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Scientists Protest U.S. Focus on Bioterror Agents
The U.S. government is focusing research funding on preventing bioterrorism at the expense of other serious public health issues, 758 scientists said yesterday in a petition submitted to the National Institutes of Health (see GSN, Feb. 8). Grants for research on anthrax and five other exotic pathogens have increased fifteenfold since 2001, the scientists said, while grants for studying nonweaponized diseases have dropped by 27 percent over that time, the scientists said, according to the New York Times. “A majority of the nation’s top microbiologists — the very group that the Bush administration is counting on to carry out its biodefense research agenda — dispute the premises and implementation of the biodefense spending,” said Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and primary organizer of the petition. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases manages about 95 percent of NIH biodefense research money, according to the Times. The $1.5 billion spent annually on biodefense research since 2003 was new money and not taken from existing programs, said NIAID Director Anthony Fauci said. In addition, research centers receiving biodefense funding are working on other public-health priorities, such as preventing a possible influenza pandemic, Fauci said. The biodefense money would have gone to similar work by the Defense or Homeland Security departments if the National Institutes had not taken the funding, Fauci said. Work in the other agencies would have occurred without input from scientists through the NIH grant-reviewing process, Fauci said (Scott Shane, New York Times, March 1).
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