OPINION:
As the deadly COVID-19 pandemic recedes, global health authorities are completing a sweeping agreement for combating future contagions. If the preparedness plan is meant to assuage worldwide health worries, it might.
At the same time, however, it ought to raise red flags over provisions that could cede to a transnational body authority over their health management that Americans have long possessed. Before taking that hasty step, President Biden should ensure that his administration is not inadvertently helping to bankroll the next pandemic.
The World Health Organization, which led the global fight against the three-year COVID-19 plague, has proposed a Pandemic Treaty, contending the “new international instrument on pandemic prevention should be legally binding.”
The WHO’s 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, which concluded May 30, set the stage for the treaty’s ratification in spring 2024.
Its provisions, according to Think Global Health, include “surveillance, outbreak notification, the sharing of pathogen samples and genetic sequence information, zoonoses, pandemic prevention, trade, and travel measures, equitable access to health countermeasures, health capacities in low-income countries, universal health coverage, social determinants of health, intellectual property rights, misinformation and disinformation, financing for pandemic preparedness and response, human rights, and strengthening the WHO.”
It is reasonable to ask whether the WHO’s recent record qualifies it to exert authority over a vast spectrum of human activity in the name of preserving human health.
Just such a concern led former President Donald Trump to cancel U.S. membership in the world body in May 2020 for failing to hold China accountable for the spread of COVID-19. In contrast, Mr. Biden tacitly discounted the organization’s missteps by reinstating U.S. participation when he took office in 2021.
Americans could see the Pandemic Treaty grant the WHO leading roles in such issues as how they manage pathogen research, vaccine development, travel restrictions, medical treatment equity, information censorship and preparedness spending. The U.S. is a reliable partner in global affairs, but to surrender health management to an organization that flailed ineffectually against a virus that killed 7 million people tests the bounds of prudence.
Before doing so, Americans deserve assurance that their tax dollars are not being spent on experiments prone to perilous laboratory accidents. Toward that end, a bipartisan group of House members in March introduced the Pausing Enhanced Pandemic Pathogen Research Act.
This sensible legislation would ban funding of lethality-enhancing gain-of-function research for five years, allowing time to gauge its risks and establish proper safety standards.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, pointed out last week that federal records show $490 million has been granted to Chinese organizations since 2017, including $2 million for the Wuhan Institute of Virology from which the deadly COVID-19 virus likely escaped.
Disturbingly, Mr. Biden has reversed Mr. Trump’s move as president to block funding for the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that funneled money to the Wuhan lab before the coronavirus outbreak. While EcoHealth’s new grant prohibits researchers from working with live viruses, the blizzard of federal dollars raises suspicions that similar grants could be funding risky experiments elsewhere.
Before endorsing the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty meant to combat the next pestilence, Mr. Biden should forswear funding the kind of research that likely led to the death of millions during the recent one.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.