In July, the Daily Caller reported that Sen. Rand Paul’s “Risky Research Review Act” would be introduced to the Senate. If passed into law, the RRRA “would provide oversight for gain of function research funding by establishing an independent board responsible for reviewing and approving federal funding for high-risk life sciences research.”
The bill hinges on the creation of a “Life Sciences Research Security Board.” The Board would be an independent entity of nine members “within the Executive Branch.” The members would provide oversight over federally funded research in the life sciences to protect “public health, safety, or national security,” including “gain-of-function research” such as that which was likely involved in the COVID-19 pandemic.
In May, the National Institutes for Health finally admitted — after years of denial — that U.S. taxpayers had funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, where COVID-19 originated.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic asked a deputy director of the NIH, Lawrence Tabak, “Dr. Tabak, did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”
“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”
The Definition Game
In a posthuman landscape where objective truth is but a dream and relativity is all-inclusive, definitions are slippery things. Defining terms like “gain-of-function,” “man,” or “woman” is like trying to grab a greased eel out of a fast-moving stream of synthetic oil. Even if you’re able to momentarily grasp the eel, the slimy beast will wriggle itself free with a whip of its tail. How one defines the “generic” form of “gain-of-function” depends largely on the context in which it is used. This makes the definition game a cesspool of fluidity — it’s all relative, man.
Dr. Bryce Nickels, a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and co-founder of the pandemic oversight group Biosafety Now, characterized Tabak’s testimony as “two people talking past each other.”
“Tabak was engaging in the usual obfuscation and semantic manipulation that is so frustrating and pointless,” Nickels continued. He went on to say that Tabak was running interference for the NIH by resisting accountability for the kind of dicey research that can potentially lead to pandemics like COVID-19.
Sen. Paul injected some common sense into the mix when he told the Daily Caller there needs to be independent oversight of dangerous research. Government experts can’t be trusted in a world where everything is reduced to power. Enhancing a deadly virus inside a lab is an act of hubris. Paul’s bill would bring the would-be gods back down to earth.
“The pandemic killed about 15 million people worldwide,” Paul explained, “about a million Americans. We believe that the evidence overwhelmingly points towards the pandemic being a leak of dangerous research from a lab in Wuhan. We think this research is ongoing not only in China, but in the United States as well,” Paul said.
That means the next deadly pandemic could be called the American Virus.
“This research was funded by our NIH, and we think there needs to be more restrictions on taxpayer money going to this type of dangerous research,” Paul (under)stated. “We think part of the problem is that the oversight has been the NIH policing themselves. But from the get-go for more than a decade, probably for 15 years, Anthony Fauci has been an advocate of gain of function research.”
Dr. Fauci is the poster child for the god-complex.
Paul warned that “the recreation of smallpox, a recreation of the Spanish flu, the mutation of the avian flu to be transmittable to mammals” are “very dangerous.” His bill “attempts to have better oversight.”
Creating a panel of independent experts to oversee funding for government experiments sounds like a reasonable thing to do. But how do you define “reasonable”?
What is Truth?
“Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice,” said Jesus to Pontius Pilate.
Pilate said to Jesus, “What is truth?”
Jesus was silent because Pilate couldn’t hear him. For Pilate, truth was relative.
“What is truth?” asks the modern-day teacher before saying it out loud, “Truth is relative.”
That’s what kids are taught in public schools and universities. That’s why boys are told they can be girls if they feel like it. That’s why Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson couldn’t answer when GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked her what a woman is.
Blackburn: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?”
Jackson: “Can I provide a definition?”
Blackburn: “Mhmm, yeah.”
Jackson: “No, I can’t.”
Blackburn: “You can’t?”
Jackson: “Not in this context— I’m not a biologist.”
Blackburn: “The meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can't give me a definition?”
Jackson could not define the term due to context. Sound familiar? Words can change meaning from one moment to the next, and if you’re not in the moment you’re out of touch. Nothing is stable and everything is for sale.
Pilate succumbed to those who wanted Jesus crucified for daring to say Truth is absolute and He is it. Though Pilate had told the bloodthirsty mob, “I find no guilt in him,” he fed Jesus to the dogs to keep what power he had left. What is truth? Truth is power.
Pilate served as a precursor to Neitzsche’s idea of the Will to Power.
Natural Law vs. The Will to Power
The idea behind Paul’s bill is sound, but it’s missing an essential element. Applying natural law to situations bubbling up from the postmodern pit is key to getting back on the path to sanity.
Natural law can be broken down into four premises:
1.) Human dignity is measured by moral capacity.
2.) Moral capacity expands with knowledge and implementation of metaphysical principles.
3.) Metaphysical principles do not originate in human reason but are rooted in natural law.
4.) Natural law is transcendent, authoritative, and naturally knowable by all people.
The following chart illustrates the main tenets of natural law.
There has been no greater deviation from natural law than the decoupling of reason from its transcendent source. The disconnect accelerated during the 18th century and reached warp speed by the 20th century. It found its voice in Friedrich Nietzsche, who died in 1900.
“[T]he Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition — it is one problem — could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its ‘intelligible character’ — it would simply be ‘Will to Power,’ and nothing else,” wrote Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil.
Reason fenced off from its natural source ends in the kind of relativism that necessarily leads to Nietzschean nihilism. Where all is reduced to power, human dignity becomes a meaningless term. How’s that for context?
This is the land where the power brokers dwell, the far shore beyond good and evil. That’s where we are, strangers in a strange land. Natural law will help us return to the land of dignity, morality, and common sense.
Though Rand’s bill is a good start in reigning in a government out of control, it's not enough. A “Life Sciences Research Security Board” would be vulnerable to power mongers and, without an explicit understanding of natural law built-in, would sooner or later become corrupt.
Where truth is seen as relative, it can mean anything, and that means it doesn’t mean anything at all. That's the problem. There’s more to science than physical reality, there’s a moral aspect rooted in natural law.
Bottom line: if the RRRA was explicit about conforming to the natural law principles spelled out in the Declaration of Independence — “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them” — it would be protected from the godless powers that be.
I wondered where all the animal rights activists were when Fauci's gruesome lab tests on beagles cam to light...not a peep.
We don’t need any more Boards and commissions; we need to pass a law preventing gain of function research at all. We already have waaay too many government agencies; making another one is counter productive for the American people