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President Donald Trump’s new executive order revising the “gain-of-function” policy ending funding for research in foreign countries is creating confusion among scientists and possible danger for the world. Associate Professor Gregory Koblentz, director of the graduate biodefense programs at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, tells the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in an extensive question-and-answer interview that the new policy is “quite problematic” and has been “incredibly disruptive for the biomedical research community.”
From the interview:
Q: Do you have any guesses as to what the permanent policy might look like?
Koblentz: It’s hard to predict anything this administration will do. The key thing is that there needs to be a transparent, multistakeholder process for reviewing and revising the 2024 policy and coming up with whatever new policy that the Trump administration is interested in pursuing, and that process is necessary to make sure that you have a well-crafted policy and to make sure that it has legitimacy and acceptance and buy in from the stakeholders. Right now, they’re off to a bad start by dropping this bombshell of an executive order the day before another long-awaited policy is about to go into effect. That raises some serious questions about the future of this policy under this administration.
Read the entire interview at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.