Trump to ban risky gain-of-function research linked to Covid lab-leak origin theory: Report

US President Donald Trump is preparing to issue an executive order to ban ‘gain-of-function’ (GoF) research over the risks it poses, according to a report.

The GoF research refers to the kind of biological research that gives an organism a characteristic it does not naturally have. While such research can be quite harmless in its basic forms where it helps understand how organisms and pathogens work and even help develop new treatments, advanced form of research with viruses and bacteria has been deemed too risky.

Since 2020 when the Covid-19 outbreak in China’s Wuhan caused a global pandemic, the GoF research has been central to the possibility of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, emerging from a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). For years before the outbreak, scientists at WIV had been conducting GoF research on coronaviruses that involved inserting new features into these viruses to make them more transmissible and virulent. To distinguish the harmless GoF research from such advanced research, the WIV-type research is now called gain-of-function research of concern (GOFROC).

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Trump administration is preparing an executive order to halt federal government’s funding to such research on the grounds that it could endanger human health.

However, the Journal reported that the order may have exceptions, such as the allowing research on some viruses, such as the bird flu H5N1, to continue.

Previously, Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, told Firstpost that the GOF research of concern “has no civilian practical applications” . He said that such research is not needed for the development of vaccines or drugs as therapeutics are developed for diseases that exist and not diseases from pathogens that would be created in a lab through such research.

Ebright said that while benefits of such research are marginal at best, the risks are apocalyptic.

Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic began in Wuhan, there is now a strong case for the lab-origin of the pandemic. In what experts have called smoking gun evidence for the lab-leak case, the Covid-19 virus had exactly the same feature that Chinese scientists at Wuhan were working on as part of their yearslong gain of function research. The feature is a ‘furin cleavage site’ (FCS) which grants the virus the ability to enter humans. SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus from its family of coronaviruses to have FCS. Chinese scientists at Wuhan were working to add FCS into coronaviruses at the time of the outbreak.

Ebright told Firstpost, “The gain-of-function research likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic and surely could cause the next pandemic…As the gain-of-function research of concern poses high —potentially existential— risks and provides limited benefits, the risk-benefit ratio for the research almost always is extremely unfavourable. The gain-of-function research of concern should be banned or, at absolute minimum, should be subject to independent and transparent national- or international-level oversight that ensures that, before research is started, risk-benefit assessment is performed, risk-benefit profiles are acceptable, and mitigable risks are mitigated.”