US President Donald Trump signed an executive order today banning all federal funding for controversial infectious disease research in China, Iran and other foreign countries that the government deems to have insufficient research oversight, APA reports citing CNN.
This area of study, known as gain-of-function research, involves altering a virus’ traits in a laboratory to study its spread and mutations.
The first Trump administration lifted a moratorium on gain-of-function studies in 2017. But controversy around the practice reignited in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the National Institutes of Health canceled a federal grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a group working with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses.
Federal agencies say there is not enough definitive evidence to conclude whether the Covid-19 pathogen leaked from a lab or spread from wildlife to humans naturally. Many scientists believe, based on analyses of the virus and early cases, that the virus occurred naturally in animalsand spread to humans in an outbreak at the Wuhan market. Republican-led congressional committees have deemed the pandemic’s origins a likely lab leak and called for the administration to bar gain-of-function research again.
The White House teed up a potential ban in a website launched last month that cited a House committee report. The website reroutes from Covid.org, which used to provide information about coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines.
The executive order would also direct the National Institutes of Health and other agencies to identify and eliminate any biological research that could pose a threat to American public health. The White House said it will also prohibit any future funding of research on viruses with pandemic potential, though it is unclear how broad that ban would be.
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