Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research
EO 14292
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What the document is
Halts federal funding for what the order defines as dangerous gain of function research, meaning work on an infectious agent or toxin that enhances its pathogenicity or increases its transmissibility. It rescinds the 2024 federal oversight policy for dual use research of concern, ends funding for such work by foreign entities in countries of concern with China named as the example, directs a strategy for tracking comparable research conducted without federal money, and orders a rewrite of the framework for screening synthetic nucleic acid orders.
Why it is in the report
For years the question of whether this category of research was real, funded, and exported was treated as a matter of opinion. An executive order now defines the category in federal law, halts the funding, and names the risk in the government's own words.
Pull it yourself
- Open the Federal Register and read the order in full.
- Read the definition of dangerous gain of function research in Section 8 and note what it includes and excludes.
- Check whether the replacement oversight policy the order required has been issued yet.