Curbing infections, not people—Part II

November 03, 2026

An exclusive CWN report by Phil Lawler

When Ave Maria Biotech (AMB) launched its web site, offering information about a device to identify airborne viruses, it led with a motto: “Never close another church.”

At first glance that phrase seemed a non sequitur: What did a pathogen detector have to do with church closings? Needless to say, the reference was to the Covid lockdown. But churches were only one of the many institutions closed during that epidemic. Why single them out?

In time the motto changed; the new site more accurately promises to “Detect and Protect.” But the original phrase reflects the thinking that inspired the project and still motivates the AMB team.

Frustration at the White House

In March 2020, as the Covid epidemic began to dominate national and international headlines, President Donald Trump named Michael Caputo to be the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Caputo had earned Trump’s respect for his skill in managing political communications in 2014, when the future president made a bid to purchase the professional football franchise in Buffalo, Caputo’s home town. In his post as HHS, Caputo was charged with “unification of message”—that is, ensuring that the Trump administration was consistent in its public statements on the Covid threat.

In practice, Caputo recalls, his challenge was to “flood the zone.” When he arrived, the administration could furnish several amply qualified experts to make public statements on Covid. But one dominant personality, Dr. Anthony Fauci, “was the only one the media would accept.”

The challenge, Caputo explains, was “not to keep Tony Fauci off the air. It was to make sure that the other seven or eight qualified spokesmen would come on instead of him at times.” He mentions, for example, Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, who from the first days of the epidemic had voiced his belief that the Covid virus originally came from a lab in Wuhan—a theory that Fauci had denied.

Fauci, a gregarious man with a capacious ego, was loath to yield his status as the dominant voice of the Trump administration on the Covid crisis. At one point he warned that “people will die” if he did not book Fauci on national television shows over the weekend. Caputo calmly replied that he had already booked a half-dozen experts on those shows, and “I don’t think that people will die just because you’re not one of them.”

But personality conflicts were certainly not the only source of tensions within the group that became the Covid-response team at the White House. The members debated frequently about proposals for a nationwide lockdown, with Caputo and Redfield arguing—often unsuccessfully—against the draconian proposals.

Looking back on those debates, Caputo says: “Nobody thought about the down side of the lockdown.” In particular, he regrets that the loudest voices in Washington “couldn’t have given a damn less about the spiritual health of our people.” He was appalled when the nation’s churches were closed, and to this date wonders why church leaders fell so readily into line. “We really screwed ourselves, as people of faith, when we allowed the government to do it,” he laments. He now believes that “anybody involved at that time has some soul-searching to do.”

Medical and spiritual battles

The day-to-day strain involved in handling a public-health emergency also took a toll. Caputo had the responsibility of monitoring the statistics about Covid deaths, and “reading the casualty lists every day” for the Covid task force. He believes that the stress of the job brought on a medical crisis.

At a September meeting of the Covid task force, when Caputo turned his head to speak, Redfield, who was seated beside him, interrupted: “Michael, what’s this on your neck?” Recognizing an ominous growth, Redfield hustled Caputo to the hospital. Within two hours, doctors had removed lymph nodes, and told him that he was suffering from an advanced case of head and neck cancer.

“I reacted badly,” Caputo confesses. Caught off guard by a life-threatening disease, he did not know how to respond. It was Fauci who, sensing that Caputo was stymied, put together a group of physicians to examine his medical records and recommend a course of treatment. They called for immediate hospitalization.

As it happens, the choice of a hospital was easy. Just a few weeks earlier, Caputo had traveled to his native Buffalo for a press conference, as part of a White House initiative to reassure Americans that despite the lockdown, hospitals were still ready to provide necessary medical treatments. “I know there are rooms available” at the hospital where that event took place, a colleague now told Caputo, “because you said so yourself!”

So Caputo returned to Buffalo, for a grueling regimen of radiation and chemotherapy. Arriving as a minor celebrity, backed by recommendations from the nation’s leading public-health officials, and buoyed by occasional calls from President Trump to check on his condition, Caputo has no doubt that he received “the health care of a sultan.” Still the process was not pleasant—especially because he was still convinced that he was dying.

His suffering was aggravated by the lockdown. When he was released from the hospital, Caputo returned home, badly in need of both physical and spiritual revival. As he wondered whether he would survive, he longed for the comfort of his Catholic faith. “I lived across the street from my parish church, and I could not attend Mass,” because the church was closed, he remembers. In his bedroom he could hear the church bells ringing, inviting everyone to church, but the doors were locked and he could not receive the sacraments. The frustration of those days, about the injustice of being denied access to the church, remains with him still.

While he was recovering, Caputo was also troubled by the leftist demonstrators who, choosing him as a symbol of the Trump administration, gathered to protest noisily outside his home. He began to receive death threats. When his young daughter went outside to play, a neighbor shouted at her: “Your daddy is going to jail!” He decided to relocate, to somewhere his family would be safe, somewhere he could find an active Catholic community.

On a recommendation from President Trump, Caputo visited Ave Maria, Florida, a newly developed town centered around the university with the same name. Both were founded by Tom Monaghan, the philanthropist and entrepreneur who earned his fortune with Domino’s Pizza, and the massive church building looming over the town’s center accurately conveys the faith-filled atmosphere that characterizes the community.

A series of coincidences

Although he was more comfortable in Florida as his recovery continued, Caputo still acutely felt the ravages of his cancer treatment. During his early days at Ave Maria he felt weak, lethargic, and depressed. One day his daughters, hoping to shake him out of the doldrums, persuaded him to take a walk to the little prayer grotto on the edge of the campus, dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. To reach the grotto, one crosses a small footbridge, taking notice of the signs that warn pedestrians to watch out for alligators.

As the Caputos returned from the grotto, they saw another family whose small children were fishing off the footbridge. Sure enough, alligators were nibbling at the fish on the children’s lines. The Caputo children, fascinated, stayed to watch. So Michael struck up a conversation with the father, who turned out to be Rodney Burton, a biochemistry professor with expertise in viral diseases. Remembering a report that had floated across his desk during his time on the Trump staff, Caputo asked Burton whether he had heard of the Estonian scientist who was researching a possible technique for identifying airborne viruses. Yes, Burton had heard of that research project, although he had doubts that the device would work; he could tell Caputo where to find more information about it.

From that moment, Caputo felt a new sense of purpose. As his strength returned (he is now cancer-free) and his spirits revived, he set out to determine whether or not the Estonian project was worth pursuing. Obtaining a summary of the research that Viktor Tomashov had begun, he began a search for someone who had both the scientific knowledge to assess the validity of that research and the practical experience to judge whether it could produce a viable medical device.

If his chance meeting with Burton had been remarkable, the answer to Caputo’s inquiries yielded an even more remarkable coincidence. The best man for the job, colleagues told him, was Dr. Ron Freeze—who was living in Ave Maria, in fact on the same road, just a few doors down; their back porches almost faced each other, looking out over the bend in a man-made lake.

Caputo asked Freeze to tell him whether he was wasting his time on the Estonian research. In a few days Freeze came back with a measured report. He was skeptical, cautioning that “founder-based reports are often extremely biased.” But no, Caputo was not wasting his time. As he read the report from Estonia, he felt a growing “confidence that I was seeing something.” The research was valid, he concluded; “the rigor was there.” Still there remained the question of whether the proposed device could be produced in a marketable form. Not long thereafter Freeze would agree to head the team that answered that question.

Coincidences abound in the story of Ave Maria Biotech (that is, if you believe in coincidences). Caputo just happened to meet Burton, and to find Freeze living almost next door. They just happened to be affiliated with Ave Maria University, a school thoroughly imbued with the entrepreneurial spirit of Monaghan, its founder. Roger Nutt, the provost of the university, says that entering into a partnership with the biotech start-up company was a “labor of love.” That partnership, he explained, opened opportunities for students as well as professors to gain first-hand experience with a cutting-edge research project. Some students had a chance to work with Army researchers in testing at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.

One more coincidence: Ave Maria University happened to be the scene of an outbreak of measles in the spring of 2026. While the highly contagious disease ripped through the student body, it did not spread to the people of the town. “It never crossed the street,” from the campus to the outside community, as Caputo puts it. The successful containment of the epidemic was primarily due to a fast response by university administrators, who mobilized to care for the sick, isolate the infection, give students careful instructions on how to protect themselves and others, and thereby limit the damage caused by the outbreak. Through it all, although many students missed time due to illness, the university persevered on its primary mission. Administrators note proudly that Ave Maria never missed a day of classes.

That happy result—the freedom to continue normal productive work despite a viral outbreak—matches the goal that the founders of Ave Maria Biotech set for themselves. Their biodetector was still being tested at the time of the measles outbreak. But in the future, any institution equipped with the devices could be able to match Ave Maria’s success at limiting the disease and keeping the institution open. The key to that success, they reason, is early detection, prompting quick responses.

The AMB team also realizes that some institutions, having absorbed the wrong lesson from the Covid era, could use the biodetector’s warnings as an excuse to close down institutions once again. “We certainly don’t want to go there,” says Gerald Boersma, AMB’s director of mission. But he recognizes the possibility of misuse: “Any powerful good thing can be used for purposes for which it was not intended.”

For now, to guard against that sort of misuse, the AMB team is emphasizing “mission alignment,” looking for users who set the proper pattern for its use. The best early adopters will share AMB’s ideas on how the device should be used, because they share the moral principles on which the biodetector project is based. Toward that end, the AMB sales team is looking first to the sprawling network of Catholic health-care institutions.

 

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