DONALD Trump has banned all US funding for risky virus research in China and beyond, five years after Covid-19 upended the planet.
In a blistering executive order signed Monday, Trump outlawed federal support for gain-of-function experiments in countries like China and Iran — blaming the controversial research for unleashing the global health catastrophe.
The US President said in the Oval Office: “I said that right from day one it leaked out — whether it was to the girlfriend or somebody else, [a] scientist walked outside to have lunch with the girlfriend or was together with a lot of people — but that’s how it leaked out in my opinion.
“I’ve never changed that opinion, so it can leak out innocently, stupidly and incompetently, but innocently and half destroy the world.”
The dramatic order pulls the plug on "any present and all future" funding for experiments that make viruses more infectious or deadly - a field many scientists call "dual-use" research due to its potential military and public health impacts.
It will also appoint the National Institutes of Health and other agencies to sniff out and shut down bio-research posing a threat to public safety or national security.
According to a White House fact sheet, the 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 move comes amid a renewed global spotlight on the origins of Covid-19.
There has been a growing consensus among US intelligence agencies including the FBI, Department of Energy, and the CIA that a lab leak in Wuhan is the likeliest explanation.
Trump’s team tore into the Biden administration for failing to slam the brakes earlier on risky foreign experiments that “half destroyed the world.”
