Earlier today President Trump signed an executive order blocking the U.S. development of “gain of function” research, the manipulation of biological agents to weaponize their lethality. [Executive Order Here]
As Health and Human Service Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr noted in his remarks, the modern U.S. development of the bioweapons program was an outcome of a little-known subset within the Patriot Act that allowed scientists to develop bioweapons without legal accountability for any negative outcome. Let us not pretend….
In 2014 a U.S. developed bioweapon escaped a lab and in response President Obama stopped the program. However, the stoppage only blocked development of the bioweapons on U.S. soil. The various government agencies then continued the “gain of function” bioweapon development by offshoring the experiments and conducting the research in foreign countries. The SARS-CoV-2 weapon, COVID-19, was developed in one of those labs in Wuhan, China, and escaped creating the pandemic of 2020. WATCH:
EXECUTIVE ORDER – Section 1. Purpose. Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens. If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.
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.
This recklessness, if unaddressed, may lead to the proliferation of research on pathogens (and potential pathogens) in settings without adequate safeguards, even after COVID-19 revealed the risk of such practices.
