Note from OCA Political Director Alexis Baden-Mayer: While this is welcome news, the world already has a Biological Weapons Convention. Some nations, including Israel, have refused to join it. Though the treaty was initiated by President Nixon, the U.S. has always blocked its enforcement (see https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/world/us-germ-warfare-research-pushes-treaty-limits.html).

President Donald Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and called for the total abolition of the creation of biological weapons.

Trump’s statement comes at a time when laboratories worldwide are actively engineering pathogens under the banner of pandemic preparedness, with bird flu serving as the most prominent—and most dangerous—focus of experimentation.

Moreover, the U.S. has a long history of deploying bioweapons on Americans without informed consent.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the DARPA/EcoHealth operation ‘DEFUSE’ outlined plans to release self-spreading COVID-related substances on human populations.