Ranking Member Ruiz’s Opening Statement at First Select Subcommittee Hearing on Origins of COVID-19
Washington, D.C. (March 8, 2023)—Below is Ranking Member Raul Ruiz's, M.D. opening statement, as prepared for delivery, at today's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing entitled "Investigating the Origins of COVID-19."
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Ranking Member Raul Ruiz, M.D.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
"Investigating the Origins of COVID-19"
March 8, 2023
Today, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic convenes for its first hearing to discuss the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic—an issue of importance to our nation's public health.
Since the first outbreak of COVID-19, researchers in the scientific community have worked tirelessly to evaluate the virus and advance our understanding of its origins. Dozens of studies have been conducted or are currently underway to evaluate this question.
And under President Biden's direction and leadership, the intelligence community initiated a sweeping assessment to get to the bottom of the virus's origins. The facts are—the evidence remains inconclusive.
Therefore, we must allow our scientists and intelligence communities to gather evidence without politicization, extreme partisan rhetoric, or conspiratorial accusations that vilify our nation's public health experts.
Instead, we should focus on developing policies that prevent and reduce the harm of future viruses and pandemics. As Ranking Member of this Select Subcommittee, it is my sincere hope that we can conduct this work in an objective, bipartisan way based on evidence to save lives.
However, today's hearing marks a concerning step down the path of letting extremism get in the way of an inquiry that should be led by science and facts. When House Republicans announced this hearing with their slate of handpicked witnesses, I was alarmed to see someone who wrote a book applauded by white supremacists.
Mr. Nicholas Wade's 2014 book, A Troublesome Inheritance, suggests that different racial and ethnic groups have evolved to possess genetic variations in traits and behaviors tied to whether they prosper or not. For example, Mr. Wade speculates that certain populations have evolved to develop greater innate intelligence. He writes that "intelligence can be more highly rewarded in modern societies because it is in far greater demand."
Conversely, he claims that certain populations have been slower to experience an evolutionary change he describes as "the transformation of a population's social traits from the violent, short-term, impulsive behavior typical of many hunter-gatherer and tribal societies" into "the more disciplined, future oriented behavior" observed in other populations.
The notion that people of different racial or ethnic groups are more successful or intellectually superior to another because of predisposed genetic makeup is grossly inconsistent with the consensus of scientific and medical scholarship.
That is why I sent a letter to my Republican colleagues this morning strongly urging them to disinvite Mr. Wade as a witness so as not to give legitimacy to a man of such discredited, unscientific, and harmful views. These views are dangerous and have no place in a hearing examining the origins of a pandemic that has disproportionately and overwhelmingly harmed communities of color in the United States.
I am concerned that Mr. Wade and his views have been elevated by his participation on today's panel, giving him a platform reaching millions of Americans. His participation hurts the credibility of this hearing.
Answering the question of how the novel coronavirus came to be is one that should be driven by the need for thoughtful policy solutions. Whether the novel coronavirus emerged naturally or as the result of a lab leak does not change this. And as our expert communities work to advance our understanding of the virus's origins, Congress should be focused on developing commonsense solutions to put people over politics and protect our nation from the threat of a future public health crisis.
There is still time for this Select Subcommittee to change course—to reject extreme partisan rhetoric, discard conspiratorial accusations, and work constructively to save lives.
The American people deserve nothing less.
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