Trump’s Gain-Of-Function Research Crackdown Turns Out To Be Narrower Than Expected

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday updating guidance for researchers and government agencies with the aim of stopping federal funding for foreign research that generates new pandemic-capable viruses, a less sweeping executive order than prior drafts, which were set to implement rules banning gain-of-function research at home and abroad.

The executive order directs several agencies to update guidance for researchers to ban federal funding from flowing to countries including North Korea, Iran, Russia and China for such research on all pathogens, according to the White House. Guidance was due to go into effect Tuesday, putting a similar restriction on U.S. funding for foreign research, but was superseded by the order. The NIH already announced on May 1 that it would cease all foreign subawards.

The 🏢Daily Caller News Foundationreported in April that a more sweeping executive order enforceable by law was expected banning gain-of-function research in the U.S. and abroad. The executive order was being drafted and refined by biosecurity expert Gerry Parker, who leads the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy Director within the National Security Council. Parker had not sought input from many officials within the government, including at the NIH, who have historically staved off meaningful regulation.

By contrast, the executive order charges many different agencies with formulating the new guidance: The Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services and the heads of other relevant executive departments and agencies identified by the director of OSTP.

The White House didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

“It is the policy of the United States to ensure that United States federally funded research benefits American citizens without jeopardizing our Nation’s security, strength, or prosperity,” the executive order reads. “My Administration will balance the prevention of catastrophic consequences with maintaining readiness against biological threats and driving global leadership in biotechnology, biological countermeasures, biosecurity, and health research.”

The executive order updates the previously expected guidance to broaden the number of experiments covered, defining “dangerous gain-of-function research” as scientific research on any pathogen or toxin with the potential to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or increasing its transmissibility.

It also introduces more enforcement mechanisms than in the previous guidance, including specifying the revocation of federal funding and a five-year debarment period for violators and a requirement that researchers must inform federal funding agencies of any dangerous gain-of-function research even if it is not funded by that agency.

There are no criminal penalties for violators.

The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — the institute run by President Joe Biden’s White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci for nearly four decades — underwrites most publicly-funded gain-of-function research of concern.

Under prior regulations, a private panel within the Department of Health and Human Services called the Pandemic Potential Pathogens Committee (P3CO) determines whether the benefits of gain-of-function research of concern outweighs the risks. But the research proposals, the deliberations and the makeup of the panel all remain secret.

In 2014, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Department of Health and Human Services implemented a moratorium on gain-of-function research of concern and announced a deliberative process to assess the potential risks and benefits in the wake of several biosafety breaches.

When the moratorium was lifted, HHS implemented the P3CO process.

Yet gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses funded by the NIAID and conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) progressed despite the moratorium and without oversight by the P3CO — including an experiment that engineered a coronavirus that generated 10,000 times the viral load of the original virus. Fauci denied this research constituted “gain-of-function research” repeatedly under oath.

Biden gave Fauci a full and unconditional pardon on Jan. 19 for any potential crimes stretching back to 2014, the year the moratorium was implemented.

The American organization that subcontracted NIAID funding to the WIV, EcoHealth Alliance, as well as its president Peter Daszak, were debarred from federal funding for five years for poor oversight of its partner lab in Wuhan and for not cooperating with federal investigations into the matter.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a podcast interview on May 1 that her office at the ODNI will work with the NIH to identify high-risk coronavirus studies that may be connected to the pandemic’s origins.

The NIH’s board of scientific advisors on biosafety and biosecurity, nonpartisan government watchdogs, virologists and biosecurity experts with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and congressional Republicans have all recommended more stringent rules on high-risk virology, both internationally and at home.

By coincidence, the NIH maximum security lab at Fort Detrick, the NIAID Integrated Research Facility, is under a temporary research pause due to personnel issues that risked jeopardizing biosafety.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Director of Communications Andrew G. Nixon confirmed to DCNF that the temporary shutdown stems from a “lover’s spat” in which one researcher punctuated the other’s personal protective equipment.

Biotechnology enabling gene sequencing, gene synthesis and gene editing has accelerated in recent years — generating concerns about lab-born pandemics.

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