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President Donald Trump’s executive order strengthening restrictions on gain-of-function research is a sensible step in his administration’s crusade for sanity. Signed Monday evening, the order seeks to clamp down on the risky research that modifies pathogens or toxins to enhance their ability to cause disease or spread more easily, which most authorities believe caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
A White House fact sheet claims the new order “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.”
This is a broader clampdown on gain-of-function research than was enacted by former President Barack Obama. Late in his second term, Obama announced a funding pause for some gain-of-function experiments on certain pathogens, including influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses. But enforcement was limited, and the federal government continued to fund other gain-of-function research, including experiments at the Wuhan Institute for Virology with grants from Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health.