With economic superpowers embarking on a frenzy to put up biological laboratories, a first-term lawmaker is calling for strict regulation in putting up such research facilities so as not to compromise public health.
Deputy Majority Leader and Rizal Rep. Juan Fidel Nograles issued the call in response to reports the United States and other countries had undertaken framework agreements concerning the establishment of scientific research facilities and laboratories.
Biological laboratories, Nograles said, can pose risks to the host country as there are speculations that these facilities are handling very dangerous types of germs like coronaviruses.
“The experiments made with these virii may have caused mutations, such that it cannot be said that the present virus occurred as a result of natural means.”
While experts have ruled out that SARS-COV-2, the virus behind COVID-19 is a genetically engineered virus meant to be deployed as a biological weapon, it is alleged that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the first coronavirus epicenter, has been working with the closest known relative of SARS-COV-2, which is also a bat coronavirus, Nograles said.