OPINION:
America still faces a mortal threat from a pandemic, particularly from man-made biological weapons genetically engineered by malevolent international actors.
Tulsi Gabbard, while serving as director of national intelligence, reported that more than 120 biological research laboratories in 30 countries had engaged in viral gain-of-function research — risky experiments designed to enhance the lethality and transmissibility of pathogens.
As Ms. Gabbard further reported, American taxpayers funded these research labs. Worse, she said, federal officials lied about the threat. The U.S. Department of Energy, the FBI and the CIA, as well as the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German foreign intelligence service, have all assessed that the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus likely originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
This was a lab that American taxpayers had been funding.
We urgently need tougher controls and oversight over such lab research, both here and abroad. This cannot simply be left to the president. Congress must also ensure that we have sound policy protecting the American people.
Sens. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, and Gary Peters, Michigan Democrat, have taken a big step in that direction by sponsoring the Risky Research Review Act. This bipartisan measure would create a strong, independent board of scientific and national security experts, outside the federal bureaucracy, to give final approval for any federal funding of potentially dangerous gain-of-function research.
The bill passed out of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 2025 by a vote of 11-2, but it languishes in the Senate.
To his credit, President Trump issued a comprehensive executive order in May 2025 to impose strong controls on dangerous viral gain-of-function research. Unfortunately, federal officials’ enforcement of the order has been a lesson in bureaucratic foot-dragging.
Under Section 5 of the order, the Office of Science and Technology Policy was supposed to have developed a strategy to govern such research by Nov. 1, 2025. It did not happen.
We cannot simply rely on federal bureaucrats to effectively monitor the federal grant process in this sensitive area of biological research, and bolstering oversight over dangerous viral gain-of-function research is not enough.
In 2020, Mr. Trump’s Operation Warp Speed secured the development and deployment of a COVID-19 vaccine in months rather than years. Although the development was unprecedented, vaccine distribution was marred by weak adverse-event reporting and a scandalously poor response to growing evidence of vaccine injuries.
In any case, viruses differ, and we will make a huge mistake if we simply hope to replicate the rapid vaccine development we achieved in the past to protect our people in the next national medical emergency.
Facing the next viral threat, we must also improve our capacity to quickly develop and effectively deploy strong antiviral therapies. This includes both direct-acting antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibody therapies.
With COVID-19, our best therapy for preventing progression from initial infection to severe disease was the monoclonal antibody bamlanivimab. In November 2020, the antibody received an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. The federal government then purchased the supply of monoclonal antibodies and distributed them to the states, rationing them as supplies began to run short.
The problem: This highly effective monoclonal antibody therapy often did not reach the most vulnerable patients — older people with underlying medical conditions — especially in rural and minority communities. Then the virus mutated, rendering these initial antibodies ineffective.
Now is the time to accelerate the development of antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies. We urgently need an Operation Warp Speed-like program for viral therapeutics.
Beyond securing better oversight and control over viral gain-of-function research, Congress, working with the White House, must undertake a wholesale reform of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This should include formally authorizing the agency in statute, continually upgrading and monitoring its data collection capacities, clearly defining its role as the lead agency to combat infectious diseases, and stripping away all other responsibilities and transferring them to other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Despite our horrid experience with COVID-19 — the loss of 1.2 million American lives and the severe damage to our social and economic life — we are not much better prepared today than we were in 2019.
With the onset of the next pandemic, this lack of preparation could prove catastrophic. Now is the time to act.
• Robert R. Redfield, M.D., is a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow.
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