As we reported (“COVID-19—Reckless ‘Gain-of-Function’ Experiments Lie at the Root of the Pandemic,” July 23, 2020), Trump faced a public relations nightmare when news broke that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—which Trump had fingered as the source of what he called China’s “kung flu”—was being paid by his administration through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

As we reported (“COVID-19—Reckless ‘Gain-of-Function’ Experiments Lie at the Root of the Pandemic,” July 23, 2020), Trump faced a public relations nightmare when news broke that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—which Trump had fingered as the source of what he called China’s “kung flu”—was being paid by his administration through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Trump subsequently made a big show of cutting funding for EcoHealth Alliance, an NIH grantee that had subcontracted with the Wuhan lab. 

What Trump didn’t do was take any action regarding the Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care & Oversight Review Committee (P3CO), a secret committee that continues to direct NIH funding to controversial gain-of-function research, the type used to make biological weapons. 

As we write this today, the WIV could well be receiving money from the NIH through the secret P3CO committee. 

But we wouldn’t know. Because P3CO’s committee members, its reviews and its decisions are all secret. 

It’s possible Trump knows nothing about this, but his deputies, including Christian Hassell and Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Service, do know. (Kadlec deserves his own profile in the Gain-of-Function Hall of Shame. Stay tuned).

Unlike the military’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program, which is opaque and doesn’t put the dodgy labs it funds (the ones that Hassell said were “in trouble for shady dealings, illegal accounting, and lack of accountability” even as he worked to get them more money) through a public process, the NIH is supposedly vetting gain-of-function research under the 2017 “Framework for Guiding Funding Decisions about Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens.”

As we reported (“COVID-19—Reckless ‘Gain-of-Function’ Experiments Lie at the Root of the Pandemic,” July 23, 2020), Trump faced a public relations nightmare when news broke that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—which Trump had fingered as the source of what he called China’s “kung flu”—was being paid by his administration through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Organic Consumers Christian ‘Risks-Be-Damned’ Hassell: Pushing Dangerous, Taxpayer-Funded Genetic Engineering and Gain-of-Function Research