President Donald Trump signed an executive order looking to limit federal funding for gain-of-function research that involves altering pathogens, suggesting the efforts could have been responsible for the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.“It could have been that we didn’t have the problem we had,” Trump told reporters Monday as he signed the executive order in the White House.
While the origins of the coronavirus pandemic remain unclear, some US intelligence agencies have concluded it’s likely that Covid-19 broke out from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Scientists, including at that lab, use both breeding practices and genetic engineering to make viruses more infectious, arguing the research is valuable for vaccine studies and to better understand pathogens.
“There’s no laboratory that does this right, there’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “This is going to prevent these kind of inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity.”The order will end US funding of gain-of-function research in countries deemed to have insufficient oversight, and allows the federal government to identify and end private biological research deemed a threat to American public health, according to the New York Post, which first reported the executive order.
While the origins of the coronavirus pandemic remain unclear, some US intelligence agencies have concluded it’s likely that Covid-19 broke out from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Scientists, including at that lab, use both breeding practices and genetic engineering to make viruses more infectious, arguing the research is valuable for vaccine studies and to better understand pathogens.
“There’s no laboratory that does this right, there’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “This is going to prevent these kind of inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity.”The order will end US funding of gain-of-function research in countries deemed to have insufficient oversight, and allows the federal government to identify and end private biological research deemed a threat to American public health, according to the New York Post, which first reported the executive order.
The order was one of a series of health-related executive orders and proclamations Trump signed Monday. Another, which the White House did not immediately provide details of, is designed to promote domestic manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
The president has threatened to impose additional tariffs on drugs made overseas in a bid to move drugmaking to the US, and said Monday that the announcement would come within “two weeks.”
Trump also teased another announcement related to drug prices in the coming days.
“We’re going have a big announcement next week on some of this kind of thing, but more related to costs, the cost of medicines and drugs because we’re being ripped off,” Trump said.
