On Monday, President Donald Trump, joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Dr. Marty Makary to sign an executive order banning gain-of-function research.
🚨 BREAKING: @POTUS just signed an executive order protecting Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research.
The 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… pic.twitter.com/4Cn7iQ4i3L
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 5, 2025
BREAKING:
@POTUS just signed an executive order protecting Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research.The 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.
The Executive Order reads in part:
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.
Sec. 2. Policy. 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. 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.
Most of us lived through the COVID-19 madness; some tragically did not survive it. As a nation, we are quantifying the damage done physically, psychologically, and spiritually. As my colleague Katie Jerkovich reported, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is investigating COVID’s origins, and Sen. Rand Paul plans to hold former NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his lies, cover-up, and duplicitous grandstanding.
But the weight behind this executive order is that it will unravel the web of darkness that has been perpetrated upon the American people for decades.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was first out of the gate to acknowledge that the entire pandemic could have been prevented. Makary also noted that it was President Trump 45 who was the first to allege that the COVID-19 virus might have originated in the Wuhan lab.
WATCH:
FDA Commissioner @MartyMakary: “It’s unbelievable to think the entire nightmare of covid was preventable… It’s crazy to think this entire nightmare was probably the result of some scientists messing with mother nature in a laboratory with technology exported from the United… pic.twitter.com/CTHJrxfJp2
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 5, 2025
It’s unbelievable to think that the entire nightmare of COVID was likely preventable. And you had good instincts early on, Mr. President, in suggesting it came from the Wuhan lab. That is now the leading theory among scientists: it was five miles from the hospital where it first broke out. So, it’s crazy to think that this entire nightmare was probably the result of some scientist messing with Mother Nature in a laboratory with technology exported from the United States that was inserted pure in cleavage site. So, I hope this does some good in the world and Mr. President, thanks for doing it.
HHS Secretary Kennedy presented a concise and detailed history of how gain-of-function became embedded in our government systems and why the world must rid itself of it.
WATCH:
.@SecKennedy tells the story of how America came to fund Gain-of-Function research in Wuhan: “In all of the history of Gain-of-Function research, we cannot point to a single good thing that has come of it.” pic.twitter.com/D3mgDNYRyP
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 5, 2025
Mr. President, it’s an extraordinary day. The end of gain-of-function research funding by the federal government and also controls by private corporations on gain-of-function studies.
This was the kind of study that was engaged in by the United States military and intelligence agencies beginning in 1947. By 1969 the CIA said that they had reached “nuclear equivalency.” That they could kill the entire U.S. population for 0.29 cents a person. That year, President Nixon went to Fort Detrick and announced a unilateral end to this kind of research, what they called, “dual use research,” research that was for vaccination and also for military purposes. He then persuaded over 180 countries to sign the bioweapons charter in 1973. That basically ended gain-of-function research around the globe until 2002.
In 2001, after the anthrax attacks, we passed the Patriot Act and the Patriot Act had a provision–a little known provision in it that said that although the bioweapons charter is still in effect, and the Geneva Convention is still in effect, U.S. federal officials that violate it cannot be prosecuted. And that relaunched the bioweapons arms race and that was driven by gain-of-function research.
In 2014, three of those bugs escaped from U.S. labs, and President Obama declared a moratorium on future use, and instead, a lot of that research was moved offshore to the Wuhan lab.
We have a large bioweapons arms race all around the country, all around the world. So that China is engaged in it, developing all kinds of weapons using AI and CRISPR technologies that are really devastating. Russia is deeply engaged in it, Iran and many other countries. It’s a kind of weapon that always had blowback, there’s always bad news, and the justification for this kind of weaponry was… and these kinds of research, was always that we have to do this to develop vaccines to counter future pandemics. In all of the history of gain-of-function research, we cannot point to a single good thing that has come from it. And today, I commend President Trump for his courage and his vision in ending US bioweapons research.
Elon Musk also weighed in, saying the real name for gain-of-function is “death maximization.”
This is great. No more funding “research” that kills millions of people!
The real name for “gain of function” is death maximization. That’s what Fauci was actually researching. https://t.co/rc4NPr2C1E
— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) May 5, 2025
Musk is not wrong. Let us pray that President Trump’s executive action, with Congress and our law enforcement agencies holding the perpetrators of these crimes accountable, will bring a swift and determined end to this practice around the world.
