Trump Bans Federal Gain-of-Function Research Via Executive Order

President Trump and HHS Secretary RFK Jr. continue to rack up wins in their promised bid to clean up the Public Health™ bureaucracy.

Via USA Today (emphasis added):

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 5 to halt federal funding for a type of biomedical research in China and Iran, aiming to prevent the development of another pandemic like COVID-19.
Trump and some federal agencies have long theorized that the pandemic began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the Chinese deny.
“It can leak out innocently, stupidly and incompetently, and half destroy the world," Trump told reporters at the White House.
His executive order targeted the elimination of what is called gain-of-function, which studies how viruses become more powerful*. The United States funded that sort of research at the Wuhan lab, in the city where the initial outbreak was reported.

*Gain-of-function is not the “study of how viruses become more powerful”; it is the proactive souping-up of viruses — just to see what happens and, in theory, to get ahead of mutations that almost certainly would never occur in nature.

By way of its standard denial of reality in the service of its corporate and government masters, USA Today slips the caveat in: “a competing theory is that a person somehow came into contact with an infected animal.”

Right.

But the gaslighting from USA Today intensifies:

The U.S. intelligence community released an unclassified assessment that found the COVID-19 virus "probably emerged and infected humans" through a small exposure by November 2019, with the first cluster of cases in Wuhan, China. The agencies were divided over whether the exposure could have come from a lab or a natural exposure to an infected animal…
The intelligence community judged "the virus was not developed as a biological weapon" and that Chinese officials didn't know about the virus before the initial outbreak.
Mao Ning, spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters in January that experts from the WHO found it was “extremely unlikely” the pandemic was caused by a lab leak.
“The U.S. needs to stop politicizing and weaponizing origins-tracing at once, and stop scapegoating others,” Ning said.

USA Today is quoting CCP foreign ministry sources as if they’re credible now, with no independent fact-checking or even acknowledgment that the CCP has an obvious interest in denying its role in the pandemic.

Awesome. Great work, guys.

Interestingly enough, the article neglects to mention that even the CIA finally threw in the towel in January of this year, acknowledging the lab leak reality.

Via Whitehouse.gov (emphasis added):

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 Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight**. 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.
This recklessness, if unaddressed, may lead to the proliferation of research on pathogens (and potential pathogens) in settings without adequate safeguards, even after COVID-19 revealed the risk of such practices.

**This is a reference to the established research on publicly-funded novel coronavirus gain-of-function research that occurred at the University of North Carolina prior to its offshoring to China in 2014.

On the executive order specifics, Section 3 and Section 5, respectively, ban federal subsidy of gain-of-function research in “countries of concern” and monitors and tracks non-federally-funded gain-of-function research by the private sector inside the United States.

Continuing:

Sec. 3. Stop Dangerous Gain-of-Function Research. (a) The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), and in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the heads of other relevant executive departments and agencies (agencies) identified by the Director of OSTP, shall establish guidance for the heads of relevant agencies, to the extent consistent with the terms and conditions of the funding, to immediately:
(i) end Federal funding of dangerous gain-of-function research conducted by foreign entities in countries of concern (e.g., China) pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 6627(c), or in other countries where there is not adequate oversight to ensure that the countries are compliant with United States oversight standards and policies; and…
Sec. 5. Manage Risks Associated with Non-federally Funded Research. Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Director of OSTP, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the APNSA, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and the heads of other relevant agencies, shall develop and implement a strategy to govern, limit, and track dangerous gain-of-function research across the United States that occurs without Federal funding and other life-science research that could cause significant societal consequences. This strategy shall include actions to achieve comprehensive, scalable, and verifiable nucleic acid synthesis screening in non-federally funded settings. Any gaps in authorities necessary to achieve the goals of this strategy shall be addressed in a legislative proposal to be sent to the President, through the Director of OSTP and the APNSA, within 180 days of the date of this order.

Does this executive order, which is not a total outright ban of the practice, go far enough?

Or will Pfizer, et al. simply conduct their own gain-of-function research in some dingy offshore lab in the future, skirting any federal oversight?

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