The National Institute of Health (NIH) announced the end of gain-of-function research in a June 18 statement. The institute’s update said the move is in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order on the topic.
The president’s order was issued on May 5 of this year to improve the “safety and security of biological research.”
The agency is also suspending or terminating the awards that have supported this research, as the order requires. The awardees are required to review their research portfolios by June 30 to ensure the projects are terminated.
“NIH is requiring all NIH awardees to review their research portfolios to identify NIH funding and other support for projects meeting the definition of dangerous gain-of-function research,” the June 18 statement said
Trump’s Order
Trump’s May executive order concludes: “Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens.” Additionally, the order allowed for research agencies to find and end federal funding for other biological research that “could pose a threat to American public health, public safety, or national security.”
It also ended federal funding for gain-of-function research in countries of concern, such as China and Iran, and prohibited funding from moving to foreign research that would likely cause another pandemic.
According to the White House fact sheet, the order was given because “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.”
The president’s order paused U.S. research that used infectious pathogens and toxins, citing possible danger to American citizens, until a time when a safer and more transparent plan can be implemented.
Both COVID-19 and the 1977 Russian flu were used as illustrations of the possible outcome of underregulated research with dangerous pathogens.
House Oversight Report
In December 2024, the Republican-led House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a 520-page report that was the end result of a two-year investigation, announcing that its findings indicated the COVID-19 virus likely originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The report found that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was funded by the NIH and the EcoHealth Alliance Inc., which used U.S. taxpayer dollars to support the research at the lab.
The committee said in its report that COVID-19 had biological characteristics not previously found in nature. According to the committee, the data reviewed indicated that all COVID-19 cases could be traced back to a single introduction into humans. This is different than previous pandemics, where there were multiple spillover events discovered.
“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin, it would have already surfaced,” the oversight subcommittee said in a statement.
The committee findings also cited a June 2023 Office of the Director of National Intelligence report that offered a similar conclusion, and went even further, stating, “Scientists at the WIV have created chimeras, or combinations of SARS-like coronaviruses through genetic engineering, attempted to clone other unrelated viruses, and used reverse genetic cloning techniques on SARS-like coronaviruses.”
During the investigation, the panel interviewed Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who left the role in December 2022.
According to the committee report, Fauci “prompted” a research study titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” for the purpose of disproving the theory of the pandemic originating via a lab leak.
“Although Dr. Fauci believed the lab-leak theory to be a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, it now appears that his position is that he does have an open mind about the origin of the virus—so long as it does not implicate EcoHealth Alliance, and by extension himself and NIAID,” it stated, citing Fauci’s memoir that was published weeks after the hearing.
More Changes
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which governs the NIH and other agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has made other significant changes. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy notified the 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices on June 9 of their dismissal.
The panel was created by the CDC to provide advice about vaccines, including childhood and adult immunization schedules.
Members “are knowledgeable in the fields of immunization practices and public health, have expertise in the use of vaccines and other immunobiologic agents in clinical practice or preventive medicine, have expertise with clinical or laboratory vaccine research, or have expertise in assessment of vaccine efficacy and safety,” the committee’s charter says.
Kennedy spoke to reporters about the dismissals, saying that the new members would be credentialed scientists and doctors “who are going to do evidence-based medicine, who are going to be objective, and who are going to follow the science and make critical public health determinations for our children based upon the best science.”
