All U.S. federal funding destined for “dangerous” gain-of-function biological research in China, Iran and a host other countries was banned Monday via an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
The move came as part of Trump’s call for improvements in the safety and security of biological research in the U.S. and globally.
The president has long championed the theory SARS-CoV-2 – more commonly known as coronavirus – leaked from the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology in China as a combined result of gain-of-function research and poor security measures sparked a lab leak.
FOX News reports the White House said the order “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.”
Gain-of-function research typically involves modifying a virus to make it more infectious among humans. Gain-of-function biological studies took place at the Wuhan Lab before the coronavirus pandemic began and swept the world.
U.S. President Donald Trump, accompanied by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holds up a new executive order at the White House on May 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump signed new proclamations and executive orders, including one that ended federal funding for so-called gain-of-function studies. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“There’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks — and this is going to prevent inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X.
“Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population, as well as the world, as we saw during the COVID pandemic,” added Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health.
The White House promised the order will protect Americans from lab accidents and other biosecurity incidents, “such as those that likely caused COVID-19 and the 1977 Russian flu.” The FOX News report set out further details:
The president’s order ends any present and all future federal funding of gain-of-function research in countries with insufficient oversight of research, and it empowers U.S. research agencies to identify and end federal funding of any other biological research that could pose a threat to American public health, public safety or national security.
“For decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight,” the White House said in a fact sheet describing the order.
“Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses.”
Read the full White House statement titled ‘IMPROVING THE SAFETY AND SECURITY OF BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH’ here
