Ending Dangerous Gain of Function Research

President Donald Trump is committed to protecting Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research that manipulates viruses and other biological agents and toxins. That is why he recently signed an Executive Order that will improve the safety and security of biological research in the United States and around the world.

A White House fact sheet explained that the Executive Order “ends any present and all future federal funding of dangerous gain-of-function research in countries of concern like China and Iran and in foreign nations deemed to have insufficient research oversight.”

The executive order empowers American research agencies “to identify and end federal funding of other biological research that could pose a threat to American public health, public safety, or national security,” according to the White House. It also “prohibits federal funding from contributing to foreign research likely to cause another pandemic.”

The White House says these “measures will drastically reduce the potential for lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research, like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

This Executive Order aims to increase the safety and security of biological research for Americans without impeding U.S. innovation. The White House noted that “for decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight.”

This executive order, noted the White House, “pauses research using infectious pathogens and toxins in the United States that may pose a danger to American citizens until a safer, more enforceable, and transparent policy governing such research can be developed and implemented.” It will also “strengthen oversight and discourage subjective interpretation of policies that researchers have used in the past to evade biosafety and biosecurity oversight.”

At the White House signing ceremony, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr., stressed the danger inherent in gain of function research: “It's a kind of weapon that always has blowback. There's always bad news, and the justification. . .was always that we have to do this to develop vaccines to counter a future pandemic. In all of the history of. . .gain-of- function research we can't point to a single good thing that's come from it. And today I commend President Trump for his courage and his vision in ending U.S. bioweapons research.”