OPINION:
Russia is waging its war on Ukraine with bombs and missiles and also with misinformation and disinformation. While the United States is carefully skirting military involvement, it is already caught up in frontline fighting with Russia over facts surrounding U.S. funding of biological research laboratories in the embattled nation. When the smoke clears, Americans should ensure that no more U.S. tax dollars pay for deadly bio-research on foreign soil where security cannot be guaranteed.
In recent days, Ukrainian and Russian officials have traded accusations that each side was planning false-flag attacks on those facilities, with the intent of subjecting the other to worldwide condemnation. Subsequently, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss what Russia’s representative called “truly shocking facts” regarding the use of more than a dozen Ukrainian labs experimenting with anthrax, cholera and plague, and funded by the U.S. military.
Not so, countered United States U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “Russia is attempting to use the Security Council to legitimize disinformation and deceive people to justify President Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” she said. Additionally, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Thursday took pains to explain to Congress that U.S. involvement in the Ukrainian labs has been confined to assisting in the development of countermeasures for bioweapons and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.
Given Mr. Putin’s KGB expertise in disinformation warfare, there is little reason to trust Russian claims of victimhood while he prosecutes his ignoble attack on a neighboring nation. Still, U.S. involvement in hazardous research in Ukraine raises a troubling question: Are these facilities involved in biomedicine or bioweapons?
Ominously, it may be a distinction with little difference. Scientific research on harmful germs for preventive medicine can also result in a lethal outcome. The COVID-19 pandemic of the past two years is a glaring case in point.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s dubious denials of U.S. involvement in China’s “gain of function” experimentation on the deadly virus have only been exceeded by Beijing’s refusal to cooperate with a thorough investigation of the pathogen’s origin. Taken together, there is every reason to suspect the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with U.S. funding, was responsible for allowing the pestilence to escape containment and cause the deaths of more than 6 million worldwide.
Much as U.S. officials may crave collaboration with their global counterparts to defend against both natural disease and bioweapons, there can be no assurance in locations such as China and Ukraine that science meant to preserve life will not be repurposed to precipitate death.
Only within their own national boundaries can Americans have a reasonable expectation that medical security will not be compromised and killer pathogens released to ravage unsuspecting populations.
Without lending credence to Russian disinformation charging U.S. involvement in alarming Ukrainian research, funding of experimentation with lethal biologics in risk-laden lands should nonetheless cease.
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