President Donald Trump halted the use of federal money for gain-of-function studies conducted in some foreign countries, such as China, where evidence suggests the Covid-19 crisis originated, on Monday evening with an executive order.
According to a point sheet released by the White House, the order focuses on prohibiting funding for for research in what are deemed” places of concern,” which include Iran and other countries lacking strict supervision for genetic research.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, which received U.S. money through EcoHealth Alliance, conducted studies on bat coronaviruses that is cited in the determination. ” It is leak out, like from Wuhan,” he said. Trump said in the Oval Office,” I believe I did that right away. ” I’ve not changed that mind.”
This executive order is intended to lower the chance of developing epidemics that might come from labs in the future. In a normally controlled laboratory setting, grain-of-function research involves studying potential threats by altering viruses to render them more infecundary or destructive.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, who had been outspoken in his criticism to Covid-19 vaccines and quarantine measures, and Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health and author of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized common lockdowns during the pandemic.
No experiment is immune to leaks, so Kennedy and Trump both said,” This is going to stop those kinds of unintended leakage from occurring in the future and endangering humanity.” This executive order is a pretext to prevent us from being involved in that kind of research in the future because it cost 20 million lives and cost the world at least$ 25 trillion.
Trump expressed his satisfaction in the measure after Kennedy’s comments, saying he was “very honored” to sign the order. The law aims to shield Americans from incidents that are related to those that have previously been suspected of being related to labs, like the 1977 Russian virus, which some researchers believe was the result of a lab incident. According to the White House, it even includes provisions to “discourage personal understanding of laws that researchers have used in the past” as well as improvements to biosafety and biosecurity techniques.
According to National Review, Republican Congressman James Comer (R-Ky. ), who is the House Oversight Committee, praised Trump for removing U.S. taxpayer funding for gain-of-function research. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins testified during a two-year investigation that the agency’s Select Subcommittee on the Ebola Pandemic conducted. Both parties eventually acknowledged that the lab leak theory is a reliable source of information and never a plot.
Every American may remain outraged that illiterate people’s tax dollars were used by illiterate scientists to create more dangerous and transmittable coronaviruses, Comer said in a statement. ” I applaud President Trump for enforcing a government-wide ban on gain-of-function analysis. This management is taking decisive action to stop the spread of the next crisis from a lab because it is concerned about the safety and health of all Americans.
