Donald Trump bans 'dangerous' virus research funding to China after Covid-19 leak

Donald Trump has taken a decisive step by signing an executive order to halt all federal funding for hazardous virus research in countries considered hostile or lacking adequate regulation, five years after COVID-19, which US intelligence now suspects likely originated from a lab accident.

The former President's sweeping directive, implemented on Monday, immediately terminates "any present and all future" US financial backing for gain-of-function research in nations such as and Iran, where safety supervision is deemed inadequate. This contentious research involves genetically altering diseases and other pathogens for study, potentially enhancing their virulence and posing a risk if inadvertently released from a lab.

Furthermore, the order empowers the National Institutes of Health and other entities to identify and withdraw funding from biological research deemed harmful to public health or national security, as announced in a post on X, formerly known as , by the White House's Rapid Response 47 X account.

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What is Trump's new executive order?

The announcement stated: "@POTUS just signed an executive order protecting Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research.", reports .

"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.", according to the Express.

"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 question of whether Covid-19 originated in China is still being debated. This move comes as leading US intelligence agencies, including the FBI, Energy Department, and CIA, increasingly agree that COVID-19 probably resulted from a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China.

This view is shared by former health figures like Dr. Robert Redfield, ex-CDC Director, as reported by the New York Post.

However, there are experts who continue to support the natural zoonotic transfer hypothesis, suggesting the virus jumped from animals to humans without human intervention. These include the Biden administration's chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins.

President Trump's recent directive imposes an immediate halt on all infectious pathogen and toxin research until the Office of Science and Policy and the national security advisor establish stricter guidelines. It is anticipated that the impending regulations will encompass rigorous enforcement and reporting requirements.

What did President Biden do to prevent hazardous lab leaks?

President Biden introduced a comparable restriction in December 2022, but it had certain loopholes - allowing the Health and Human Services secretaries to circumvent the ban after notifying Congress. Nonetheless, federal officials have faced challenges in comprehensively tracing the use of grant funds.

The newly introduced order brings greater attention to the disputed US-funded research conducted in Wuhan. Between 2014 and 2021, over $1.4 million in grants and subawards were allocated through EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, then overseen by Fauci, and the US Agency for International Development.

The project, named "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," led to gain-of-function work as stated by Dr. Lawrence Tabak, former NIH principal deputy director. Nonetheless, Tabak and others have disputed a direct link to COVID.

A separate grant proposal from EcoHealth, known as Project DEFUSE, has garnered even more scrutiny. Despite never receiving funding, it has been referred to as a "smoking gun" by critics who claim it demonstrates COVID was fabricated in a lab.

Oddly, the DEFUSE project was left out of a US intelligence report on the origins of COVID from 2021, even though it wasn't classified.

Did Biden know of a potential leak from the Wuhan lab?

Startling documents obtained by US Right to Know have revealed that EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak attempted to downplay the involvement of Wuhan researchers in a contentious proposal.

"I simply wanted to stress the US side of the proposal," Dr. Daszak explained during his Congressional testimony in 2023, before admitting that China's safety standards couldn't match those of the United States.

Even though the DEFUSE proposal never received funding from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) since its submission in 2018, Dr. Redfield has warned of dangers—the initiative might still proceed with backing from other sources.

Facing the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Dr. Daszak acknowledged he was unaware of the full genomic data from the Wuhan lab, opening the door to undiscovered coronavirus samples existing there.

Now, fresh allegations from a Defense Department whistleblower suggest deeper controversy: DEFUSE was inexplicably disregarded in the 2021 report on COVID's origins by the US Intelligence Community. Even more troubling are claims that extra hints of a lab accident were discovered by FBI and DoD experts but shockingly excluded from President Biden’s briefing by then-National Intelligence Director Avril Haines.

Both Daszak and Dr. Fauci have repeatedly dismissed the lab-leak theory.

Fauci, formerly the leading figure for COVID-19 response under the Biden administration, referred to those supporting the lab-leak idea as "conspiracy theorists."

Meanwhile, a report from the Department of Defense Inspector General has disclosed that U.S. officials remain unable to comprehensively oversee gain-of-function research in China and elsewhere.