This post was published by Jon Fleetwood. Support him by subscribing at Substack and following at Instagram / X / Facebook.
In a Friday Nature Medicine publication, top U.S. health agency leaders emphasized their commitment to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that allows for taxpayer-funded, dangerous gain-of-function (GOF) work to continue.
This is despite Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) confirming that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely the result of lab-engineered pathogen manipulation.
If GOF was the cause of the COVID pandemic that killed 1.2 million Americans, any ongoing GOF experiments represent the greatest national security risk of our time.
Leaders from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the Clinical Research Directorate (CRD) at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) will not halt GOF, but will allow it to continue under exemptions.
See the long list of never-before-seen chimeric “Frankenstein” pathogens recently created through these agencies at the bottom of this article.
In their Nature piece, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, NIAID director Jeffery K. Taubenberger, and CRD director John H. Powers write:
“[T]he NIAID will strictly adhere to new regulatory frameworks on dangerous gain-of-function research, as defined in President Trump’s Executive Order 14292 in May 2025, and which will be established by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. We will ensure that NIH-supported research follows the new guidelines, review processes and prohibitions. Although most infectious disease research poses no catastrophic threat to human populations, those projects that do will have no part in the NIAID portfolio going forward.”
The Nature publication is behind a paywall, despite the work being funded by U.S. taxpayers.
The language of the paper gives the impression GOF work is being halted.
But Executive Order 14292, cited by the agency leaders in their Nature publication, confirms the administration is allowing GOF “exemption[s].”
Bhattacharya, Taubenberger, and Powers failed to make this clear for those who could afford access to their article.
The May 2025 executive order reads:
“Heads of agencies shall report any exception to a suspension to the Director of OSTP for review in consultation with the APNSA and the heads of relevant agencies.”
This means GOF experiments are not off the table.
Michael Kratsios serves as the 13th Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), confirmed in March 2025.
Kratsios graduated from Princeton University and interned for Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
He worked in finance at Barclays Capital, Lyford Group, and as CFO of Clarium Capital, then at Thiel Capital as chief of staff to Peter Thiel.
He joined the White House in 2017 as Deputy Assistant for Technology Policy, became the fourth U.S. Chief Technology Officer in 2019, and acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in 2020, overseeing a $106 billion R&D budget including DARPA.
DARPA’s involvement in pandemic research predates COVID-19 and includes the agency’s rejected 2018 DEFUSE proposal to engineer novel bat coronaviruses with enhanced human infectivity, subsequent NIH-funded coronavirus manipulation, and the rapid deployment of Moderna’s mRNA platform—developed with extensive DARPA support—as the primary countermeasure once SARS-CoV-2 emerged.
Key initiatives championed by Kratsios include the American AI Initiative, National Quantum Initiative, AI regulatory principles, and international efforts like G7/G20 tech ministerials.
Post-2021, he was Managing Director at Scale AI until his 2025 OSTP return, focusing on AI, quantum, biotech, and U.S. tech leadership under President Trump.
So long as Kratsios approves the exemption, GOF work continues in the U.S.
With exemptions approved behind closed doors by a small group of political appointees, the Trump administration has yet to clearly explain where it draws the line between permissible biodefense research and experiments that could again place the United States—and the world—at catastrophic national security risk.
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