In a quiet Oval Office signing ceremony last week, President Trump released a new executive order that included a shocking clause.
The order immediately halted all U.S. government funding for gain-of-function research “in China, Iran and other foreign countries.”
Gain-of-function (GOF) studies focus on altering harmful pathogens to make them more virulent and infectious. In stopping this research, the new executive order “will drastically reduce the potential for lab-related incidents like that conducted in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the White House said.
Who would have dreamed this type of U.S. government-funded research was being conducted in hostile countries?
This explosive clause should have grabbed headlines but astoundingly, the media ignored it. Almost as if the notion of deadly pathogens in the hands of scientists controlled by tyrannical regimes stirred no interest.
Instead of exploring the ramifications of the bombshell announcement–Are the allegations true? If yes, what could possibly be the motive for funding dangerous biolabs in these countries? Why was nothing done about this until now?—the media occupied itself with a more philosophical question: is halting experimentation with deadly pathogens good or bad for “Science”? A host of experts were quoted on both sides of the debate.
What a stark contrast with the media’s frenzied reaction when rumors first surfaced about US funding bioweapons facilities in Ukraine after Russia invaded that country in 2022.
USA Today raced to “fact check,” slamming the allegations as “Russian disinformation.”
“False claim of U.S. bio labs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign. Russia has teamed up with China to further amplify the false claim of U.S. labs in Ukraine,” the paper’s headlines warned darkly.
Rear Admiral John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary under the Biden-Harris administration, dismissed the allegations as “laughable.”
“The Russian accusations are absurd. They’re laughable. And you know, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey. There is nothing to it,” Kirby told a press conference. “It’s classic Russian propaganda. And, and I wouldn’t — if I were you, I wouldn’t give it a drop of ink worth paying attention to.”
Asked by Fox News whether a financial relationship existed between the Pentagon and a bioweapons facility in Ukraine, as per the allegations, the State Department dodged the question.
“The U.S. Department of Defense does not own or operate biological laboratories in Ukraine,” a spokesman said in a statement.
But the question wasn’t about the United States “owning” or “operating” laboratories in Ukraine. It was about whether the U.S. government provided funding.
It turns out that the U.S. Defense Department has a website that contains a media clip about the opening of a biological research facility in Ukraine in 2010, which seems to answer the funding question.
“U.S. Senator Dick Lugar applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine this week announcing it will be instrumental in researching dangerous pathogens used by bio terrorists,” a spokesman says on the media clip. “The level-3 biosafety lab will be used to study anthrax, tularemia, and Q fever as well as other dangerous pathogens.”
Backing up the media clip, a 2011 report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences explains that the Odessa-based laboratory “is responsible for the identification of especially dangerous biological pathogens.”
Stunning Admission
Despite clear evidence that the federal government funded two dozen biolabs in Ukraine, the drum beat of denial in the media continued until a stunning admission emerged from Victoria Nuland, then under secretary of state, during a March 2022 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Nuland was responding to questions from Senator Marco Rubio of Florida (now secretary of state) during her testimony.
Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?
Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities, which in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of. So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
Nuland’s testimony was seen by many as confirmation that the United States was in fact funding bioweapons facilities in Ukraine. In the ensuing uproar, a Pentagon official released an official clarification:
“Undersecretary Nuland was referring to Ukrainian diagnostic and bio defense laboratories during her testimony, which are not biological weapons facilities,” the official said. “These institutions counter biological threats throughout the country.”
Defining a nation’s bioweapon as intended either for defensive purpose or military aggression can be tricky. The weapons can obviously suit both purposes. For example, one could describe America’s nuclear stockpile correctly as “defensive.” It wasn’t designed to initiate a war to wipe out a population. The weapons were designed to prevent other nations from waging war on America, but they’re still capable of mass destruction.
Were the biolabs in Ukraine simply conducting research or were they developing bioweapons with a military application—which would be a violation of the Bioweapons Charter?
Robert Kennedy Jr., now the head of Health and Human Services, stated unequivocally in a 2023 interview, “The U.S. has created biological laboratories in Ukraine for the purpose of developing biological weapons for the Pentagon.”
“Those bioweapons are using all kinds of new synthetic biology and CRISPR technology (a powerful gene-editing tool used in modifying DNA) and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to a previous generation,” RFK elaborated.
He added that “when the Patriot Act reopened the biolabs arms race in 2001, the Pentagon began putting a lot of money into bioweapons.”
The Bioweapons Race
Three years later, standing at President Trump’s side in the Oval Office as the president signed the newest executive order, RFK offered an eye-opening glimpse of how GOF and bioweapons research in this country accelerated so drastically over the past seven decades.
“Gain of function research began in 1947. By 1969,” RFK said, “the CIA said it had reached nuclear-level equivalency (in the development of bioweapons), that it could kill the entire U.S. population for $0.29 per person.”
“Bioweapons are a kind of weapon that always has blowback, it’s always bad news,” RFK Jr. continued, adding that the devastating events caused by lab-related accidents are seen by GOF advocates as sacrifices for the higher good. [See Sidebar]
That “higher good” is the development of vaccines deemed crucial for “public health.”
The HHS director recapped the history of how GOF research was recognized early on as a dangerous, fruitless avenue of research. Leaders who sought to shut it down, however, were outmaneuvered by individuals who championed the experimentation.
“By 1969, President Nixon went to Fort Deitrich and announced a unilateral end to gain of function research, which was called “dual use” research, meaning that it was intended for both vaccination development and military purposes,” RFK said.
“Nixon then persuaded 180 countries to sign the bioweapons charter of 1973 that ended gain of function research around the globe.”
A fateful twist came with the passage of the Patriot Act in 2002 following the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, RFK recounted. “The Patriot Act had a little known provision in it that said that although the Bioweapons Charter and the Geneva Charter are still in effect, US officials who violated it cannot be prosecuted.”
“That relaunched the bioweapons arms race, and that was driven by gain of function research,” the HHS Director said.
Lab Accident Caused Ebola Outbreak
RFK went on to recount that in 2014, “three of those bugs [pathogens]” escaped from US labs in Africa, [causing the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa]. President Obama declared a moratorium on future use [of bioweapons research] and instead, much of that research was moved offshore to the Wuhan lab and other sites.
“GOF research and bioweapons have become a global preoccupation,” he said, “Russia is deeply engaged in this research as are Iran and other countries.”
Some have speculated that Washington’s intent behind funding biolabs in foreign countries might be to wield a measure of control as well as gain access to inside information.
But RFK dismissed that notion. “In the entire history of gain of function research, we can’t find a single good thing that has come out of it,” he declared.
Newly appointed NIH director Jay Battacharya who was also present at the signing ceremony noted that the fallacy of GOF research is “believing that it can protect us, either against pandemics or against bioterror attacks from other nations. That belief is an illusion,” he said.
“Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population and that of the world.”
The president signed the order last Monday “to improve the safety and security of biological research in the U.S. and around the world.” But experts say it’s not at all certain that the gain-of-function genie can be put back in the bottle.
As Kennedy noted, most countries around the world are doing this research, which has become cheap, easy, and convenient. Any mad scientist determined enough to create his own bioweapon can order equipment from Amazon for next-day delivery and quickly start creating Ebola viruses from scratch.
Another witness at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that heard the shocking testimony from Victoria Nuland was Dr. Steven Quay, chief executive officer at Atossa Therapeutics Inc. He co-wrote a Wall Street Journal column citing four studies that provide strong evidence for the lab-leak theory.
One study, published by Nature Medicine, concluded the original SARS-CoV-2 pathogen was 99.5% optimized for human infection, which is strong confirmation of the lab-leak hypothesis.
Quay was asked at the hearing by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., if he was concerned about the expansion of Chinese GOF research. In response, Quay pointed out that in December 2019, Chinese researchers were “doing synthetic biology on a cloning vector of the Nipah virus, which is 60% lethal.”
“We just experienced a 1% lethal virus,” he said, referring to Covid-19. Noting the Black Plague “was a 20% lethal event that set the world back 250 years, a pandemic of the Nipah virus (associated with encephalitis, a severe swelling of the brain), would set us back a millennium.”
She Sounded the Alarm Years Ago
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sounded the alarm long before Trump signed his executive order last week halting gain of function research.
Gabbard, a former congresswoman from Hawaii and today director of National Intelligence, stated in an online presentation in 2022 that there are “25 plus U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release and spread deadly pathogens to the United States and the world, causing untold suffering and death.
She called for the labs to be secured and the pathogens destroyed.
Gabbard emphasized the potential biosecurity risks and warned of possible outbreaks.
“Instead of covering this up,” she urged, “the Biden-Harris administration needs to work with Russia, Ukraine, the EU, the UN, NATO and all relevant parties to immediately implement a cease-fire in the vicinity of these labs until they’re secured and all these pathogens destroyed.”
Gabbard noted that in addition to the biolabs in Ukraine, “the United States funds around 300 such facilities around the world who are engaging in dangerous research, including gain of function similar to the lab in Wuhan.”
“After realizing how dangerous and vulnerable these labs are, they should have all been shut down two years ago,” Gabbard insisted. “But they have not been.”
“Why is this research something that is so critical, not done in secure labs within the United States?” Gabbard asked on a Fox News show in 2023. “Why is this research being outsourced? “And if they have nothing to hide, why are they trying so hard to hide it? There are so many different questions here, and all of it points back to the huge risk this is posing.”
Now serving as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard has the chance to turn her convictions into concrete action.
Collaborating closely with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., she says she intends to work hard at the implementation of President Trump’s executive order to end gain-of-function research, and to overhaul security protocols across all biological research facilities in the United States.
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‘Gain-of-Function Is Worth the Risk’
The Weekend Australian unearthed a paper Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote for the American Society for Microbiology in October 2012, in which he argued in support of gain-of-function research.
Fauci claimed that the benefits of gain-of-function research are worth the enhanced risk of a pandemic-causing lab accident. Despite the inherent risks, Fauci called GOF experiments “important work.”
“In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” the former NIAID director asks. “Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed or published in the first place?
“Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.”
In view of these chilling words, no one should be surprised that Fauci championed gain-of-function experiments despite the knowledge that it could trigger the global pandemic he described in 2012.
The Weekend Australian report adds that Dr. Fauci did not alert senior White House officials before lifting a ban on gain-of-function research in 2017.
In 2014, the Obama administration paused funding for GOF experiments in 22 fields, including those involving SARS, influenza and MERS because of the increased risk such experimentation carries of causing a pandemic.
Yet EcoHealth Alliance director Peter Daszak, reportedly in collusion with Fauci, diverted $600,000 in grants from the NIH to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab known to have engaged in GOF experimentation.
Experts have identified the “furin cleavage site” on the SAR 2 virus as clear evidence of human manipulation, which supports the theory that the pandemic was caused by a lab-leak, noted FDA chief Dr. Marty Makary at the signing ceremony with President Trump.
How tragic that Anthony Fauci, a man who relentlessly pushed for the continuation of gain-of-function research—despite its profound risks to humanity—and harmed millions of fellow Americans with his insistence on lockdowns, masking and vaccine mandates, was entrusted with such immense power over the lives of millions.
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A Terrifying Universe
Kevin Esvelt, assistant professor at MIT Media Lab, testified at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that U.S. funding of gain-of-function – which he described as “asymmetric tools of mass death” – is far more dangerous than many people realize.
“The world must take the threat of pandemic terrorism more seriously,” Esvelt said.
More recently, he noted on the podcast Rationally Speaking that the potential for this form of terrorism has escalated. The ability to take the DNA sequence of a virus from a database, turn it into a living virus and intentionally infect people with it poses an extremely serious threat to humanity.
“Just by ordering synthetic DNA from a supplier using gene synthesis, you could actually have them make the entire constructs that you need, to the point that now you don’t need to know anything at all about assembling DNA,” Esvelt said.
“The constructs you need would come in the mail. You’d need to know and understand how to do mammalian tissue culture, and how to follow the protocol. The ease in doing this drives home the essence of the problem: an ever-growing number of individuals can make viruses.”
“The danger with GOF research is that they are attempting to take existing animal viruses that can’t trigger a pandemic, and enhance them so that they could,” Esvelt said. “And then they will share the sequence online.”
“And as soon as they do that, we go from a world in which almost no one can make a pandemic weapon of mass destruction… to a terrifying universe where such a thing is possible.
“SARS 2 has killed officially more than 5 million people. When you look at excess deaths statistics, it’s exceeded 15 million. That’s more than any operational nuclear weapon can achieve today. So, these are weapons of mass destruction.”
