Despite the breaking news Monday that the Energy Department’s conclusion that the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins is probable, the Biden administration still supports the controversial gain-of-function research. Gain-of-function research has been widely debated and criticized. The practice is where labs make pathogens more deadly or transmissible, with the theoretical purpose of better understanding current or future pandemics and therefore being able to respond faster. National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby was asked Monday by a White House reporter if risks of gain-of-function research outweigh the risks; the risks being leaking a virus and creating a deadly global pandemic. “[The president] believes that [the research is] important to help prevent future pandemics, which means he understands that there has to be legitimate scientific research into…the potential sources of pandemics so that we understand [them] and so we can prevent them from happening,” Kirby said. “But he also believes…that that research has to be done, must be done in a safe and secure manner,” Kirby added. Funding for the research has been largely criticized and controversial well before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. National Review reports: Funding for the practice was halted in 2014 during the Obama administration due to concerns about the risks: If modified pathogens escape the laboratory setting, they can cause pandemics. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) lifted that funding pause three years later after the creation of an oversight framework. In 2021, it emerged that U.S. taxpayers had funded research into bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through an intermediary — that is, EcoHealth Alliance. The news gained new relevance last week after the Energy Department’s conclusion that the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins is probable. The Wuhan Institute of Virology subaward through EcoHealth Alliance was permanently suspended in August of 2022 for compliance issues, including failure to provide NIH with laboratory notebooks related to the funded experiments.