President Trump has signed an executive order ending federal funding for risky gain-of-function research to prevent another pandemic. Gain-of-function research involves modifying pathogens, such as disease-causing viruses, to make them more infectious or change how they function.
The gain-of-function funding ban targets countries of concern, such as Iran and China, that lack oversight standards to prevent the spread of more potent modified organisms, which could put American lives at risk.
“Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens. If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.”
The executive order establishes new enforcement tools for federal funding related to gain-of-function research abroad and implements oversight mechanisms to enhance the safety of biomedical research.
The executive order criticized what it called Biden’s reckless approval of gain-of-function research in China, where the United States had limited oversight, via the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“The Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight,” it reads. “It also actively approved, through the National Institutes of Health, Federal life-science research funding in China and other countries where there is limited United States oversight or reasonable expectation of biosafety enforcement.”
Subsequently, the order warned that such recklessness, if not addressed, could cause the proliferation of research pathogens and suggested that COVID-19 was a wake-up call for the federal government to act.
“It can leak out, like from Wuhan … I said that right from day one.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was present at the signing ceremony, echoed Trump’s concerns.
“There’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks — and this is going to prevent inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity.”
RFK Jr. also highlighted the human and financial cost, which he said was estimated at 20 million lives and over $25 trillion, respectively.
“… this executive order is a precaution against us being involved in that kind of research in the future,” he said.
RFK Jr. also noted that government- and private-funded gain-of-function research had resulted in modified pathogens that had reached the nuclear equivalency of annihilating the entire population of the United States.
Similarly, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R., Ky.) lauded the president’s decision to end gain-of-function funding in high-risk countries.
“Every American should be outraged that their hard-earned tax dollars were used by mad scientists to engineer more deadly and transmissible coronaviruses,” Comer said. “I applaud President Trump for banning taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research government-wide.”
Initially, the Biden administration officials suggested that COVID-19 did not originate from a Chinese lab and pushed the natural origin theory. The National Center for Medical Intelligence scientists, who had more knowledge on the matter, were also allegedly silenced and even barred from sharing their lab-leak findings.
Similarly, Anthony Fauci, the then National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, and Francis Collins, the former National Institutes of Health Director, supported the zoonosis (animal to human transfer) theory.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also convinced us that Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell story had “all the hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign, also pushed the natural origins of COVID-19.
Interestingly, Biden or the autopen gave Fauci a blanket “full and unconditional pardon” for all actions since January 1, 2014, before leaving office. Coincidentally, that was the same year when Fauci-led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) received the EcoHealth Alliance grant for a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
However, the FBI, the Department of Energy, the CIA, and other agencies corroborated that the virus likely originated from a Wuhan, China lab, shortly after Trump took office.
Nonetheless, Trump was heavily censored and even accused of racism for linking COVID-19 to China during the height of the pandemic.
I guess Fauci will have more time to take his beagle for walks now.