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Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist who teaches at the University of Saskatchewan and is a research scientist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Research Organization-International Vaccine Centre, says that while the Department of Health and Human Services, especially NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, minimizes the impact of the order — as if it will affect only the teensy-teensiest bit of nefarious research — the EO in fact uses a vastly expanded definition of gain-of-function research.

Rasmussen says the previous version was also unclear about how it would be interpreted: the new EO is far worse in this respect.

The fact is that Dr. Evil and his fellow fictional evil and/or mad scientists are far from the only biologists who make regular use of gain-of-function research, or whose work may be seriously affected by the EO, among other administration acts.

Rasmussen said that her PhD work, which involved adapting human cold virus to infect mouse cells so that it could be studied in mice, might have been banned under another article of the EO, which prohibits altering the host range of an agent or toxin.

"The President's EO's on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented," she continued.