The National Institutes of Health (NIH) plans to continue creating novel pandemic viruses in apparent defiance of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump calling for a crackdown on the research, according to three government sources involved with the process, who were granted anonymity to avoid government reprisals.
Biosafety hawks have been duking it out with officials at the NIH, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security as an interagency group finalizes Trump’s policy on dangerous gain-of-function (GOF) research — which makes viruses more deadly in the lab. Per the executive order, the policy on federal GOF research is due Sept. 2. Three intelligence agencies have concluded that a lab accident sparked COVID-19.
Former White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy Director Gerry Parker — a biodefense expert who has long been critical of the NIH gain-of-function policies that preceded COVID-19 — led the process of drafting the policy. But Parker resigned this July from the White House after a six month stint, STAT News first reported. Parker confirmed his departure to the Daily Caller News Foundation and said it was due to a personal rather than professional issue.
In the void, inertia has set in. At NIH — where the policy shop has remained unchanged since the Biden administration — a consultant hired by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya was marginalized as an extremist for pushing for a stricter policy, according to a government source. Ed Hammond, who tracked Fauci’s biodefense buildup for years, was fired from NIH on Aug. 21, he said on X. Hammond declined to comment beyond his tweet.
After a government career lasting a little over two months, this is my final day at the NIH Office of Science Policy.
— Edward Hammond (@pricklyresearch) August 21, 2025
Bhattacharya identified the “crisis of gain of function research” as one of his top five priorities at a March confirmation hearing, yet has not been deeply involved with GOF policy.
A spokesperson for Bhattacharya’s top deputy, NIH Principal Deputy Director Matthew Memoli, declined an interview request.
Bhattacharya in April promoted Memoli’s longtime collaborator Jeffrey Taubenberger to lead the National Allergy and Infectious Diseases Institute (NIAID), Anthony Fauci’s former institute. Taubenberger, who also worked with Fauci on GOF issues, will lead GOF reforms at NIAID, according to an NIH statement to the DCNF.
“Director Bhattacharya has full confidence in Dr. Taubenberger to lead reforms at NIAID that strengthen biosafety, prohibit dangerous gain-of-function research, and align the institute’s work with the true health needs of the American people,” the statement reads.
Taubenberger had throughout his decades-long career worked with Fauci to defend GOF research, including the work in Wuhan in the early pandemic period. Restrictions would have hampered his own career. Taubenberger revived and published the genome of the infamous 1918 flu, also called the “Spanish Flu.”
About 50 million people worldwide died from the flu between 1918 and 1919, and about 675,000 people died in the U.S., per the Cleveland Clinic.
“To my knowledge there hasn’t ever been a lab leak of 1918 Spanish flu … However, the information as to how to make Spanish flu virus has leaked across the globe courtesy of the US taxpayer,” Simon Wain-Hobson, an emeritus professor of virology at the Institute Pasteur, told the DCNF.
“Dr. Taubenberger’s paper has been downloaded in labs across the globe including Russia, North Korea, Iran … And with Dr. Taubenberger atop the NIAID, it is logical that dual use research of concern around infectious agents will not get the thought needed to protect US citizens,” he added.
NIH directed other questions to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. However, NIAID oversees the government’s largest portfolio of GOF research.
Taubenberger did not respond to a request for comment.
Bhattacharya said of Taubenberger that “past associations do not dictate future inclinations” in an Aug. 24 tweet.
In May, Trump signed an executive order that set a 120-day deadline for establishing a new GOF policy.
An earlier draft of the executive order would have immediately banned dangerous GOF research outright, the DCNF previously reported. In writing the executive order, Parker, the former White House pandemic preparedness lead, had taken pains to avoid involving NIH, which has historically defeated attempts to stop GOF, according to a source familiar. It remains unclear why the executive order was watered down.
But Trump’s top health officials characterized the executive order as a ban in the making in an Oval Office signing ceremony.
“A historic day: The end of gain-of-function research funding by the government,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that GOF is indistinguishable from bioweapons research.
Dr. Fauci “cannot recall.” If I’d presided over the catastrophic bioweapons program and pandemic response, I’d probably want to forget too.https://t.co/OFBd0JGXJb
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 10, 2024
“The conduct of this research does not protect us against pandemics, as some people might say. It doesn’t protect us against other nations,” said Bhattacharya at the time. “Any nation that engages in this research endangers their own population and the world, as we saw during the COVID pandemic.”
NIH Director Bhattacharya: “Two weeks ago…the President of the United States signed an executive order banning dangerous gain of function research…Dangerous NIH-approved research will never be conducted again”https://t.co/4Kuf51HeO3
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) May 26, 2025
However, the reality of the policy has fallen significantly short of the promise of a ban at the White House signing ceremony, according to the government sources.
The draft policy has prompted confusion among multiple agencies, one former government source said. The policy will be determined by the heads of relevant agencies rather than standardized across agencies. This approach could also invite loopholes from subversive bureaucrats, a separate former government source said, who added that there are teams of scientists dedicated to exploiting loopholes.
The same NIH official responsible for former President Joe Biden’s policy has been tasked by Bhattacharya with overhauling it.
NIH Associate Director for Science Policy Lyric Jorgenson, who also led former Biden’s GOF research policy and whose expertise is in neuroscience, now leads NIH on writing Trump’s policy, according to two government sources.
NIH officials intend to maintain certain pre-COVID policies that allowed for coronavirus engineering projects to be offshored to Wuhan, according to three government sources. Projects would fall under a spectrum according to their risk — “green light,” “yellow light,” or “red light” — with “red light” projects recommended by each agency to a higher-level review.
But NIH would determine which of its projects are subject to stronger review without external audits of the completeness of NIH’s reports, according to two government sources. That same approach under NIH’s pre-COVID policy — the Potential Pandemic Pathogens Committee (P3CO) — paved the way for the exportation of coronavirus engineering projects to Wuhan without adequate review, some experts say. The program officers who review grants are often friendly with the virologists they fund, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show.
NIH would also dole out exemptions for “national security” purposes.
NIH contractor Alex Washburne, a former Sandia National Laboratories scientist who in 2023 published research pointing to a probable lab origin of COVID, has pushed for a continuation of gain-of-function research in order to match gain-of-function research in hostile countries like China, according to two government sources.
Washburne shared with the DCNF in June that he is developing dual use research of concern — viral research that could be misapplied as a bioweapon — bringing his future research plans squarely under the policy upon which he advises. The research involves phages — viruses that infect bacteria — but has implications for other viruses, Washburne said.
In February 2025, Washburne wrote in his Substack that combatting Trump and “the goons who enable him” was of higher priority than reining in pandemic pathogens, his current task at NIH. Washburne also wrote that he would withhold further analyses about the origins of COVID due to his opposition to Trump.
Washburne included this AI-generated photo in a Substack in which he argued that combatting Trump on DEI was more important than reining in pandemic pathogens, his current task at NIH.
He has since deleted it, along with several other posts. His Feb. 10 repost of an apparent call to scientists to vocally oppose the actions of the Trump administration at NIH remains up.
On GOF, Washburne has found an ally in Taubenberger, according to two government sources.
On the new acting director of NIAID, Jeffery Taubenberger: https://t.co/ZU1I5Anndv
— Alina Chan (@Ayjchan) April 25, 2025
Wain-Hobson threw cold water on the idea that GOF remains necessary for national security purposes. “They don’t need to play around with the virus just to see how deadly it is. That is macabre and unhelpful,” he said.
NIH revealed in a July 21 post on X that Taubenberger’s institute had underreported a list of dangerous GOF research projects to the White House. The tweet blamed “NIAID staff.”
In accordance with Executive Order 14292, the Office of the Director asked NIAID to identify projects that could potentially fall under the definition of dangerous gain of function (dGOF) research. The NIAID staff identified those projects, but then inappropriately made an…
— NIH (@NIH) July 17, 2025
The DCNF obtained the initial list of 40 GOF projects reported by NIAID to the White House. According to that list, coupled with public records, Taubenberger’s institute failed to flag a project by University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric involving GOF and MERS, a coronavirus with an estimated 35% fatality rate. An ongoing North Carolina legislative commission is probing Baric’s pre-COVID collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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