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Public trust in science has declined since COVID — virologists need to unite around safety standards

Creating international viral biosafety guidelines are key to clearing up confusion, regaining trust and ensuring that essential research continues.
By
  1. Melanie Ott

    1. Melanie Ott is director of the Gladstone Infectious Disease Institute in San Francisco, California, USA, and professor in the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.

  2. Olivier Schwartz

    1. Olivier Schwartz is head of the Virus and Immunity Unit and professor at the Pasteur Institute, Paris Cité University, Paris, France.

  3. Alex Sigal

    1. Alex Sigal is a professor at the Lautenberg Center for Immunology and Cancer Research, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, and a faculty member at the Africa Health Research Institute, Durban, South Africa.

An engineer-virologist in PPE holds up lab plates with viruses at the Biosafety level 3 laboratory in France.

Researchers studying certain viruses must use personal protective equipment and follow strict procedures in biosafety facilities. Credit: Jean-Francois Monier/AFP via Getty

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times in March, two leading virologists argued that experiments on a coronavirus found in bats and similar to those that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) had been conducted without sufficient safety measures. The experiments involved infecting human cells with the live bat virus to see how the virus behaved1.

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Nature 646, 31-34 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03151-z

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Competing Interests

M.O. is a co-founder of DirectBio, Inc. and on the SAB for Invisishield Technologies Ltd.

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