by WorldTribune Staff, July 29, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
The Trump Administration on Tuesday announced it has officially banned gain of function research.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology
U.S.-funded gain of function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is believed by many scientists, government, and intelligence officials to have played a key role in creating the Covid virus.
The State and Health and Human Services departments said in a joint statement that an “America First approach to scientific research means ensuring that taxpayer dollars are never used to support dangerous gain-of-function research … in the United States or abroad.”
The new policy prohibits federal support for gain of function research, strengthens oversight of other high-risk life sciences research, and restricts funding for research conducted in countries that lack appropriate safety, security, and oversight standards.
“Scientific leadership requires both innovation and responsibility,” the departments said. “The United States will continue to support biomedical research that develops vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and other lifesaving medical countermeasures while ensuring that the highest-risk research is subject to rigorous safeguards.
“We encourage our international partners to join us in ending dangerous gain-of-function research and adopting strong biosafety and biosecurity standards that make the world safer, more secure, and better prepared for future biological threats,” they added.
The policy was developed by top officials including Undersecretary of State Tom DiNanno and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya.
In a July 28 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Bhattacharya wrote:
After planning and coordinating across every relevant government agency, the Trump administration is issuing a comprehensive oversight framework that will eliminate the risk that federally funded scientific experiments will cause a pandemic or other catastrophic harm. The new policy preserves the benefits of life-sciences research while defining the areas of greatest risk, including prevention of accidental or intentional lab leaks, and penalties for irresponsible practices.
The new policy makes clear that Americans won’t fund research that risks our health or security, either here or abroad. This policy is based on three principles: that there are categories of research too risky to pursue, such as dangerous gain-of-function research and international research lacking appropriate oversight; that the entirety of the biomedical research enterprise must assess and monitor risks; and that researchers, institutions and funders will be held accountable for evaluating and reporting on high-risk research.
First, funding agencies will require researchers to make clear they won’t be proposing any life-sciences experiments that the policy deems too risky to conduct. If the research could be high-risk, the researchers must conduct a risk-benefit assessment, including the potential to cause catastrophic harm to human populations in case of an accident or inadvertent laboratory leak, for further institution and funding agency review. Since such experiments often require arcane technical knowledge, researchers themselves have the most accurate information about such risks.
Second, the institutions and universities that house the laboratories and employ the researchers will be responsible for the accuracy of the researchers’ risk assessment to ensure no risky work is proposed. Institutions will be required to have specialized infrastructure to conduct these reviews. If institutions or researchers fail to report the risk of catastrophic harm from an experiment, the government can impose financial penalties or prevent future federal funding.
Third, federal funding agencies like NIH will be required to review funding proposals for potential risky research and flag any proposal with the potential to significantly endanger Americans’ health or security. Proposals in the gray zone must be reviewed by an independent expert board that will make recommendations on eligibility for funding or required steps for risk mitigation. Under the new policy, the funding agencies will no longer be grading their own homework, providing checks and balances across all levels of research.
Similarly, agencies will be prevented from funding projects conducted by or alongside America’s adversaries—a determination that will be made by the State Department, intelligence agencies and other departments. Proposals for research to be conducted overseas will undergo an additional level of review. No research will be funded if the oversight doesn’t align with American values and interests.
