Proximate Cause Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Liability and Culpability of the United States and China and Recommended Policy Changes

This report offers a comprehensive legal and policy analysis of the proximate causes underlying the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, applying established doctrines from U.S. tort law—particularly foreseeability, scope of risk, and aggregate causation—to assess the respective roles of the United States and China. By examining decades of virological innovation, transnational scientific collaboration, and lapses in biosafety governance, the analysis contends that both nations materially contributed to a causal chain enabling the plausible lab-associated origin of SARS-CoV-2. Drawing heavily upon the Restatement (Third) of Torts and other relevant case law, the report argues that the pandemic lies squarely within the class of harms foreseeable from gain-of-function research conducted with limited oversight. It explores the interplay between American technological enablement—reverse genetics, synthetic virology, and transgenic animal models—and Chinese operational execution under inadequate biosafety conditions. The report further considers joint efforts such as the DEFUSE grant proposal, illustrating a pattern of bilateral scientific ambition that outpaced ethical synchronization and global risk containment. In identifying shared liability under the legal framework of proximate cause and aggregate harm, the report calls for the establishment of enforceable international biosafety standards, transparent oversight of dual-use research, and the creation of a global pandemic liability tribunal. The analysis situates these recommendations within the broader geopolitical context of the U.S. and China’s outsized economic and scientific influence, arguing that global custodianship demands accountability commensurate with capability.