President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order ending US federal funding of ‘dangerous gain-of-function research’ in China, Iran and other nations, which he said lack sufficient oversight.
The order ends ‘any present and all future’ federal funding for such research in those countries.
The order also temporarily pauses federally-funded research using infectious pathogens and toxins in the US for 120 days.
‘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.
During the 120-day pause in the US, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the national security adviser will work with funding agencies – namely the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – to develop a new policy for that research which is ‘safer, more enforceable, and transparent’.
The order also directs relevant public health officials and agencies to develop a strategy to limit and track gain-of-function research in the private sector and create a legislative proposal to close regulatory loopholes for that type of research.
According to the fact sheet, the goal is to promote ‘American biotechnology dominance’ and improve the safety and security of biological research both domestically and globally.
At the signing ceremony, Trump was flanked by HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, both of whom praised the order.
Kennedy said that Dr Anthony Fauci‘s research on viruses and bioweapons created an ‘arms race’ involving Russia, China and Iran. He said: ‘It’s a kind of weapon that always has blowback. There’s always bad news, and the justification for this kind of weaponry and this kind of research 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 cannot point to a single good thing that’s come from it.’
Bhattacharya said: ‘The conduct of this research does not protect us against pandemics, as some people might say, it doesn’t protect us against other nations. There’s always a danger that in doing this research, it might leak out, just by accident even, and cause a pandemic.’
Internist and bioweapons expert Dr Meryl Nass, who provided input for the executive order, said that although she thought that a global ban and global enforcement were ultimately necessary, the executive order was ‘an excellent start’ and she was ‘thrilled with the result’.
However, critics raised concerns that the order merely pauses the research rather than banning it outright. Investigative journalist Sam Husseini, who reported extensively on gain-of-function research during the covid event, said, ‘Pausing federal funding of so-called “gain of function” lab work is not the same as stopping it. If this is a temporary pause on federal funding, which will be followed by minimal reforms, then it will be more than anything an exercise in the management of the public mind.
‘This would be similar to the temporary ceasefire in Gaza put in place just as Trump was inaugurated to get the public to put Gaza out of their minds. Of course, Israel then quietly resumed its slaughter-and-starve politics with minimal media attention.’
McCullough Foundation epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher expressed cautious optimism, calling the order ‘a critical first step toward ending dangerous gain-of-function research once and for all’.
Hulscher welcomed the pause on experiments in the US involving infectious pathogens and toxins. He also noted the order ‘acknowledges a long-ignored danger: non-federally funded GOF research in private labs’.
Still, Hulscher warned, ‘We must remain clear-eyed – a temporary pause is not a permanent solution. Some of the most reckless and high-risk gain-of-function experiments have taken place right here on US soil.’
Gain-of-function research has faced restrictions before
Gain-of-function research typically involves altering a pathogen, often to make it more transmissible or deadly, usually with the stated goal of pre-emptive vaccine development.
Critics argue that it has a ‘dual-use’ potential, as the pathogens can be used for bioweapons research and development.
The question of Covid-19’s origins has largely become a partisan debate that sees it as either a natural spillover or a lab leak, although other researchers argue it could have been an intentional leak, or that there was no pandemic virus.
While many scientists pointed to likely origins resulting from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, public health officials, including Fauci and Dr Francis Collins, then head of the NIH, maintained that the virus had ‘natural origins’ – spilling over from animals to humans.
Evidence from Freedom of Information Act requests and a congressional investigation into the virus’s origins suggests that Fauci and others colluded to push the ‘natural origins’ theory and to cover up US government funding of risky gain-of-function research.
The substantial amount of evidence that has since been released pointing to a lab origin led the congressional committee, along with the FBI, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA to conclude that the virus most likely escaped from a lab.
Mounting evidence eventually prompted mainstream publications, including the New York Times, Vanity Fair and ProPublica to publish investigations supporting the theory.
At Monday’s signing ceremony, Trump reaffirmed his belief in the lab-leak theory. ‘I think I said that from Day 1, that it leaked out,’ he said. ‘A scientist walked outside to have lunch with a girlfriend or was together with a lot of people.’
Kennedy also reiterated his position, which he outlined in his 2023 book, The Wuhan Cover-Up and the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race, in which he argued for an end to gain-of-function research.
At the signing, Kennedy pointed to the long history of dual-use gain-of-function research by US military and intelligence agencies going back to the 1940s. Nixon ended that research in the 1970s, and more than 180 countries signed on to the Biological Weapons Convention, effectively ending the research globally until Congress passed the Patriot Act in 2001.
Obama froze federal funding in 2014, Trump unfroze it in 2017
The Obama administration froze federal funding for gain-of-function research in 2014, after critics raised concerns that sufficient guidelines were not in place.
Following the freeze, much federally funded research was moved offshore. During that time, the NIH funded the EcoHealth Alliance and its coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina.
The order blamed the Biden administration for the lack of effective oversight of such research: ‘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.’
Husseini noted that although the White House fact sheet places the blame for failed gain-of-function oversight on the Biden administration exclusively, the funding for Eco-health alliance ‘goes back at least to 2015 and continued through the first Trump administration until after the covid outbreak, when Trump finally cut it off’.
The first Trump administration in 2017 also lifted the ban on domestic gain-of-function research, restarting funding for research on influenza, and the SARS and MERS coronaviruses. That decision was framed as a response to a new and more stringent oversight process said to have been set up by HHS at the time.
Husseini criticised the new order for omitting any reference to international law, specifically the Biological Weapons Convention or its US implementing legislation, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
He said it indicated the order was ‘about pausing federal funding, not stopping such research, much less prosecuting individuals responsible’.
Nass said that strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention could be an effective way to create a global ban on the research with global enforcement.
This article appeared in The Defender on May 6, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
