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The Sun
06-05-2025
- Health
- The Sun
Trump signs executive order BANNING Frankenstein-style virus research feared to spawned Covid pandemic in Wuhan lab leak
DONALD Trump has banned all US funding for risky virus research in China and beyond, five years after Covid-19 upended the planet. In a blistering executive order signed Monday, Trump outlawed federal support for gain-of-function experiments in countries like China and Iran — blaming the controversial research for unleashing the global health catastrophe. 7 7 7 7 The US President said in the Oval Office: 'I said that right from day one it leaked out — whether it was to the girlfriend or somebody else, [a] scientist walked outside to have lunch with the girlfriend or was together with a lot of people — but that's how it leaked out in my opinion. 'I've never changed that opinion, so it can leak out innocently, stupidly and incompetently, but innocently and half destroy the world.' The dramatic order pulls the plug on "any present and all future" funding for experiments that make viruses more infectious or deadly - a field many scientists call "dual-use" research due to its potential military and public health impacts. It will also appoint the National Institutes of Health and other agencies to sniff out and shut down bio-research posing a threat to public safety or national security. According to a White House fact sheet, the 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." The move comes amid a renewed global spotlight on the origins of Covid-19. There has been a growing consensus among US intelligence agencies including the FBI, Department of Energy, and the CIA that a lab leak in Wuhan is the likeliest explanation. Trump's team tore into the Biden administration for failing to slam the brakes earlier on risky foreign experiments that 'half destroyed the world.' 'Many people believe that gain-of-function research was one of the key causes of the Covid pandemic that struck us in the last decade,' said White House secretary Will Scharf. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hailed it as 'a historic day' and 'the end of gain-of-function research funding by the federal government.' Trump will NOT run for third term after insisting he was 'not joking' What is gain-of-function research? GAIN-of-function (GoF) research involves altering an organism — typically a virus or bacterium — to give it new or enhanced abilities. When it comes to viruses, this often means making them: • More transmissible (spread more easily between people or animals) • More virulent (cause more severe illness) • Able to infect new species (including humans) The goal is usually to better understand how pathogens evolve or to develop vaccines and treatments. For example, scientists might tweak a flu virus to see how it could mutate to jump from birds to humans — giving researchers a head start on fighting future outbreaks. But GoF research is highly controversial because of the risk it could create a supervirus that escapes the lab — whether accidentally or deliberately — and triggers a pandemic, as many fear happened with Covid-19. 'This dangerous game of function research, which aims at taking pathogens and making them more virulent, more transmissible on humans, many scientists believe is responsible for the COVID pandemic,' added NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. 'This research does not protect us against pandemics, as some people might say. There's always a danger that in doing this research, it might leak out,' he said. 'The vast majority of science will go on under this as normal.' The Covid-19 pandemic, which killed more than seven million people worldwide and over one million Americans, has long been surrounded by suspicion over its origins. Though former NIH boss Dr. Francis Collins and ex-NIAID chief Dr. Anthony Fauci insist the virus likely jumped naturally from animals to humans, others — including former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield — have backed the lab leak theory. It comes after The Sun's explosive Covid lab leak documentary laid bare the mounting evidence and disturbing questions surrounding the virus's emergence in Wuhan — home to China's most secretive bio-research facility. The new crackdown also follows an explosive congressional report last December, which concluded Covid "most likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan" - implicating China, US officials, and scientific institutions in a cover-up. The report also revealed the DOJ had probed the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance - accused of funnelling US taxpayer cash to the Wuhan lab through projects like 'Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.' The program, funded by NIAID and USAID between 2014 and 2021, led to gain-of-function research, according to former The National Institutes of Health (NIH) deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak — though officials have denied any direct Covid link. Another proposal, Project DEFUSE, submitted by EcoHealth president Dr. Peter Daszak to DARPA, sought to create chimeric bat coronaviruses — and has since been labelled the 'smoking gun' by lab leak proponents. Though never funded, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chief Redfield has warned such projects may still have been tested under other grants. 7 7 7 Daszak, who testified before Congress last year, admitted China's biosafety rules were weaker than America's — and said he lacked access to key genomic data from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He has fiercely denied any link between EcoHealth and the outbreak, branding lab-leak theorists 'conspiracy theorists' — a stance echoed by Fauci. But the Department of Defense's own watchdog found the US has struggled to track how much gain-of-function research it's helped fund — citing 'significant limitations' and noting such work could qualify as 'offensive biological' research. An audit sparked by Sen. Joni Ernst found at least seven grants worth more than $15.5 million were channelled through subrecipients to Chinese or other foreign labs. The Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency handed over another $46.7 million to EcoHealth Alliance alone. 'I have been fighting for years to end the insane practice of sending tax dollars to China for sketchy pseudoscience,' said Ernst. 'Thankfully, President Trump is ending the batty experiments, like those conducted in Wuhan, that are dangerous and wasteful.' The executive order pauses all infectious pathogen and toxin research until a new enforcement policy is drawn up by Office of Science and Technology boss Michael Kratsios and acting National Security adviser Marco Rubio. It also comes just days after the US released a bombshell new website on Covid origins - pointing the finger squarely at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In a desperate propaganda push, China hit back last week with a bizarre White Paper claiming the virus may have started in the US — accusing America of 'spreading misinformation' and 'scapegoating' Beijing for its own failures. The document insists Covid 'might have emerged in the United States earlier than its officially-claimed timeline' and slams the US for 'indifference and delayed actions.' But the evidence — and global pressure — continues to mount. 'This is a great win for the American people and common sense,' said Ernst. 'I will continue working to expose and halt all taxpayer-funded risky research of pandemic potential in malign foreign countries!'
Epoch Times
06-05-2025
- Health
- Epoch Times
Trump Bans Biomedical Research in Other Countries
President Donald Trump on May 5 banned federal funding for gain-of-function research in other countries, including China, just weeks after his administration 'It's a big deal,' Trump said in the Oval Office while signing the executive order. 'Could have been that we wouldn't have had the problem we had if we had this done earlier.' The president's order forbids federal funds from supporting risky research, which is aimed at increasing pathogenicity or another function of a virus, in other countries unless there is proper oversight. 'Many people believe that gain-of-function research was one of the key causes of the COVID pandemic,' White House staffer Will Scharf said while handing the document to the president to sign. According to the order, the new rules will protect Americans from potentially dangerous research that includes the manipulation of viruses, toxins, and other biological materials. Related Stories 5/5/2025 5/5/2025 The regulations are constructed so as not to interfere with the nation's national security and readiness to respond to threats, White House officials said in a statement. Changes are meant to improve enforcement, oversight, and transparency. 'What this executive order does, first of all, it provides powerful new tools to enforce the ban on federal funding of gain-of-function research abroad,' Scharf said. 'It also strengthens other oversight mechanisms ... and creates an overarching strategy to ensure that biomedical research, in general, is being conducted safely and ultimately protects human health more.' The directive empowers agencies to identify and rescind federal funding of any biological research that could endanger public health, safety, or 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,' the White House said in a fact sheet. The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development provided more than $1 million in funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, via the EcoHealth Alliance group, for experimenting on bat coronaviruses. The Chinese city that hosts the lab is the same city in which the first COVID-19 cases were identified. 'By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin, it would have already surfaced. But it hasn't,' the White House Officials also noted that researchers in Wuhan were sick with COVID-like symptoms months before COVID-19 was discovered at a wet market there. 'It leaked out, I've said that since Day 1,' Trump said. 'I've never changed that opinion.' EcoHealth has said the research in Wuhan did not result in COVID-19. Administration officials said the ban will prevent future leaks from occurring. 'This is a historic day. The end of gain-of-function research,' Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Health and Human Services director, said during the signing event. He described the history of dual-use research for vaccine and military purposes by U.S. intelligence agencies dating back to 1947. Such risky research was banned in 1973 by the Bioweapons Charter, but a line in the PATRIOT Act, passed in 2001 after the anthrax attacks and 9/11, exempted officials from liability and thus led to a resurgence in gain-of-function funding, according to Kennedy. 'It's a weapon that always has blowback, it's always bad news,' Kennedy said, pointing to three instances in 2014 when lab leaks occurred. 'In all the decades of bioweapons research, we can't point to a single good thing that has come from it.' He said other nations, including China, are developing all types of weapons using artificial intelligence and genetic technologies, which he described as 'devastating.' 'There's always a danger that in doing this research, it might leak out, just by accident even, and cause a pandemic,' Jay Battacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said during the signing ceremony. 'Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population, as well as the world, as we saw during the COVID pandemic.'
Sky News AU
05-05-2025
- Health
- Sky News AU
Donald Trump bans federal funding for 'dangerous' gain-of-function research, blocks funding for foreign research that could cause another pandemic
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday banning all federal funding for "dangerous" gain-of-function research in China, Iran and other countries and blocking all federal funding for foreign research that could cause another pandemic. The president signed the order Monday afternoon to improve the safety and security of biological research in the U.S. and around the world. The White House said the order "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." Gain-of-function research typically involves modifying a virus to make it more infectious among humans. Gain of function research took place at the Wuhan Lab before the COVID-19 pandemic began. The White House said the order will protect Americans from lab accidents and other biosecurity incidents, "such as those that likely caused COVID-19 and the 1977 Russian flu." The president's order ends any present and all future federal funding of gain-of-function research in countries with insufficient oversight of research, and it empowers U.S. research agencies to identify and end federal funding of any other biological research that could pose a threat to American public health, public safety or national security. "For decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight," the White House said in a fact sheet describing the order. "Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses." The order, according to the White House, "protects Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research that manipulates viruses and other biological agents and toxins, but it does not impede productive biological research that will ensure the United States maintains readiness against biological threats and continues to drive global leadership in biotechnology, biosecurity, and health research." "President Trump has long theorized that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has consistently pushed for transparency in investigating its origins," the White House said. Originally published as Donald Trump bans federal funding for 'dangerous' gain-of-function research, blocks funding for foreign research that could cause another pandemic
International Business Times
05-05-2025
- Health
- International Business Times
Trump to Sign Executive Order Banning All Risky Research that Lead to Covid-19 Pandemic: Report
President Trump will sign an executive order on Monday that will ban all federal funding for high-risk gain-of-function research that is being conducted in China, Iran, and other nations which lack adequate supervision of such experiments, according to a new report. This decision comes more than five years after the Covid-19 outbreak, which U.S. intelligence agencies now believe most likely originated from a laboratory accident in China. The order will immediately cut off funding from "any present and all future" gain-of-function studies. It will also authorize the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal bodies to monitor and flag biological research that could endanger public health to national security. Trump Puts and End to Research on Covid "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 that was obtained by The New York Post. White House officials also slammed the Biden administration for allowing experiments that increase the transmissibility of viruses and bacteria—research they claim could potentially trigger another global pandemic, the outlet reported. Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2—which has claimed the lives of over 1 million Americans—government officials, lawmakers, and scientists have continued to debate whether the virus originated from gain-of-function research funded by the U.S. at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Between 2014 and 2021, the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), then led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), directed more than $1.4 million in grants and subawards to the Chinese lab via EcoHealth Alliance for a project called "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." Stopping All Kinds of Risks to Humans This led to what former NIH principal deputy director Dr. Lawrence Tabak acknowledged were gain-of-function experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. However, he and other officials have maintained that there is no direct connection between those experiments and the Covid-19 pandemic. The FBI, Department of Energy, and CIA — along with former health leaders such as former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield — later pointed to a laboratory leak as the most probable origin of the outbreak.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump bans federal funding for 'dangerous' gain-of-function research
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday banning all federal funding for "dangerous" gain-of-function research in China, Iran and other countries and blocking all federal funding for foreign research that could cause another pandemic. The president signed the order Monday afternoon to improve the safety and security of biological research in the U.S. and around the world. Flashback: Covid Origins: Hhs Suspends Ecohealth Alliance Grants After Finding Taxpayer Funds Used In Risky Research The White House said the order "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." Gain-of-function research typically involves modifying a virus to make it more infectious among humans. Gain of function research took place at the Wuhan Lab before the COVID-19 pandemic began. The White House said the order will protect Americans from lab accidents and other biosecurity incidents, "such as those that likely caused COVID-19 and the 1977 Russian flu." Read On The Fox News App The president's order ends any present and all future federal funding of gain-of-function research in countries with insufficient oversight of research, and it empowers U.S. research agencies to identify and end federal funding of any other biological research that could pose a threat to American public health, public safety or national security. Flashback: Us Taxpayer Funds Flowed To Chinese Entities That Conducted Coronavirus Research Before Covid Pandemic: Gao "For decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight," the White House said in a fact sheet describing the order. "Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses." The order, according to the White House, "protects Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research that manipulates viruses and other biological agents and toxins, but it does not impede productive biological research that will ensure the United States maintains readiness against biological threats and continues to drive global leadership in biotechnology, biosecurity, and health research." "President Trump has long theorized that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has consistently pushed for transparency in investigating its origins," the White House said. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. Original article source: Trump bans federal funding for 'dangerous' gain-of-function research
