Rep. Morgan Griffith
speaker
171 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Rep. Morgan Griffith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We shut down all the swimming pools because they didn't think it was safe to have people swimming in a vat of chlorine. I mean, if you wanted to raise the chlorine level attached, that's fine. But it was not, oh my gosh, you can't be in a swimming pool. Come on, people. They didn't use any reason. Yeah, I mean, it's just a terrible-
Cuz he didn't wear a mask. I'm just teasing.
100%.
A little bit. We've seen a little bit at the NIH with some of their scientists that they're now sounding the same kind of concerns that were raised by this. So I think there's a little bit. I don't think it's sufficient, which is why I think we need to get legislation passed that, as I said, we break up NIAID.
We make transparency at NIH more available for people getting royalties on certain types of research and whether or not that's right. There may be an argument for it. To get the top scientists, you may need to pay a little bit of a royalty.
At the same time, we need the information delivered to Congress so that we can make a decision on behalf of the American people, whether that makes sense or it's just somebody lining their pockets. And then last but not least, that risky research panel that I mentioned is absolutely essential, I believe, because
someday, someplace, sometime, maybe not 2024, 2025, or 2026, but by 2029, people will have forgotten. And NIH may go back to not paying as close attention to risky research as I hope they are today. And we need an independent board out there that will make sure that we are studying all of this information and making sure that If we're doing something, there better be a good reason for it.
As you said, it can't just be, well, we got to do something. No. We need to leave some of these viruses alone. They're very dangerous. Why would we want to spread them around the world to do research and possibly have an outbreak? And the one that I'm most worried about in the midterm is monkeypox. I mean, bird flu is something to keep an eye on. But there's a lot of things we can do on bird flu.
But monkeypox is a problem, Ebola, it's a problem. Why would we wanna go and stir everything up and spread those viruses around the world with hundreds of researchers or even dozens of researchers working with the virus? Every time you have that virus out there, there's a greater likelihood
that it's going to be some kind of an accident or somebody's going to forget they've got it in the back of the freezer. And I mention that because when I first got to Congress a number of years ago, they just finished a study of US labs and it was a government lab. They found a frozen substance in the back of one of the lab freezers. Nobody knew what it was. So they took it out and they tested it.
They had live smallpox living in, I mean, it was frozen, but it was in the back of the freezer and it was unlabeled. So the more times you put human involved and there was no outbreak as a result, the more time you have that kind of human involvement where they're taking it in and out of the freezers or refrigerators, they're messing with it in the lab, they're goofing around, doing whatever.
I mean, people do things. And next thing you know, something bad is breaking out on the world that we don't have any information on. And that's what happened. One of those scenarios is what I think happened with COVID-19.
Yeah, well, I agree with you that there's some denial. They're looking at these significant threats, but ones that are more remote instead of looking at the immediate threat. That's the denial. The hysteria is, I think, and this is an opinion based on some information, but it's just part of my gut feeling.
I think that the leaders at the NIH thought they could get ahead of this, and they were so good, they could prevent future outbreaks of bad things like Ebola and Mpox and coronaviruses.
And they didn't look sufficiently at the risks they were taking, and they weren't focused on, and I think this is true across a lot of government agencies, they weren't focused on the day-to-day stuff that's a real problem.
i mean yeah you're right yeah the the antibiotic resistant bacteria there's a big deal i've been pushing for phage therapy i love the concept uh because we're gonna need it and uh i'm probably one of the few people that's actually visited sewage treatment plants for a different reason but that's where you find the the viruses that attack the antibiotic resistant uh uh
Bacteria, great book out of a couple, The Perfect Predator, coming out of San Diego State and how they saved that man's life. It's a fun book to read. Lots of good science in it. It's about five or six years old now. Talking about phase therapy. But those are the kinds of things we need to be looking at because that's a worldwide problem. And it's here today. It's not here next month.
It's not here five years from now. It's here today. And then the dengue fever, you know, yeah, it's a problem.
I can't help but laugh a little bit at that because when I was in high school, I read a Scientific American article that posited that perhaps the common cold came in on an asteroid because it didn't exist until something like the 12th century. It was not in the medical records anywhere. And then all of a sudden, it's all over the place.
And so we say that, but we have seen microbial life in several different places in the space. I mean, it's a little out there, but it's possible.
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