pandemics.

“Like any person that’s trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, occasionally, what you‘ll do is you’ll say things that are technically correct, but it’s used to deceive. And that’s what’s been going on for this use of the term ‘gain-of-function,’” says Dr. Nickels.

In this episode, we discuss the Risky Research Review Act—legislation that, if passed, would establish an independent review board to assess whether the benefits of gain-of-function research outweigh the risks and determine whether that research should be done in the first place.

“They believe that what they’re doing is so important that it’s okay to lie,” says Nickels, referring to how scientific and government leaders hid critical information about the origins of COVID from the public. “We want to make there be incentives to tell the truth, not to hide the truth.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.