[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
BIOSECURITY FOR THE FUTURE: STRENGTHENING DETERRENCE AND DETECTION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA, THE PACIFIC, CENTRAL ASIA, AND NONPROLIFERATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
December 8, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-95
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
46-227 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York, Chairman
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey Member
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
KAREN BASS, California
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
AMI BERA, California
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
DINA TITUS, Nevada
TED LIEU, California
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota
COLIN ALLRED, Texas
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
SARA JACOBS, California
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
JIM COSTA, California
JUAN VARGAS, California
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
DARRELL ISSA, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
LEE ZELDIN, New York
ANN WAGNER, Missouri
BRIAN MAST, Florida
BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
KEN BUCK, Colorado
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
MARK GREEN, Tennessee
ANDY BARR, Kentucky
GREG STEUBE, Florida
DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
PETER MEIJER, Michigan
NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
RONNY JACKSON, Texas
YOUNG KIM, California
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation
AMI BERA, California, Chairman,
BRAD SHERMAN, California STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Ranking Member
DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY LEVIN. Michigan
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
GERALD CONNOLLY, Virginia
TED LIEU, California
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
ANN WAGNER, Missouri
KEN BUCK, Colorado
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
MARK GREEN, Tennessee
ANDY BARR, Kentucky
YOUNG KIM, California
Jamie Morgan, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Yassif, Dr. Jaime, Senior Fellow, Global Biological Policy and
Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative............................ 8
Weber, The Honorable Andy, Senior Fellow, Council on Strategic
Risks.......................................................... 17
Adalja, Dr. Amesh, Senior Scholar, Center for Health Security,
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health..... 26
Esvelt, Kevin, Director, Sculpting Evolution Group, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology........................................ 34
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 63
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 64
Hearing Attendance............................................... 65
STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD
Statement for the record from Representative Connolly............ 66
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Responses to questions submitted for the record.................. 68
BIOSECURITY FOR THE FUTURE:
STRENGTHENING DETERRENCE AND DETECTION
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific,
Central Asia, and Nonproliferation
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m.,
via Webex, Hon. Ami Bera (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Mr. Bera. Virtual gavel is banged. The Subcommittee on
Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation will come
to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any point, and all members will have
5 days to submit statements, extraneous material, and questions
for the record subject to the length limitation in the rules.
To insert something into the record, please have your staff
email the previously mentioned address or contact full
committee staff.
Please keep your video function on at all times even when
you are not recognized by the chair. Members are responsible
for muting and unmuting themselves, and please remember to mute
yourself after you finish speaking.
Consistent with remote committee proceedings of H. Res. 8,
staff will only mute members and witnesses as appropriate when
they are not under recognition to eliminate background noise.
I see that we have a quorum and will now recognize myself
for opening remarks. I want to thank my good friend, the
ranking member, Mr. Chabot, the members of this subcommittee,
our witnesses, and the members of the public for joining
today's hearing.
For almost 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged
communities, devastated economies, and disrupted the fabric of
our international global system. It is a reminder of the grave
consequences that low-probability, high-impact biological
threats can have our daily lives if we are not prepared.
Moving forward, we can do better. As chair of the
subcommittee, I have convened multiple hearings related to the
2019 novel coronavirus, including the first congressional
hearing on this topic in early February 2020 and on enhancing
U.S. and global biosecurity.
In the near 2 years since the first hearing on COVID-19, we
have thankfully seen meaningful efforts and expanding
investments in technologies and practices such as gene
sequencing, biosurveillance, and detection.
Many of these efforts have been crucial in the global fight
against this pandemic thus far. For example, advances in rapid
sequencing and diagnostic capabilities in South Africa allowed
the government to correctly identify and report a new variant
of concern to the international community in record time.
New technologies also enabled partnerships between
governments and pharmaceutical companies to develop, test,
manufacture, and begin distribution of vaccines and
therapeutics in timeframes that were previously thought
impossible.
Such developments do not occur overnight. They require
time, dedicated staff, and resources well before an incident.
As we continue to combat the coronavirus, we were reminded
of the importance of making long-term investments in the global
health infrastructure and taking other steps to help prevent
such catastrophe in the future.
That is the primary focus of today's hearing, to take stock
of current resources dedicated to this critical field and to
assess what more needs to be done to work with international
partners to strengthen biosecurity and about biosurveillance
practices globally.
These conversations are particularly relevant when one
factors in the possibility of facing pathogens and diseases
intentionally created by bad actors.
Biological weapons, and especially dangerous pathogens,
existed before COVID-19, but the threat they pose today is now
undeniable. Laboratories around the world regularly handle
dangerous pathogens, and these threats are only amplified by
the widespread availability of new gene-editing technologies
such as CRISPR.
It is imperative that we ensure our government has the
right strategy and resources to prevent naturally occurring, as
well as manmade pathogens from causing the next pandemic. We
cannot afford to be stagnant in our preparations and planning
for the biological threats of tomorrow.
The pandemic also reaffirms the need for continued U.S.
global leadership for a proactive biological security and
defense strategy.
Prioritizing investments to counter and prepare for
biological threats ranging from research-related or medical
center accidents to naturally occurring pathogens to deliberate
biological weapons attacks is a national security imperative
and requires appropriate resourcing and sustained attention.
Much like the counterterrorism and countering weapons of
mass destruction proliferation, the field of biosecurity
measures success through the absence of an incident.
But, as the pandemic clearly demonstrates, we must not wait
for a devastating crisis to start investing in biosecurity.
Particularly in today's interconnected world, a deadly pathogen
unleashed in the opposite corner of the world would be upon our
doorstep shortly thereafter. Therefore, we must be proactive.
The international community has a collective responsibility
to work together to improve biosecurity systems and regimes
worldwide. We need to examine how we are making investments in
deterrence and detection and ensure that we have well-resourced
mechanisms to prevent and defeat both naturally occurring
health challenges, as well as acts of bioterrorism.
I want to thank our witnesses today in advance for sharing
their expertise with us as we consider this crucial matter.
And, with that, let me go ahead and yield 5 minutes to my
good friend from Ohio, our ranking member, Representative Steve
Chabot, for any opening comments he may have.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
calling this important hearing today. I would also like to
thank our witnesses for being here and for providing us their
uniquely qualified insights.
It is important to be discussing the threats posed by
potential new diseases, as well as a new generation of
bioweapons, so I commend you for doing this.
This hearing comes at a pivotal time. COVID-19 has taught
us, like nothing else, the devastation that can be caused by a
previously unknown disease.
The Chinese Communist Party hid the emergence of the
disease from the world, allowing it to become a global
pandemic. This shows just how crucial it is to detect and
address a new disease early on.
But such a contagion could easily begin somewhere that has
a less malevolent government but a weak health system. In fact,
Ebola did just that.
The bottom line is the world needs to be better prepared to
detect and combat new diseases before they get out of control.
It is possible, of course, that even deadlier diseases and
viruses than COVID-19 could threaten us as well as chemical
compounds.
Syria, Russia, and North Korea, for example, have used
chlorine gas, Novichok, and VX nerve agent to murder dissidents
and perceived enemies both in their own countries and across
the globe.
To make matters worse, the Biological Weapons Convention,
the international treaty, banning biological weapons lacks
enforcement while the U.N.'s Implementation Support Unit has
three people on staff and a budget smaller than that of a
McDonald's.
Further, according to the State Department, North Korea and
Russia have current, offensive bioweapon programs which are
illegal under treaty, and China and Iran are engaging in dual-
use research in violation of the treaty as well.
All this is compounded by new and emerging science and
technologies that have made it easier than ever before for
individuals, even with a limited amount of training and
knowledge, to genetically engineer new threats.
Such advances, which could potentially do wonders in the
fields of health and medicine, are inherently dual-use and, in
the hands of our adversaries, pose a threat to our national
security.
Unless we take this threat seriously, countries that have
already violated their legal obligations not to use chemical
weapons could see advances in biotechnology as offering a new
range of weapons that are targeted, deniable, and incredibly
lethal.
COVID-19 has raised questions about the nature of this
technology itself, including around the issue of gain-of-
function research. As we now know, scientists have the ability
to genetically manipulate and modify viruses without leaving
any evidence.
They can even create synthetic viruses from scratch,
choosing the level of transmissibility and lethality in humans.
Even before the current pandemic, groups of researchers
around the world were using existing techniques to create
hybrid viruses known to have pandemic potential and testing new
and novel viruses.
Going forward, we must balance our need to predict and
detect new diseases that could cause pandemics with the
potential for accidents or for the weaponization of new
discoveries.
Supporters argue that gain-of-function research is critical
to safeguarding public health and that lab accidents are rare
and isolated, but they downplay the inherent risks posed by
progressive experimentation.
The level of sophistication seen in terrorist groups like
the Islamic State makes it more likely, not less, that these
new technologies will be exploited by terrorist organizations
seeking new asymmetric weapons.
There is no need to hijack an airliner when you can simply
release a weaponized virus in an airport terminal. The death
toll from the resulting pandemic could be in the millions.
Worse, it might not even take a terrorist acting
intentionally. History shows us that lab accidents are
frequent. For instance, in 1979, anthrax was accidentally
released from a Soviet military research facility.
Despite assurances to the contrary from American and Soviet
scientists, we know that this lab leak resulted in infections
and the deaths of close to a hundred people.
Moving forward, it is clear that we need to rebalance our
priorities to better prepare for such threats.
Chairman Bera, I look forward to working with you as we
consider how to respond to these challenges. We are facing a
very real threat, one that we are not adequately addressing, I
believe, at the present time.
So, again, I want to thank the witnesses for being here
today, look forward to their testimony, and I yield back.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Ranking Member Chabot. Let me go ahead
and briefly introduce our witnesses. First we have Dr. Jaime
Yassif, senior fellow for global biological policy and programs
at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Dr. Yassif was previously a
program officer at Open Philanthropy where she led the
biosecurity and pandemic preparedness initiative.
Prior that, she was a science and technology policy adviser
at the U.S. Department of Defense where she focused on
oversight of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and East
Asia security issues.
Next, we welcome the honorable Andy Weber, senior fellow at
the Council on Strategic Risks, Janne E. Nolan Center on
Strategic Weapons. Mr. Weber has had a long career of U.S.
Government service, including as Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs from
2009 to 2014.
He also coordinated U.S. leadership of the international
Ebola response for the Department of State. He serves on the
boards of Healthcare Ready and the Arms Control Association,
among others.
Next, we have Dr. Amesh Adalja, who is the senior scholar
at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an adjunct
assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health, and affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for
Global Health.
Among his many accomplishments and contributions, Dr.
Adalja has served on U.S. Government panels tasked with
developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism,
and anthrax in mass casualty settings for the system of care
for infectious disease emergencies.
Last but not least, we have Dr. Kevin Esvelt, an assistant
professor at the MIT Media Lab where he leads the Sculpting
Evolution group in exploring evolutionary and ecological
engineering.
Professor Esvelt helped pioneer the development of CRISPR,
the powerful new method of genome engineering, and is the
inventor of synthetic viral ecosystems for the directed
evolution of biomolecules.
I want to thank all of you for participating in today's
hearing, and I will now recognize witnesses for 5 minutes.
Without objection, your prepared written statements will be
made part of the record. I will first invite Dr. Yassif to
share her testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. JAIME YASSIF, SENIOR FELLOW, GLOBAL BIOLOGICAL
POLICY AND PROGRAMS, NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE
Dr. Yassif. Thank you. Chairman Bera, Ranking Member
Chabot, and other members of the subcommittee. Thank you for
the opportunity to join today's hearing to share my perspective
on biosecurity for the future. I am a senior fellow at NTI,
which is a nonpartisan, global security organization focused on
reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity.
Over the past 21 months, COVID has revealed that national
governments and the international community are unprepared to
respond to pandemics, underscoring our shared vulnerability to
future catastrophic biological threats that could match the
impact of the current pandemic or cause damage that is much
more severe.
To effectively guard against these risks, the world needs a
layered defense, comprised of measures for prevention,
detection, and response. I will focus my testimony today
primarily on actions necessary to prevent catastrophic
biological events, and specifically I will discuss three
initiatives that NTI has been working to advance.
First, I will start with NTI's work to reduce emerging
biological risks associated with rapid technology advances.
Bioscience and biotechnology offer tremendous benefits. They
are vital for fighting disease, protecting the environment, and
promoting economic development.
However, these innovations can also pose unique challenges,
increasing the risks of lab accidents or deliberate misuse by
malicious actors.
This threat becomes increasingly pressing as the technical
barriers to manipulating biological organisms continue to fall.
Governments are key to safeguarding the life sciences, but they
have struggled to keep pace with rapid technology advances.
And, at the international level, governance is also weak.
There is no existing international entity dedicated, as its
primary mission, to strengthening biosecurity and bioscience
governance, notwithstanding the importance work of WHO and the
Biological Weapons Convention.
To address this gap, NTI is working to develop the
International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative For Science,
or IBBIS. We envision that this new organization will work
collaboratively to strengthen global biosecurity norms and
develop innovative and practical tools to uphold them.
And the underlying goal would be to safeguard science and
to reduce the risk of catastrophic events that could result
from deliberate abuse or accidental misuse.
IBBIS will begin with a narrow focus on improving DNA
synthesis screening practices internationally with the
understanding that its remit can expand over time.
NTI is working with international partners to continue
shaping the vision for IBBIS, and we aspire to launch this new
organization in 2022.
We encourage Congress, and specifically members of this
subcommittee, to support the goals of this initiative and to
help us build broad international support for this effort.
The second portion of my remarks will focus on our
initiative for investigating high-consequence biological events
of unknown origin. An effective deterrence strategy rests in
part on the ability of the international community to
demonstrate, to would-be developers or users of bioweapons,
that there is a reliable system for attribution and
accountability for such actions.
But, to do that, it will be important to bolster the
capabilities of the U.N. system to investigate pandemic origins
whether naturally emerging, accidental, or deliberate.
And this includes investing more resources in the U.N.
Secretary General's Mechanism, which has the authority to
investigate alleged deliberate weapons use.
We must also fill gaps, however, specifically in the
capabilities to investigate the source of biological events of
unknown origin. This important work falls at the seam between
existing mechanisms, including the outbreak investigation
capabilities of the World Health Organization and the U.N.
Secretary General's Mechanism.
To meet this need, NTI is pursuing the establishment of a
new joint assessment mechanism for investigating high-
consequence bio events of unknown origin. We envision that this
mechanism would take an approach that is rapid, transparent,
evidence-based, and legitimate in the eyes of the international
community.
I hope Congress and this subcommittee will support the
establishment of this type of multilateral mechanism, which
will be critical for mitigating pandemic effects in real time
and for deterring future bioweapons development and use.
The third initiative that I will very briefly address is
financing for pandemic preparedness. Building strong systems
for early detection and robust response is critical for
stopping outbreaks from evolving into global pandemics, and it
can also contribute to deterrence.
But none of this can happen without resources. As
documented by the 2021 Global Health Security Index, which we
are releasing this morning, most nations have not made
dedicated financial investments in pandemic preparedness.
The current shortsighted approach to financing doesn't make
a lot of sense because investing in pandemic preparedness is
highly cost-effective.
COVID has led to trillions in economic losses and extensive
damage to global economies, and yet the international community
can effectively guard against these risks with a global
investment on the order of 1 to several hundred billion
dollars.
To achieve and sustain this level investment, we need to
redesign our collective approach to financing. That is why NTI
is working with partners to advocate for a new catalytic,
multilateral financing mechanism forpandemic preparedness in
countries around the world.
We applaud the leadership that the U.S. has already
signaled by championing the establishment of a new multilateral
financing mechanism at the recent Global COVID-19 Summit.
Now, it must follow through with funding to set the bar for
others and challenge them to step up and contribute. The U.S.
should contribute at least $2 billion in seed funding and work
with partners to mobilize at least $10 billion annually.
Such an investment would constitute a tiny fraction of the
potentially catastrophic cost of inaction.
To conclude, COVID has served as a warning shot,
highlighting our shared vulnerability to global pandemics,
while national and global leaders are understandably focused on
the current crisis but cannot afford the essential work to
prevent and respond to future, high-consequence bio events.
Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Chabot, and other members of
this subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today,
and I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Yassif follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bera. Thank you. I now invite Mr. Weber for his
testimony.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ANDY WEBER, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL
ON STRATEGIC RISKS
Mr. Weber. Thank you. Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Chabot,
and members of the committee. I am honored to appear before you
today. I would like to applaud the committee for hosting this
hearing on what I believe is one of the most consequential
issues for the United States and the international community:
deterring biological weapons threats and preventing pandemics.
I have focused on countering biological threats for the
bulk of my career. In the 1990's, I worked with the Department
of Defense Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and
saw firsthand the massive scale of the Soviet Union's offensive
biological weapons complex.
One facility we completely dismantled, at the request of
First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, was capable
of producing 300 tons of anthrax agent during a mobilization
period of about 8 months.
Another laboratory in Koltsovo, Russia, perfected viral
weapons to cause horrific diseases like smallpox, Marburg, and
Ebola.
Biological weapons threats are increasing due to several
factors, including advanced North Korean and Russian offensive
programs, China's huge investments in dual-use biotechnologies,
and a revolution in biotechnology that is making it easier and
cheaper for even small groups or individuals to misuse biology.
The United States should now pursue a strategy based on two
reinforcing goals. The first is preventing future outbreaks
from ever again reaching pandemic scale. This goal is more
achievable than ever. Though it will take leadership and
sustained investments in biodefense, the U.S. bio economy, and
international partnerships.
The second focus ox on deliberate biological threats, which
are increasing.
The United States should lead the world in making
biological weapons the first category of weapons of mass
destruction to be effectively eliminated or rendered obsolete.
Deterrence is at the heart of this proposal. Specifically,
we are calling for a U.S. strategy of deterrence by denial.
This type of deterrence strategy would focus on ultimately
denying the attackers' success in their aims regarding
biological weapons.
Today, U.S. innovation has created a new paradigm. We now
have the technologies and tools needed to make deterrence by
denial, regarding deliberate biological threats and pandemic
prevention, a reality.
Our task today is to deploy such advanced technologies
effectively and integrate them via a systems approach to
addressing the full range of biological threats. We need fast
and precise pathogen early warning.
We need these systems to produce and share robust data that
can be used for rapidly characterizing pathogens and tailoring
diagnostics and countermeasures, vaccines, and medical
treatments to help stop them.
One of the top opportunities to enhance early warning stems
from the Biological Threat Reduction Program at the Department
of Defense. This program, which I helped create, has long been
used for advancing biosurveillance and biosecurity with many
partners around the world.
This paid off heavily. Several U.S. allies and partners
have been leaders in detecting and monitoring COVID-19. I
deeply appreciate that this year, you, in the House of
Representatives, on a bipartisan basis, restored the severe and
inexplicable Pentagon cuts to the Biological Threat Reduction
Program.
It will also be critical to revitalize and expand another
Department of Defense program that has suffered budget cuts and
underutilization in recent years, the Pentagon's Chemical and
Biological Defense Program, or CBDP.
Despite a strong track record of performance and extensive
national capacities, in recent years Department leaders have
slashed CBDP's budget, even during a pandemic, and restricted
its ability to respond to COVID-19 early in the pandemic.
I am heartened, however, that, in launching the first ever
Pentagon Biodefense Posture Review last month, Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin commanded the Department of Defense to
prioritize biodefense across the full spectrum of biological
threats, from naturally occurring to accidental and deliberate
biological incidents.
To enact a national strategy to take biological weapons off
the table as a weapon of mass destruction threat and to prevent
future infectious disease threats from growing to pandemic
scale, I and my colleagues recommend an investment plan that we
call ``10 plus 10 over 10.''
This entails investing $10 billion per year for 10 years
for deterring and addressing biological weapons threats, plus
$10 billion per year for 10 years for global health security
and direct pandemic prevention initiatives.
The details of this $200 billion, 10-year plan will be
published in our forthcoming handbook for deterring biological
weapons and preventing future pandemics. The Council on
Strategic Risks will release it this month.
In conclusion, the United States has made significant
progress in addressing biological threats over the past several
decades. The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call.
The good news is that it is within our reach to take
biological threats off the table. To do so, we must summon the
political will to set a bold strategy for the United States and
our partners around the world. Thank you very much, and I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bera. Thank you. I now invite Dr. Adalja for his
testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. AMESH ADALJA, SENIOR SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR
HEALTH SECURITY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF
PUBLIC HEALTH
Dr. Adalja. Chairman and Dr. Bera, Ranking Member Chabot,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to offer testimony today on the biosecurity for the
future, strengthening deterrence and detection.
I am a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for
Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health. The opinions expressed herein are my own anddo not
reflect the views of Johns Hopkins University.
As our country and the rest of the world continue to
grapple with the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,
it is appropriate and important to put surveillance systems and
strategies in place to detect in the future the emergence or
reemergence of dangerous viruses with pandemic potential.
Because many infectious diseases are contagious and transit
between humans easily, infectious disease threats anywhere can
universalize very quickly.
We are now seeing firsthand that pathogens no longer travel
at the speed of a steam ship. They travel at the speed of a
jet. Borders are porous, and diseases seep through them
quickly.
The U.S. needs to have as comprehensive global situational
awareness of infectious disease threats as possible.
As the U.S. Government decides how to best invest limited
resources in early warning systems for detection of future
viral threats, it is critical to prioritize surveillance
activities that, one, are the most likely to uncover actual
rather than hypothetical threats; and, two, are practical and
add value every day to preparedness even between outbreaks.
Too often our limited surveillance dollars are funding
overly broad surveillance and basic analysis that includes a
vast collection of animal samples with the goal of identifying
potential infectious diseases emanating from animals in
spillover or zoonotic events.
Given the history of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, Nipah,
Ebola, and HIV, zoonotic spillover events are an appropriate
priority. However, focusing our surveillance efforts on the
constant sampling of animals can be like looking for a needle
is a never-ending haystack.
While this type of surveillance can play a part in early
warning systems and it helps us to improve our understanding of
disease in animal species, we should be careful not to place an
overemphasis on viral cataloguing efforts.
These are indeed essential virologic and scientific tasks
but should not be construed to be synonymouswith early warning
or a substitute for pandemic preparedness activities.
We should complement the broad sampling of animal species
with a more targeted type of surveillance, focused on sampling
of viruses present in patients in clinical environments.
A microbe most likely to cause a pandemic or a disruptive
outbreak is likely one that possesses the ability to infect
humans to some extent now. These are infections that are
occurring in humans by pathogens--these are infections that are
occurring in humans by pathogens that have the capacity to do
so now.
Such a microbe may go unnoticed, mistaken for other causes,
or occur in populations where diagnostic technology is not
available and may be spread by the respiratory route and cause
a respiratory infection such as pneumonia. It may also have
characteristics that can cause a brain or central nervous
system infection like meningitis.
And critically it is likely to result in sepsis or septic
shock as the final common pathway to severe disease and death.
The majority of these cases go without identification of
the virus and without a specific diagnosis. The empiric
treatment either works or it doesn't. This is something I
witness in the United States, and it is very common
internationally.
I liken the undiagnosed syndromes to biological dark matter
which likely contain key information about what is making
people sick, some deathly, today, right now, everywhere.
The first COVID-19 cases in Wuhan were mixed in with
influenza, and they were missed. A few weeks would have saved
lives if there was early detection. The first U.S. case of the
novel 2009 H1N1 pandemic virus was only identified because
people went to a naval surveillance study site and got this
virus identified much earlier.
Whether what is lurking in the biological dark matter is
the first human foray for an emerging pathogen, a change in
behavior of a known pathogen, or an ordinary infection that
went undiagnosed, it is valuable information.
We need to commit and spend more time diving deep to
understand this dark matter. This is a no-regret investment
because it is likely to uncover actual, rather than
hypothetical, threats.
The value is fivefold. First, if it is a new emerging
pathogen that is obscured because it is causing a familiar
clinical syndrome, its discovery could be an early warning for
the entire world.
Second, if a new property has evolved in a known pathogen,
it can be valuable clinical information.
Third, inappropriate use of antibiotics for these
undiagnosed syndromes contributes to antimicrobial resistance
worldwide.
Fourth, we will learn a lot about the epidemiology of what
is circulating.
And, fifth, we will engage in global health diplomacy.
I believe Congress should prioritize augmentation of
diagnostic technologies as part of the international
biosurveillance enterprise. These technologies exist today. It
doesn't necessarily involve building a very big lab. I think it
is about improving bread-and-butter diagnostic capacities, and
I think it will help us all.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Adalja follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bera. Oops. Professor Esvelt? Did we lose Professor
Esvelt? Looks as though we may have lost Professor Esvelt.
Staff. Sir, we are just getting back on here.
Mr. Bera. OK. Professor Esvelt?
Dr. Esvelt [continuing]. Individuals.
Mr. Bera. Teresa, can you work with Professor Esvelt?
Staff. Chair Bera? Oh, there--so we are seeing Dr. Esvelt
on the line again. Dr. Esvelt, if you wouldn't mind----
Dr. Esvelt. Apologies. Could you not hear me?
Staff. No, sir.
Mr. Bera. We couldn't hear you. We lost you for a moment
there. If you want to start your 5 minutes of testimony.
Dr. Esvelt. [Inaudible.]
Mr. Bera. Teresa, we have lost him again. Is that correct?
Staff. Yes, sir. Sir, if you wouldn't mind, we will work
with Dr. Esvelt on his bandwidth issues, and we can come back
to him if that is OK with you.
Mr. Bera. OK. That sounds fine. Why do not we, in the
interest of time, we will now move on to questions, and then,
when Professor Esvelt gets back on, we can allow him to do his
opening testimony.
I will now recognize members for 5 minutes each, and
pursuant to House rules, all time yielded is for the purpose of
questioning our witnesses.
Because of the virtual format of this hearing, I will
recognize members by committee seniority, alternating between
Democrats and Republicans. If you miss your turn, please let
our staff know, and we will circle back to you.
If you seek recognition, you must unmute your microphone
and address the chair verbally.
With that, we will see if Professor Esvelt is on, and not
seeing him at this moment, I will recognize myself for 5
minutes of questioning.
You know, Mr. Weber, I applaud your optimism that we could
actually reduce the threat significantly down to zero, but I do
worry about the readily available technology and the fact that
high school students are learning how to use CRISPR technology,
which isn't a bad thing.
You know, as a doctor, you know, we have made remarkable
achievements in the therapeutics that we have to treat
oncology, you know, cancers, and remarkable advances. But I do
worry about the down side.
I am going to ask, you know, I guess each of the witnesses
one thing that we touched on was biosurveillance and how we
ought to use biosurveillance.
We have invested, you know, billions of dollars into gene
sequencing, which was woefully inadequate here in the United
States but also worldwide, and we are doing a much better job
around COVID-19 in terms of addressing those threats.
You know, maybe starting with Dr. Yassif, as we, in
Congress, think about these investments, beyond COVID-19, what
are the regimes and biosurveillance that we should be thinking
about both here domestically but then also internationally to
identify as quickly as possible, naturally occurring pathogens
but also manmade pathogens?
Dr. Yassif. Thank you, Chairman Bera.
I appreciate that really timely and important question.
Certainly biosurveillance is critically important for part of
the layered defense that we need to protect against high-
consequence biological risks. I will share three quick points.
One is that we really need to integrate gene sequencing
technology, as you have mentioned, into biosurveillance
systems, both domestically and internationally. I would argue
that, before COVID, that wasn't really in place, and I think
that is still a work in progress.
Second, we need to ensure that our biosurveillance systems
and data-sharing capabilities are integrated across countries
and across regions. This has been a significant challenge that
experts in the community have been discussing for years, and we
have a long way to go to create an integrated global system.
I think, third, I would offer that we need to have a
combination of a baseline set of data so we know what normal
background, biological noise looks like, and so we can detect
unusual events and new pathogens that we might not have been
looking for, so we can detect unknown unknowns, especially as
we are looking to the future where we might have to contend
with engineered pathogens. So those are some recommendations
that I would offer. Thank you.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Weber, do you want to add?
Mr. Weber. Yes. I completely agree with you that these new
technologies, like metagenomic sequencing, give us incredible
capabilities to improve our biosurveillance and early warning
systems, which are the key to both preventing pandemics,
isolating outbreaks before they become epidemics and pandemics.
But also an important part, just as we have a nuclear
detection system to prevent biological terrorism, having early
warning against deliberate biological threats needs to be a big
part of our deterrence strategy. Our adversaries need to know
that they will be detected and caught if they launch biological
weapons attacks.
So I think it is an exciting time. And one of the tools
that the U.S. Government has is the Biological Threat Reduction
Program that is implemented by the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency.
I was involved in that for decades, and one of the goals
was to enhance global biosurveillance, working with partners
all around the world, and I think, in the next phase, with
sufficient funding from Congress--it is a shame that the
Department cut over a hundred million dollars from this program
in the current year, Fiscal Year 2022 budget request, but if we
can restore that funding, we can use those dollars to surge
technologies that will enable genomic sequencing to be used
broadly as part of our early warning system against pandemics
and bio attacks. So the opportunity is really incredible.
Also, metagenomic sequencing gives us new opportunities to
identify unknown pathogens. We do not have to just test for a
list of 10 or 12 specific pathogens, but we can take a sample
and test it for everything, virtually hundreds of potential
pathogens. And it is getting much cheaper and faster to do
this.
So I agree, we need to, both domestically and abroad,
deploy these new capabilities on a massive scale.
Mr. Bera. Right. Wonderful. I see I am out of time. I do
see Professor Esvelt on.
Professor, do you want to give your testimony? And then we
will come back to the ranking member, Mr. Chabot.
STATEMENT OF KEVIN ESVELT, DIRECTOR, SCULPTING EVOLUTION GROUP,
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Esvelt. Thank you, Chairman Bera, Ranking Member
Chabot, members of the subcommittee. First, I am going to
check, can you hear me now?
Mr. Bera. Yes, we can.
Mr. Esvelt. Wonderful. Thank you for inviting me here today
and additional thanks to my fellow witnesses for outlining the
situation. As a practicing biotechnologist, I am deeply
concerned that pandemic viruses pose a proliferation threat
greater than that of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Government can
take specific steps that would greatly reduce this risk.
The threat is severe because new technologies have given
thousands of skilled individuals the ability to assemble
infectious viruses using materials and equipment that can be
ordered online.
If scientists learn and share which viruses could cause new
pandemics, no matter how pure our motives, everyone with these
skills will be getting access to credible weapons of mass
destruction.
For example, even though there are no virologists in my own
lab at MIT, perhaps a third of us could order synthetic DNA in
the mail and successfully follow published, step-by-step,
virus-assembly protocols.
Thankfully scientists do not yet know of any animal or lab-
created viruses that would cause another pandemic, but some
well-meaning programs that aim to prevent or mitigate natural
pandemics are trying to identify all of the viruses that could
cause them and publish a list of the most threatening ones.
This inadvertently threatens U.S. national security and the
world's future.
I do not believe that there are remotely commensurate
benefits. The vast majority of the pandemic viruses would never
naturally jump into humans, and finding the remainder would not
speed vaccine development.
The main proliferation risk comes from laboratory
experiments performed by EcoHealth Alliance and similar
programs to determine which viruses would likely cause
pandemics.
These experiments are the equivalent of nuclear tests. They
first received Federal support back when it was much harder to
make viruses, and funding has continued under administrations
of both parties.
Nations from the Netherlands to China to Germany have also
funded these kinds of experiments. In my opinion, they should
be stopped, not just in China and in the U.S., but everywhere.
If successful, pandemic virus prediction will give
thousands of actors the ability to ignite more pandemics at the
same time than would normally occur in a century. If there is
published, peer-reviewed research describing the potential of
these viral weapons, threats to use them will be all too
credible.
Imagine a rogue State warning that infectious samples of
all the top-ranked pandemic viruses will be released in
airports if their regime is overthrown. Extremist groups,
apocalyptic cults, or even a lone wolf bioterrorist could kill
more people than any nuclear weapon.
So what can be done to minimize our vulnerability to
pandemic proliferation? First, Congress should issue a finding
that pandemic virus prediction threatens the security of the
United States. That alone would change the tenor of the
discussion and leave Federal agencies with little security
expertise to rethink their support and oversight of such
experiments, which are only performed by a tiny fraction of
virology labs.
Second, the U.S. and other governments should limit access
to synthetic viral DNA. The California State legislature
recently passed well-targeted legislation with this intent, but
it was vetoed on the grounds that security bills should be
enacted federally.
Third, the U.S. could work with China on these issues,
because this is one case where our interests are aligned. Both
Nations have little to gain and much to lose if pandemic
viruses become widely accessible. Any diplomatic benefits or
leverage that we gain here could be applied to more sensitive
challenges.
Fourth, as the other witnesses have emphasized, we should
invest in detecting biological threats early. A sequencing-
based nucleic acid observatory focused on travel hubs, such as
airports, could reliably detect any emerging biological threat,
and it could be done using current technology, we believe, for
less than a billion dollars a year. This would improve our
response time to all pandemics and deter attacks.
Last, Congress could amend the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 to
regulate all viruses with evidence suggestive of pandemic
potential through the Federal Select Agent Program, which
applies to all research as well as export control.
If we act now, we can greatly reduce the chance that
viruses will be used as weapons. Pandemic virus prediction is a
needless game of Russian roulette, and we keep adding more
ammunition. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Esvelt follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bera. Thank you.
Let me now recognize my good friend, the ranking member,
the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Chabot, for 5 minutes of
questioning.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and, again,
thank you for holding this, what I think is a very, very
important meeting, and I want to commend all of the witnesses
for their testimony this morning.
Dr. Esvelt, I am going to turn to you if I can. Since the
beginning of this pandemic, I think, to a considerable degree,
the American public has been misinformed, kind of misled, first
of all, obviously, by the PRC but to some degree, the coverage
in the media as far as the relative likelihood that a lab leak
actually caused this pandemic. So I have a few questions.
First of all, it is my understanding that lab leaks, even
in this country but especially in other parts across the globe,
are, you know, pretty safe, but that lab leaks do happen, in
fact, much more often than the general public or the media seem
to appreciate. Could you comment on that, and you know, how
frequently do such lab leaks actually occur?
Mr. Esvelt. That is an excellent question, Ranking Member
Chabot. There is well-documented evidence that hundreds of lab
leaks, involving dangerous pathogens, occur around the world.
This evidence is so substantial--of course, most of them do not
involve potential pandemic viruses--but nevertheless we know
that the risk is nontrivial.
To the extent that we add one more to the list, whether or
not we can do so, doesn't change our assessment of the risk,
which is that it is definitely nontrivial. I am not saying that
some of these experiments cannot be performed safely in theory,
but in practice, we are all human, and humans do make mistakes.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you. Let me ask you specifically this.
How many times, for example, was there a SARS leak in the PRC,
in a lab in China?
Mr. Esvelt. There were two known occasions--at least two
known occasions confirmed of leaks of SARS 1 after the initial
outbreak. One of them actually did lead to a chain of
transmission through people associated with the laboratory
members that experienced the leak.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you. And I think, you know, much of the
world, unfortunately, is woefully behind in getting their
healthcare systems up to the standards that are set by the
international health regulations, and that is why I have been
working very closely with my Democratic colleague, Gerry
Connolly, on the Global Health Security Act.
We have been working on that now for a number of years, and
I would want to add that it was somewhat prescient, and I want
to say, particularly on Mr. Connolly's part, because we
introduced this prior to COVID. It was almost a year prior to
COVID that we introduced this legislation, and then the COVID
came around, you know, was facing us around the corner.
So could you talk about, right now, even, you know, if our
standards are very good here in the United States, if they are
not up to par in other countries across the globe, how it can
affect us here at home? And obviously COVID is the best
example, but why should we care? Why should we--for example,
you know, we give assistance across the globe, with all kinds
of recommendation how that assistance or requirements of how
that assistance is utilized.
How do things across the globe, how can they affect us here
at home? Why should we care about that?
Mr. Esvelt. Well, unfortunately, a leak of a pandemic-
capable virus anywhere in the world will most certainly come to
affect us here in the United States unless it can be contained
elsewhere. And, as noted, many countries have much less
sophisticated systems for detection and containment.
It is also certainly true that, even in the United States
in well regarded labs, leaks do happen. So the risk is not zero
anywhere in the world, and it is arguably more severe elsewhere
for certain.
So I do not mean to say that we should not support other
countries in monitoring the animal-human interface, as Dr.
Adalja suggested, and in assisting them in detecting threats as
early as possible and containing them before they get to
American shores.
But supporting other nations in directly culturing these
kinds of viruses in the lab does risk lab leaks. Or what is
more, if we identify a pandemic-capable virus anywhere in the
world and we publish it, then a malevolent actor, anywhere in
the world, could assemble it using available published
protocols and deliberately release it as a weapon of mass
destruction.
So that kind of research, pandemic virus prediction, simply
cannot be performed safely anywhere in the world.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, Doctor.
Mr. Chairman, my time is expired, and I yield back.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
Let me now recognize the gentlelady from Nevada, Ms. Titus,
for 5 minutes.
Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank our
witnesses. I am glad that Dr. Esvelt made it back. I had a
question for him. And I know he is an expert on this, and if we
didn't know it from his resume, we could tell it from the white
board behind him. It is very impressive.
We have talked a lot about what happens in the lab, but I
would like to extend that and talk about the relationship
between biosecurity and climate change. Climate change leads to
demographic changes. People move, animals move, the weather
changes, patterns that affect growth of crops.
All of those things seem to be related in some way to
biosecurity, and I wonder if you could address that
relationship and how we might look at this bigger picture, not
just the labs.
Mr. Esvelt. Thank you, Congresswoman. So the idea you have
so well articulated is often called One Health, and the idea is
that the health of animals and the environment and people is
all connected, most obviously because viruses and other
pathogens can spread between animals and people. And, as we
have seen with SARS 2, that can even occur back, and possibly
back and forth. We are not certain.
So monitoring the health of the environment and animals and
detecting animal outbreaks could potentially allow us to
anticipate threats to humans. Whether the risk of natural
pandemics resulting from spillover from animals to humans is
greater now than before is--has been advanced as a hypothesis.
There isn't a lot of data to support that one way or another.
To the extent that we are forcing wild animals into contact
with humans as we advance into the environment, that should
increase the risk.
On the other hand, more people now live in cities than
before, which might imply fewer people in direct contact with
those animals.
But it is certainly true that the impacts on the
environment can come back to affect our health in direct ways.
So I fully support the sorts of monitoring programs that
examine the animal-human interface, as those really could
detect nascent pandemics before they actually spread out of
control.
That is very distinct from surveying for animal viruses,
the vast majority of which will never actually come in contact
with humans but, if identified, could be deliberately assembled
and released as a weapon.
Ms. Titus. Well, thank you for that answer. It kind of
confirms what I just suspected on an informal level, and I
would like it if we could look into that, Mr. Chairman, see if
there is some way we can be supportive of that kind of
research.
Thank you, Doctor.
I would ask Dr. Yassif, we have had different responses to
the COVID. Different States have different degrees of
prevention or cure. Different countries have come on earlier,
later.
Do you think it is better for us to have universal
standards that everybody follows so we are all on the same
page, or is it better to respond individually with
circumstances that differ how we can meet those as opposed to
being bound by one set of rules?
Dr. Yassif. Well, thank you so much for that really
important and timely question. I think the challenge of finding
a way for every country to lead its own pandemic responses and
mitigation efforts while having an integrated global response
is not trivial, but it is important to get it right.
I think the short answer is it is sort of a balance between
the two sort of poles that you are talking about. One is having
a shared global standard while still allowing countries the
flexibility to respond, as appropriate, based on their needs
and capabilities. And I think this has got a few pieces.
So, first, I think at the international level what we
really need is a more integrated and effective early warning
system associated with the WHO sort of alert and warning
system, the Public Health Emergency of International Concern
declaration.
That needs to be strengthened, and we at NTI have
recommended that it shift from a binary sort of yes/no signal
to something that is more--to something that has multiple
grades so that it provides information to countries about how
bad an emerging pandemic risk might be.
So we just need to strengthen that system so countries have
better sense of what the risk is over the horizon even,
perhaps, before it might have materialized. And I think to make
that really--you can think about the early stages of COVID,
perhaps in February and March 2020, when we saw it start to
break out in certain parts of the world, but we weren't really
sure how serious it was. And we need to really do better in
terms of early intelligence--epidemic intelligence in sort of
thinking about the emerging risks of a new pandemic.
Second I would offer is that countries--you know, I think
the shared approach that countries should offer is proactive
response, that is, you know, triggered early response to
emerging pandemics, not wait for mounting case counts and
fatality because then it is too late.
But, fundamentally, countries around the world have
different populations and different capabilities, and so they
will have to have flexibility within that system to respond
effectively. Thank you.
Ms. Titus. Thank you.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. Let me now recognize the
gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Houlahan, for 5 minutes of
questioning.
Ms. Houlahan. Hi all, and thank you so much for the
conversation. It has been riveting and terrifying all at the
same time. And I have been trying to compose my questions, and
I have so many of them and no real good way to articulate them
into one cogent question.
Dr. Esvelt, I think your testimony was perhaps the most
devastating, and so, at the same time, I hear optimism coming
that we will be able to manage and control future pandemics,
but I am concerned and confused where the advice is, you know,
basically, not to make it too exaggerated, but we should stick
our heads in the collective sand and not look up or around
because of the implications that bad actors would have if we
were to be able to understand what the threats are.
So I also look at the response that the Nation took and the
world has taken to COVID-19--and this has something to do with
Representative Titus' line of questions--which is, we have done
horribly as a collective in terms of managing what happened
with COVID-19.
And even had we had advance warning and a couple weeks of
warning, I am not certain that we would end up in much of a
different place than we are. And so here we are, optimism
coming from you all and advice to, you know, not look around,
but we really have mismanaged this one.
How can we possibly do this better, and what is your
prescription for the average person, citizen, to be able to
prevent this from happening and for it to, you know--I am just
trying to figure out, like, what do we do to prevent another
pandemic from happening if we are not going to look around and
understand what it is, if we are not going to develop cures or
techniques to address those issues, and if we have got a
population that is uncompliant? And I would love to turn that
over to my fellow MIT person, Dr. Esvelt.
Mr. Esvelt. Thank you for that very difficult question. So
I think, to be blunt, we are in a very bad place, and even with
very substantial investments, we will still struggle against a
truly nasty pandemic.
In my assessment, something deliberate could be much worse
than anything that is natural, simply because something that is
natural is a single point of spillover and involves a single
virus, where something deliberate could be multiple points in
travel hubs with multiple viruses. So that is why I say
deliberate would be worse.
Also, engineered would be worse, but that is something that
I really would prefer that we not discuss today.
If we want to be actually immune to future pandemics, as
The Honorable Andy Weber has indicated, I think we need early
warning, metagenomic sequencing systems, especially in travel
hubs, so we know what it is.
Once we know what it is, then we can figure out where it is
with diagnostics.
But then we need to ensure that food distribution, water
distribution, and power all stay on, healthcare remains
operational in the teeth of a 30 percent-plus lethality
pandemic.
And I think that can only be done by investing in new
personal protective equipment. Make it comfortable, as good as
a powered air purifying respirator today. And it needs to be
reliable enough that all essential workers can be confident
going out there in that kind of a pandemic and keeping our
civilization intact.
If we do that, then I think we will be resistant to just
about any kind of pandemic. I am not confident in our ability
to reliably come up with vaccines or any kind of countermeasure
against every kind of threat.
Note that we still do not have an HIV vaccine. Note how
long it took us to get Paxlovid, although I would love to see
that approved immediately. These things are amazing when you
can get them, but we should not assume they are possible.
Whereas gear that can prevent Americans from getting
infected in the first place, that will always work. And I am
not saying stick our heads in the sand on this. I am saying
build a network to ensure that whatever it is, we can see it
when it comes. But that the vast majority of pandemic-capable
viruses out there, whether they are in nature or whether they
do not exist yet and scientists are trying to evolve them, the
vast majority of those would never hit us anyway.
Even if we had advance warning of a particular one, mRNA
vaccine design can be done in a day now. So, if we can get a
virus, we are going to have it almost immediately. And so
advance knowledge of a particular virus out there that is going
to come and bite us actually doesn't save us any time, as long
as we are willing to combine Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials, which
I would like to think we would certainly do in a pandemic.
So that is why I say I do not think knowing a particular
virus as a threat is going to help us respond, and I also do
not think we are really going to invest the kind of money
needed to develop vaccines for what are probably hundreds of
existing pandemic-capable viruses out there in nature. That
just doesn't seem practical to me.
So I would prefer to work on preparedness plans that would
work for everything across the board.
Ms. Houlahan. And so these detection systems that you are
talking about that are at airports, et cetera, I am assuming
that these are some sort of passive detection systems, that
they do not require anybody participating in them in any way,
shape, or form?
And, you know, help me understand as a layperson, how would
a passive detection system, where you do not have a cataloguing
of what it is that you are looking for, do you even know that
you have seen something? If that makes any sense.
Mr. Esvelt. That is a great question, and briefly, the
answer is, any serious biological threat must be growing
exponentially. So, if we sequence all the nucleic acids out
there, all of the RNA and DNA, because viruses can come in
either form, and we just look for the sequence fragments that
are growing rapidly in abundance, that is a biological threat.
And every biological threat will display that signature. And we
think that by looking for it, we can reliably find anything of
that variety.
So that is when I say, even if an adversary designs
something to be undetectable by targeted probes, looking for
the kinds of viruses we know are threats, we will still be able
to detect it using metagenomic sequencing in that way.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, Doctor.
Is my time out?
Mr. Bera. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Bera. Let me go ahead and recognize the gentleman from
California, Mr. Lieu, for 5 minutes of questioning.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you, Chair Bera, for holding this important
hearing.
My first question goes to Dr. Adalja. I saw that in your
biography, you previously worked on the anthrax issue.
I note that I was vaccinated for anthrax when I served on
Active Duty in the military. I served overseas, and my question
to you is about vaccines. Would you agree with me that vaccines
are one of the best ways to mitigate pandemics?
Dr. Adalja. Thank you for that question. Yes. I think when
it comes to any infectious disease, prevention is always better
than treatment, especially if you have a safe and effective
vaccine. So vaccines have to be a cornerstone of our medical
countermeasure policy because that is what takes a threat off
the table, that is what reduces severity from illness, and that
ultimately is what we have to aim for by looking at what is out
there in the threatscape that we know can cause infection and
starting to work toward vaccines. Even if it may not be the
exact vaccines that is used during an epidemic or a pandemic,
making those steps down the road will get us a much faster
response. The work that people did on the first SARS and Middle
East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS, made it much easier to develop
a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 because they already knew, for
example, that the spike protein was an important target for
immunity.
So, yes, vaccines are always going to be one of the
cornerstones for medical countermeasures.
Mr. Lieu. And it also turns out that our immune system is
pretty smart. So, when we put vaccines in and train our immune
system, even with the variants, our immune system still sort of
figures it out, that, oh, maybe, this is something we need to
take care of. So, while the vaccines may not be a hundred
percent effective, they are still somewhat effective at making
the immune system better against even a variants. Isn't that
correct?
Dr. Adalja. Right. If you have an effective vaccine, it is
very hard for a variant or a mutation to erase all the
protection the vaccine gives you. Vaccines are not all or none.
It is not an on-or-off switch. It is a spectrum of protection.
So, even if a vaccine may allow you to get infected, other
arms of the immune system, other than the antibodies, may
protect you against the severe consequences. So, even when you
have a vaccine that is not 100 percent, that is not a magic bug
zapper, you still get benefits from them, and they are
beneficial.
This underscores what we do with the influenza vaccine
every year. We know it is much more protective against severe
disease than it is protection against mild disease, and that is
also true for the COVID-19 vaccines.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you. This question is for Dr. Esvelt. You
said something interesting about combining Phase 1 and Phase 2
trials. Can you explain the difference between Phase 1 and
Phase 2 trials for vaccine development?
Mr. Esvelt. Thank you, Representative. Yes. A Phase 1 trial
normally seeks to establish the safe dosage and doesn't try to
figure out whether or not a vaccine actually is effective
against the given pathogen.
Phase 2 is when we give it to enough people, some of whom
we know will become infected, that we will be able to tell how
effective the vaccine actually is.
So, when I suggest combining Phase 1 and Phase 2, if there
is a pandemic there is very high lethality, much higher than
SARS 2, then, in all likelihood, we would want to get shots
into arms sooner rather than later, if necessary, trying
multiple different doses of the same vaccine in different
cohorts.
Honestly, if we are serious about it, we would actually run
challenge trials in which we take volunteer cohorts, guarantee
them the best medical care and deliberately infect them, some
of whom would have vaccinated with different vaccines in
different amounts.
Mr. Lieu. In a high-lethality pandemic, would the FDA have
authority to do this, or would there need to be a change to a
law for them to combine the trials and speed things up?
Mr. Esvelt. That is an excellent question. I am afraid I do
not know. I suspect Dr. Adalja may know.
Mr. Lieu. Does anyone on the panel know?
Dr. Adalja. If I can, sir, I do think that this is
something that has been--that is in the public health authority
laws of the FDA. I do not know that for sure, but I do think
there has been a lot of discussion about running Phase 1 and
Phase 2 simultaneously. And I think that there is not any
obstacle to doing so, and it would be necessary during a
pandemic to get the vaccine as quickly as possible to meet
these hundred-day goals that we hear talked about.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
And now let me speak to my Republican colleagues across the
aisle. We need your help to counter vaccine disinformation. As
you have just heard, vaccines are one of the most effective
ways to mitigate a pandemic, and yet we have lots of folks
believing that these vaccines have microchips in them or that
they cause autism or that they are going to give you COVID or
other crazy things, and all of that is false.
And so we simply need Republican colleagues to step up and,
when they go on Fox News, just push back on their hosts who are
saying crazy stuff about these vaccines because that is how we
can beat this pandemic by getting as many people vaccinated as
quickly as possible.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
Let me now recognize the gentlelady from Virginia, Ms.
Spanberger, for 5 minutes of questioning.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to
our witnesses today, thank you so much for being here. This has
been extraordinarily interesting, frightening, but I believe
that the way that we prepare ourselves for the threats that
exist is by facing them head on. So I truly appreciate your
honest assessments and the information you shared.
I also am thankful that the chair and the ranking member
included the term ``deterrence'' in the title of today's
hearing, because, you know, frankly the best defense against
future biothreats is our ability to quickly mitigate the spread
of them and the effects of any biological agent.
And a critical part of any biosecurity deterrence strategy
is ensure that the United States has the manufacturing capacity
to quickly ramp up our production, if necessary, medical
countermeasures in the event of an emergency.
And I am sure all of our witnesses know, active
pharmaceutical ingredients are the base ingredients for
producing essential generic medicines, but, unfortunately, 87
percent of facilities that produce APIs are overseas.
Our healthcare system suffers routine shortages, even
outside of emergencies, and our reliance on foreign suppliers
really jeopardizes our ability to keep Americans healthy.
For example, the U.S. has lost the capacity to produce
penicillin here at home. That should be kind of a flashing
warning sign to those who are focused on how prepared we may be
into the future to ultimately deter or respond to future
biosecurity threats or even supply chain challenges.
I introduced a bill called the PREPARE Act. It is a
bipartisan piece of legislation to identify the essential
generic medicines that are necessary for us to have, as a
Nation, available at all times and to authorize the creation of
a stockpile of active pharmaceutical ingredients so that we can
ensure that our pharmaceutical supply chain is always able to
produce the essential medicines that we need in the event of an
emergency.
Certainly my district in central Virginia is leading the
way in ensuring robust domestic supply of essential medicines,
which is why I am so focused on this issue.
The bipartisan PREPARE Act would provide statutory
authorization for this important Federal effort and would
create thousands of well-paid jobs, improve patients' access to
medicines, and bolster our national biosecurity.
And all of this kind of preface leads me to my question.
Either for Mr. Weber or for Dr. Adalja, how does strengthening
the domestic production capacity of essential medicines and
other medical countermeasures improve our Nation's ability to
deter biosecurity threats?
Again, assuming you agree with that assertion, if you could
comment on that.
Mr. Weber. Yes, yes, thank you for your leadership in this
area. It is very important, and I will just give you one
example. Smallpox. We vaccinate our forces against smallpox. We
have a stockpile of enough for every American in our Strategic
National Stockpile, and I think just that fact is deterrence.
It tells our adversaries that smallpox would not be
successful as a weapon against the United States and its
citizens.
So that kind of preparedness deterrence, by having those
capacities to respond, I think, are key. And onshoring those
capabilities here in the United States to surge and rapidly
manufacture all of these medical countermeasures is vital to
not just public health but to U.S. national security.
Ms. Spanberger. Thank you, Mr. Weber.
Dr. Adalja, would you add anything to that?
Dr. Adalja. I completely agree. I liken medical
countermeasures to almost an anti-ballistic missile defense
system, that the more prepared we are for these threats,
natural or deliberate, the less likely they are to be used. And
I think the smallpox example is a great one, and I think--and I
applaud your leadership on the PREPARE Act because I have
worked on this issue in the past, where we know that there are
many active pharmaceutical ingredients that all trace back to
one place. And, if there is a supply chain disruption, it
becomes really disastrous.
And I think we need a lot more redundancy when it comes to
certain medical countermeasures that should be thought of as
part of national security.
Ms. Spanberger. So, Dr. Adalja, just following up briefly
on that point, you know, the World Health Organization
maintains the list of essential medicines since I guess at
least 2007, but only in 2020 did FDA publish its first list of
essential medicines.
As new pathogens and biothreats emerge, how can the
government identify the essential medicines and medical
countermeasures for the threats that exist, that we, as a
Nation, will want to have to protect our people and our
servicemembers?
Dr. Adalja. It will have to have a lot of clinical read-in
to what is actually effective, what drugs are being used, which
ones are in trials, which ones are promising but not yet
approved.
All of those should be on the radar of people that are
trying to figure out how to augment the Strategic National
Stockpile and how to think about what needs to have redundancy
in supply chains.
Ms. Spanberger. Excellent.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Again, to our witnesses, thank you so much for your time
today. It is extraordinarily helpful as we think about what
Congress' role should be in making sure we are protecting our
people.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
Let me now recognize the gentlelady from North Carolina,
Ms. Manning, for 5 minutes of questioning.
Ms. Manning. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our
witnesses for being with us today on this important topic.
Mr. Weber, I am interested in what you started talking
about at the beginning of your testimony about the strategy of
deterrence of denial.
And I am wondering what exactly that would have meant, how
could it have been used to prevent COVID from becoming
international? What systems did we not have in place, and why?
Mr. Weber. Well, we didn't have a system of early warning
rapid detection--a global system. This pandemic could have been
stopped in its tracks in China if they had had a robust system
of early warning.
And then the other part is rapid diagnostics, testing, and
contact tracing, and then countermeasures like platform--
programmable platforms like the mRNA vaccine. If we could have
had that not in 10 months but in a hundred days or even less,
that would give us tools to respond to any biological threat,
whether it is engineered as a biological weapon or naturally
occurring.
So it is that system; it is all about time, time to detect,
to know there is a problem, and then to isolate it and have
those rapid countermeasures available so we can prevent them
from spreading from the source to different places around the
world.
Ms. Manning. So would that have required cooperation or
first steps by the Chinese, or could we have had people in
place who could have instigated that kind of a deterrence-by-
denial system?
Mr. Weber. Well, the deterrence-by-denial strategy that I
laid out is primarily to prevent the deliberate use of
biological weapons against the United States, its partners, and
its allies around the world.
Pandemic prevention is a subset of that, I believe, and
yes, we could have had in place a system of information-sharing
and metagenomic testing that would have given the Chinese a
better capability and prepared us better for a possible spread
to this country. But we didn't have----
Ms. Manning. I am sorry. We didn't have?
Mr. Weber. We didn't have those systems in place.
And it is going to require a sustained investment. I do not
want to say this is going to be easy.
[inaudible.]
Ms. Manning. OK. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Adalja, I appreciated your answer to Mr. Lieu that
vaccines are a critically important first line of defense
against a pandemic, and I certainly echo Mr. Lieu's comments to
our colleagues, because we have seen an almost unimaginable
level of vaccine hesitancy and an anti-vax movement that has
dramatically harmed our effort to prevent the spread of COVID.
I would like your thoughts, Dr. Adalja, about what steps we
could take to get ahead of this problem the next time around,
and by ``this problem,'' I mean vaccine hesitancy or an anti-
vax movement.
How can we develop our population in a way that the people
are not just willing but anxious to get vaccinated to prevent
the spread of a future pandemic?
Dr. Adalja. Thank you for that question. I think this is
one of the most important aspects of the pandemic that we did
to think about and reflect on to get us prepared for the next
pandemic, because vaccine hesitancy is a major threat.
No one imagined that we would, in the United States, still
be facing the onslaught of this pandemic, not because we didn't
have a vaccine but because people chose not to take the
vaccine.
And I think that this self-inflicted wound is really
something that is going to make us all think about how to make
us--how we make ourselves more resilient, even if we have these
great tools, if no one wants to utilize them.
So I think that we, as a medical community, and I am an
infectious disease physician, have to be very proactive. The
vaccine hesitancy movement has been something that has been
coming at us for some time, basically since the dawn of
vaccines.
But, with measles, mumps, rubella, with Gardasil, they
continually meet each new vaccine with misinformation, and I
think we have to really call it out as something that takes
lives, and we can't be passive and try and debunk them only
after they bring these things up.
We have to have a tool kit to talk to people, to train
physicians, train healthcare providers to be able to almost
vaccinate people against the anti-vaccine movement by showing
them how to think about this data and allowing them to really
actually just open their eyes and see the benefits of vaccines,
the fact that decades have been added to all of our lives
because of vaccines, hundreds of thousands of lives saved.
And to me it is mind-boggling, and it is frustrating. It is
almost as if it is the voice of the Dark Ages that has gained
access to internet technology and has allowed itself to spread
so much bad information out there.
But this is--I do not think it is going to be one single
solution. It really has to be the whole healthcare community,
the whole medical community, scientific community, as well as
policymakers that call this out for dangerous it is and take
the fight to them, instead of being merely reactive.
Ms. Manning. Thank you.
My time has expired. I yield back.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. Let me recognize the gentlelady
from Missouri, Mrs. Wagner, for 5 minutes of questioning.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank the chair very much, and I think our
witnesses for their time today.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense suffering, and we
grieve the millions of victims who have lost their lives.
As we continue to combat COVID-19, we must acknowledge
that, right from the outset of this devastating crisis, the
Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, suppressed, misrepresented,
and falsified information necessary to prevent a pandemic in
clear violation of the international health regulations.
Holding the CCP accountable is the only way to deter the
release of another deadly virus on the global community in the
future and ensure that the Communist Party stops violating
international laws.
That is why I introduced the Compensation for Americans
Act, which will establish a compensation fund for those
affected and allow the President to freeze Chinese assets to
bring the Communist Party to the negotiating table and give the
United States a comprehensive toolbox of punitive measures to
further incentivize China's cooperation.
However, the United States must also lead efforts to reform
the international organizations and laws governing pandemic
prevention and response to ensure there are real consequences
for putting all nations at risk of a deadly outbreak.
The United States alone cannot prevent the next pandemic.
Every member of the international community must honor their
legal obligations to defend against emerging biothreats.
And the World Health Organization's failure to combat
China's coronavirus-related misinformation campaign in the
early days of the pandemic cost the international community
precious time it needed to avert a crisis.
And the WHO remains a deeply flawed institution and is
highly susceptible to China's malign influence.
Assist Secretary Weber, what reforms to the WHO are needed
to prevent authoritarian States like China from co-opting
global health policy to serve their interests? What leverage, I
would say, does the United States have to secure these badly
needed reforms?
Mr. Weber. Well, I think the first thing that was
unfortunate was several years ago we pulled out of the WHO and
lost our influence there.
It is great that the United States is back at the table and
using our influence, but we need to strengthen the
international health regulations.
We need to support this new pandemic treaty initiative that
will close some of the gaps that exist in the IHRs, and we need
to make this a priority.
But it should be in the interest of all nations to work
together against what is clearly a global and increasing threat
of pandemics and biological weapons.
And I think it is very important that this hearing is being
held by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, because it is a
global problem, and there is no, you know, single-nation
solution to it.
We have to work with partners around the world, even
difficult partners, if we are going to get ahead of this
problem.
Mrs. Wagner. Dr. Esvelt, the State Department's 2021 arms
control report States that the People's Republic of China has
been, quote, engaged in activities with dual-use applications
and that the U.S. does not have sufficient information to
determine whether China eliminated its biological weapons
program.
Can you tell me what type of dual-use activities are
scientists in the PRC engaged in, and do you believe the PRC is
complying with its obligations under the Biological Weapons
Convention? Dr. Esvelt?
Mr. Esvelt. Thank you for the questions. The scientists in
China, like those elsewhere in the world, have definitely been
attempting to identify pandemic-capable pathogens.
They have, additionally, in pursuit of that goal, been
exploring whether combinations of potentially risky viruses are
more infectious and more transmissible than the natural wild
versions.
Whether that is a violation of the Biological Weapons
Convention is very much a legal and international question. If
it is, then many nations would need to change their behavior on
this.
But whether or not it is true, pandemic virus prediction
definitely contributes to proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and undermines our national security.
Mrs. Wagner. I am very concerned about these dual-use
applications.
My time has expired. I would like to explore this further,
and I thank the chairman for this very important hearing. Thank
you.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. I am going to take chairman's
prerogative, if I can, and ask an additional question. And I am
told Mr. Levin may be joining us shortly.
You know, we talked a little bit about countermeasures as
one of our best strategies for deterrence. I think it is quite
remarkable that we were able to come up with a vaccine within
10 months' time.
I have heard several of you suggest that if we can narrow
that down to a hundred days, that would--obviously the shortest
possible time. My sense is, with the mRNA technology, we can
achieve that hundred-day goal. Is that the right target at this
point that we should be thinking about, Dr. Adalja, or any of
the witnesses?
Dr. Adalja. Thanks for that question. I think 100 days is
what has been articulated, and I think that is something to aim
for. Whether it is a hundred days or 180 days or 150 days I
think doesn't matter so much. The point is that we have the
technology to speed vaccine development, and even just a week
faster would have saved lives in the United States, for
example, if the Pfizer vaccine was available a week later.
So we do have to be much more innovative harnessing these
vaccine technologies at the same time, but we also have to be
cognizant of the fact that the vaccine hesitancy movement is
going to say this happened even faster, and that may end up
becoming a problem.
But I do think that it is not a scientific problem now to
get vaccines faster, and I think we have to really incentivize
companies to move quickly and rapidly characterize these
threats and develop vaccines, and I think it can be done.
Mr. Bera. So the scientific component of it might be
easiest component, looking at the regulatory process of having
Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials ready to go in a pandemic, and then
obviously the faster they are, how we market those vaccines and
address the hesitancy.
I have got one last question, then I will turn it back over
to Mr. Levin and recognize Mr. Levin.
We have also talked about surveillance a little bit.
Something I have explored and talked to some of our technology
companies is how we use technology, you know, search terms, et
cetera, as a form of surveillance.
And, you know, I would be curious if, you know, any of the
experts that we have on as witnesses have any thoughts on that.
You know, if all of a sudden a certain area people are
searching ``fever,'' searching particular search terms, is that
an area that we should explore in terms of biosurveillance, how
we work with the tech sector? Maybe Dr. Yassif.
Dr. Yassif. Thank you, Chairman Bera. I really appreciate
that question. I do think that we need to think creatively
about using all the different and emerging new technologies
that are at our disposal to take creative approaches to
biosurveillance.
So the kind of Google search and base strategy that you are
describing is something that, you know, Google and others have
tried to do in the past I think with some success, but you
know, in some ways, mixed results.
But I think over time we are seeing more and more different
types of data streams come online that we could think about
integrating into a 21st century strategy for biosurveillance.
And I think that could be really useful for early detection
of emerging infectious disease outbreaks so that we can stop
outbreaks at the source, which is critical as the other
witnesses have shared.
And it may also perhaps yield other types of information
that could help us more reliably attribute the source of
outbreaks in the event that we are not sure if they were
natural or not, and we are thinking about that in the context
of our joint assessment mechanism that I discussed in my
testimony.
And, if I may, I just wanted to offer one more thought
about the role of vaccines and the other capabilities for
ensuring that the United States and the globe can respond
effectively to pandemics.
And I absolutely agree with all the comments that have been
made about the critical importance of vaccines and the critical
importance of platform technologies and that the most robust
thing we can do is to be prepared to be surprised and that we
shouldn't assume that we will know in advance where the next
pandemic threat will emerge from, and we absolutely need to
have a flexible and adaptable response, and it has to be quick.
I could not agree more.
But I would also offer that we need nonpharmaceutical
interventions in the interim. So, when we saw with COVID it
took us well over a year and actually quite a lot longer to
have a vaccine that was developed, tested, and ready to go. And
we should absolutely accelerate those timelines. I think that
is a high priority.
But we need to acknowledge that there is going to be a lag
time, and in that interim, the virus will spread, and lives
will be lost, and economies will be damaged.
And social distancing and nonpharmaceutical interventions
can be incredibly valuable for slowing the chains of
transmission and saving lives during a public health emergency
of international concern.
And we shouldn't be winging it during a pandemic. We should
have plans in place. We should have--national governments
around the world should have response plans in place for a
high-consequence biological event where you are triggering
proactive early response that incorporates these kinds of
provisions for national and global response in addition to all
the other important medical countermeasures and other
provisions that we have been discussing. Thank you.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
Let me now recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mr.
Levin, for 5 minutes of questioning.
Mr. Levin. Thank you so much, Chairman Bera, for holding
this really important hearing and for your leadership on these
issues.
I want to talk about arms control and its relationship with
biothreats.
You know, the COVID pandemic has made the importance of
international cooperation in the face of emerging biothreats
abundantly clear, and it appears that all the witnesses before
the subcommittee today would agree that we have to improve
international cooperation among national governments and
international organizations on biosecurity issues if we hope to
prevent more severe threats in the future.
Despite the U.S. and Russia being in communication on arms
control, which is certainly an improvement from the last 4
years, it is my sense that real progress toward another major
arms control agreement is stalled.
So I am curious whether you think that investing in
international cooperation and negotiations with other
governments on biosecurity would also yield benefits for
broader arms control efforts.
For instance, could the U.S. leverage cooperation on
biosecurity as we seek to address the arsenals of other nuclear
powers?
Now, Mr. Weber, you Stated in your testimony that we could
more effectively deter the use of bioweapons if U.S. policy
were explicitly to State that U.S. nuclear weapons' sole
purpose was to deter the use of nuclear weapons.
Why is the threat of nuclear use not credible in deterring
biological attacks? Could you explain that?
Mr. Weber. Yes. And I certainly support what Candidate
Biden said, that we should adopt a sole-purpose strategy, that
nuclear weapons are for deterring nuclear weapons.
Traditionally, we have included biothreats, Big Cyber
threats, chemical threats, as something that we think that
nuclear weapons are useful in deterring. But the truth is they
are just not credible. No nation thinks that we would actually
use nuclear weapons in response to a biological attack. They
are not credible.
And that is why we are favoring a deterrence-by-denial
strategy by having such good early warning and defenses against
infectious disease--afterall, biological weapons are infectious
disease--that our adversaries will decide that it is not worth
pursuing biological weapons because they won't be very
effective.
So that is the approach that we are recommending, is
investing in our biodefenses to make these threats obsolete as
weapons of mass destruction.
And we also need to support the efforts to strengthen the
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which bans biological
weapons. These activities that are happening in North Korea and
Russia are already prohibited by the international community,
and we need to work harder to find mechanisms to strengthen
that international convention against the development and
stockpiling of biological weapons.
Mr. Levin. All right. Well, thanks, and hopefully we can,
you know, in tandem, improve our, you know, cooperation on
biological weapons with a revamped effort on arms control in
terms of nuclear weapons.
Now, COVID-19 has proved that we can't prevent future
pandemics alone. It has just blown up the idea of a go-alone
strategy on foreign policy generally and that expanding health
capabilities around the globe requires sharing financial
resources and making strategic investments.
I understand that Dr. Yassif, in her testimony, has
recommended that the United States invest in a new multilateral
financing mechanism for pandemic preparedness that would
incentivize other governments to invest in their own readiness
to respond to future pandemics.
And you were just touching on this, so Dr. Yassif, how can
we ensure that U.S. investments in international pandemic
preparedness efforts are targeted effectively?
Dr. Yassif. Well, thank you, Representative. The issue of
financing is absolutely critically important, and thank you for
raising the multilateral pandemic preparedness financing
mechanism that we have been advocating for.
And I would also thank the House for being so proactive and
forward leaning on this issue. We are hoping that Congress can
really advance this important initiative and get it across the
finish line, understanding that it is currently the matter of
active discussion.
And, you know, we are advocating for this financing
mechanism because everything we have had in place so far hasn't
worked. You know, we have seen a cycle of panic and neglect in
the runup to COVID that has left us woefully unprepared and has
really led the U.S., and the globe I think, to inadequately
respond. And so we need a better approach.
We do not think the United States can or should do it
alone. We absolutely think other governments should step up and
put their money on the table and contribute to their own
pandemic preparedness.
But absolutely it should be targeted, and it shouldn't just
be based on the fashion of the day. We should move money to the
most--to the places where it is most needed and where it can
have the greatest impact on reducing global biological risks.
You know, there are a number of tools at our disposal to figure
out what that is.
I will share that today NTI, in partnership with the Johns
Hopkins Center for Health Security, we released 2021 Global
Health Security Index, which it has a lot of data about
pandemic preparedness and biosecurity capabilities in countries
around the world, including gaps and where there is room for
improvement.
We put that forward as a tool to help funders within
government and in the private sector to think about how they
can most effectively invest their resources to target the areas
that need the most investment.
As part of our financing mechanism, the other provision
that we are thinking about is that countries should absolutely
be part of the discussion to think about what their own
internal priorities should be and where they need the greatest
investment to shore up their vulnerabilities.
So appreciate the question about targeted financing, I
couldn't agree more, and fortunately we have at our disposal a
number of tools that can help make that effective. Thank you.
Mr. Levin. Thanks. Well, Mr. Chairman, it looks like my
time is expired, but I will just say, in closing, if I am not
able to ask this as a further question, that, you know, clearly
we need to--a multilateral financing mechanism like this would
need to incentivize efforts to improve transparency and data-
sharing and support countries in doing that as we prepare for
future biosecurity threats because the kind of idea that South
Africa and other countries did such a great job in sharing and
then they seem to be penalized for it, you know, we have to
figure out ways to get beyond that.
So thanks, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Mr. Bera. Thank you.
And, you know, I think, with that, we have asked all the
questions. It doesn't look like the ranking member, Mr. Chabot,
has a closing statement.
So I want to, you know, commend, you know, each of the
witnesses for your testimony and look forward to working with
the other members on this subcommittee, full committee, and
Congress, to address some of the issues that were raised and
again defeat COVID-19 but, at the same time, make sure we are
prepared for the next pandemic or any other biothreats.
So, again, thank you for the testimony. It was timely.
And, with that, I will go ahead and bang the gavel, and the
hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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