This is preaching to the choir, especially on this site of self-proclaimed technologists. Yeah, we know more oversight/regulation needs to happen in certain nascent industries. We also know how awful things could get; you just told us. Blog posts like these is just wasting breath. Getting out and doing something and getting involved in the political process now is what will be helpful...so when the last baby boomer in a position of political power finally shuffles off the mortal realm (and we can have a weeklong celebration) we will have well-educated people on the issues that matter ready to ascend to power.
Then again, who am I kidding. We're talking about politics.
The main point of the article is not a point which is widely discussed, known, or accepted. It has nothing to do with oversight/regulation. The point is that offensive biotechnology has progressed way ahead of defensive biotechnology. In other words, we know how to engineer viruses but not how to engineer the immune system. The human immune system is vastly more complicated than viruses. Therefore, the author appears to be calling for vastly more funding into defensive biotechnology. In other words, though research into dna modification technologies (such as viral engineering) is already heavily funded, resarch into therapeutic methods and immune response should be much greater than most are even considering.
My own personal opinion is that that funding should be increased orders of magnitude; a few trillion over the next decade seems judicious.
Then again, who am I kidding. We're talking about politics.