PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM DANGEROUS GAIN OF FUNCTION RESEARCH: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to improve the safety and security of biological research in the United States and around the world. This Executive Order:
- Ends any present and all future Federal funding of dangerous gain-of-function research in countries of concern like China and Iran and in foreign nations deemed to have insufficient research oversight.
- Empowers American research agencies to identify and end Federal funding of other biological research that could pose a threat to American public health, public safety, or national security.
- Prohibits Federal funding from contributing to foreign research likely to cause another pandemic. 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.
- Protects Americans from lab accidents and other biosecurity incidents, such as those that likely caused COVID-19 and the 1977 Russian flu.
ESTABLISHING SAFE AND SECURE OVERSIGHT OF DANGEROUS GAIN OF FUNCTION RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES: This Executive Order will increase the safety and security of biological research for Americans without impeding U.S. innovation.
- For decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight. Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses.
- The Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research with insufficient levels of oversight and actively approved Federal life-science research funding in China and other countries.
- The 2024 United States Government Policy for Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential (“DURC/PEPP”) and the 2024 Framework for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening are the latest examples of inadequate policies that rely on self-reporting and fail to protect Americans from dangerous research practices.
- This Order pauses research using infectious pathogens and toxins in the United States that may pose a danger to American citizens until a safer, more enforceable, and transparent policy governing such research can be developed and implemented. It directs the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Security Advisor (NSA) to work with funding agencies to develop such a policy within 120 days.
- Unlike previous policies, this Order contains enforcement and reporting mechanisms that will strengthen oversight and discourage subjective interpretation of policies that researchers have used in the past to evade biosafety and biosecurity oversight.
SAFEGUARDING THE FUTURE AND PROMOTING AMERICAN BIOTECHNOLOGY DOMINANCE: President Trump is driving us into the Golden Age of American Innovation that will lead us to a safer, healthier, and more prosperous America.
- This Order 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.