Trump to ban risky gain-of-function research in China, nations lacking proper oversight
WASHINGTON — President Trump will sign an executive order Monday to ban all risky gain-of-function research in China, Iran and other countries without proper oversight of the experiments — more than five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that US intel agencies have since said most likely resulted from a lab accident.
The order will yank funding from 'any present and all future' gain-of-function research as well as deputize the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies to identify biological research harmful to public health or threatening to national security.
'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,' according to a White House fact sheet reviewed by The Post.
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White House officials also dinged the Biden administration for allowing the possibly global-pandemic producing experiments that enhance the infectiousness of viruses and bacteria.
Additionally, all research with infectious pathogens and toxins will be paused until the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and national security adviser develop a new policy with enforcement and reporting requirements.
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Since SARS-CoV-2 emerged and went on to kill more than 1 million Americans, federal officials, lawmakers and scientific experts have debated whether it was a result of US-funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The NIH's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), then run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) funneled more than $1.4 million in grants and subawards through EcoHealth to the Chinese lab between 2014 and 2021 for a project titled 'Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.'
That resulted in what ex-NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak said were gain-of-function experiments at the WIV, though he and other officials have denied there's a direct link between the project and the COVID pandemic.
The FBI, Energy Department and CIA — as well as former public health officials like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield — later pointed to a lab leak as the most likely explanation.
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