Excerpt: “Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to improve the safety and security of biological research in the United States and around the world. This Executive 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.
- 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.”
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