Biosecurity Must Protect Human Functional Capacity

As artificial intelligence accelerates the capability to engineer novel biological agents, public health and security frameworks face a critical paradigm shift. In a September 2026 correspondence published in Nature, researcher Nicolas Paccini argues that contemporary biosecurity protocols must evolve beyond a narrow focus on mass mortality to actively safeguard human functional capacity. Traditional threat assessment models prioritize preventing large-scale fatalities, but emerging biological risks may inflict widespread, non-lethal disability that paralyzes economic and social infrastructure. Paccini draws parallels between natural and engineered threats, citing severe myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome, alongside the post-infectious complications observed during the recent pandemic, as instructive case studies. These conditions frequently render individuals bedbound or housebound, creating substantial dependencies on care systems and introducing widespread sensory intolerance. The resulting population-level disability demonstrates a fundamental divergence between biological survival and functional security. The implication for national defense and public health policy is substantial. A biologically optimized agent does not require high lethality to destabilize a nation; it only needs to systematically degrade the workforce, healthcare responsiveness, and daily operational capacity. Current biosecurity architectures, which heavily weight fatality rates and acute infection curves, remain ill-equipped to mitigate scenarios where the primary threat is prolonged functional impairment rather than rapid demographic collapse. To address this vulnerability, experts are calling for comprehensive revisions to risk modeling and emergency response protocols. Future biosecurity strategies must incorporate metrics that track cognitive and physical functional retention, integrate early-warning systems for non-fatal epidemic trajectories, and invest in resilient care infrastructures capable of sustaining large-scale disability. As synthetic biology and machine learning converge to lower the barrier for designing complex biological agents, regulatory bodies and health agencies must pivot their focus from merely preserving life to actively maintaining the functional continuity of society.