Ex­clu­sive: In­flu­en­tial De­mo­c­rat will op­pose Biose­cure Act ahead of House vote

An in­flu­en­tial mem­ber in Con­gress is slat­ed to pub­licly dis­avow the close­ly watched Biose­cure Act ahead of a planned House vote next week, ac­cord­ing to a let­ter re­viewed by End­points News.

The leg­is­la­tion would force drug­mak­ers to re­strict their work with two pop­u­lar Chi­nese con­trac­tors: WuXi Bi­o­log­ics and its sis­ter com­pa­ny, WuXi AppTec, by 2032. It al­so names three ge­nomics com­pa­nies: BGI, MGI and Com­plete Ge­nomics.

James Mc­Gov­ern (D-MA), rank­ing mem­ber of the House Rules Com­mit­tee, said in the let­ter that the bill would es­sen­tial­ly ban com­pa­nies with­out due process.

“In short, with no due process for named com­pa­nies, Con­gress is re­ly­ing on ques­tion­able da­ta to make im­por­tant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­ci­sions. It may be that some of the com­pa­nies named should be on the list. But oth­ers may be pun­ished that should not be,” he wrote in a let­ter to mem­bers of the House that is slat­ed to be sent soon.

Mc­Gov­ern has been pub­licly qui­et on the leg­is­la­tion, but this week, he asked some of his col­leagues to vote against the bill, ac­cord­ing to three sources fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter. A spokesman for his of­fice con­firmed his ad­vo­ca­cy against the bill.

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“Over the last sev­er­al months, I’ve par­tic­i­pat­ed in a num­ber of brief­in­gs and con­ver­sa­tions re­lat­ed to this bill — in both clas­si­fied and un­clas­si­fied set­tings,” he wrote in the let­ter. “And all of those have led me to be­lieve that HR 8333, as cur­rent­ly draft­ed, is a short­sight­ed way to ad­dress the re­al prob­lem of for­eign ex­ploita­tion of the US bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try.”

It’s un­clear if Mc­Gov­ern’s let­ter will sway the vote on the bill. In Mc­Gov­ern’s dis­trict, WuXi Bi­o­log­ics planned to build a $300 mil­lion bio­med­ical plant in Worces­ter, MA, that’s at the cen­ter of last-minute lob­by­ing against the leg­is­la­tion.

Jon Weaver, CEO of the in­cu­ba­tor Mass­a­chu­setts Bio­med­ical Ini­tia­tives, told some mem­bers of Con­gress in emails this week that the Biose­cure Act re­sult­ed in WuXi Bi­o­log­ics paus­ing work on the 190,000-square-foot bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­viewed by End­points.

It ap­pears to be the first link be­tween the leg­is­la­tion and the stop­page.

In May, The Worces­ter Guardian re­port­ed that WuXi Bi­o­log­ics de­nied the Biose­cure Act had caused the com­pa­ny to pause con­struc­tion on the fa­cil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

Weaver said in the email to law­mak­ers that WuXi Bi­o­log­ics promised to restart if there’s a gov­ern­ment au­dit process to re­view com­pa­nies, rather than “as­sert­ing their guilt with no mech­a­nism for jus­tice or re­prieve.”

“They are con­fi­dent they will be cleared in such a re­view and are un­der­tak­ing a vol­un­tary third-par­ty au­dit to con­firm this,” Weaver wrote.

In an in­ter­view with End­points, Weaver de­clined to share which leg­is­la­tors he con­tact­ed, or their re­spons­es.

“We’re fo­cused on mak­ing this area in Mass­a­chu­setts a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing hub,” Weaver said.

The leg­is­la­tion has been close­ly watched in life sci­ences cir­cles. But few or­ga­ni­za­tions have been will­ing to pub­licly ex­press their po­si­tions for fear of trig­ger­ing an­ti-Chi­na hawks who are con­cerned over na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and, con­verse­ly, com­pa­nies that be­lieve the leg­is­la­tion could slow down sci­en­tif­ic progress.

If the House pass­es the leg­is­la­tion, a sep­a­rate ver­sion of the bill would al­so need to clear the Sen­ate.