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U.S. Plans to Defend Against Engineered Bioattack By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — The United States is pursuing multiple avenues of defense against a possible terrorist attack using bioengineered pathogens, officials said at a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing yesterday (see GSN, June 10). Top leaders such as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have recently stepped up calls for greater use of terrorist threat information in setting a hierarchy of planning and spending priorities. Witnesses yesterday warned the Government Reform National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Subcommittee, though, about limits to what can be known about potential engineered threats. They stressed the need for maintaining a broad, flexible array of countermeasures. “It's very difficult for us to come up with specific antidotes, pills and vaccines for everything the terrorists might throw at us," said Dale Klein, WMD defense assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We're trying to do more on capabilities, rather than a specific threat.” Klein called the threat of new pathogens being used against U.S. troops his “main concern” as he “look[s] to the future.” Top Homeland Security biological defense official John Vitko said his agency and the Health and Human Services Department have developed a strategy to address the potential for a bioengineered attack, a document he said highlights monitoring of scientific research around the world, as well as broad countermeasure development to give the United States flexibility when confronting an unknown pathogen. Subcommittee members voiced concerns about what some called the slow pace and insufficient coordination of WMD countermeasure development in federal agencies. “Even with the advent of Project Bioshield,” Chairman Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said of the 2004 law intended to spur countermeasure development through a government-supported market for the products, “the development of critical countermeasures still seems fractured and without a clear focus on known threats. Precious time and money are being wasted.” Witnesses responded to such concerns by emphasizing the time-consuming nature of any drug research and development, as well as Bioshield's focus on supporting the later stages of development. “No matter how hard we work or how much money we spend, some steps in the process cannot be rushed,” said Health and Human Services Public Health Emergency Preparedness Assistant Secretary Stewart Simonson. Several officials in testimony previewed coming steps in their agencies' countermeasure work. Klein said that the Defense and Health and Human Services departments have been working on an interagency cooperation agreement on countermeasures and that the Pentagon may soon hand off its first project to the health agency: a blood plasma-derived bioscavenger that acts as a sponge to remove nerve agent from the body. Simonson said his department is “in the final execution phases” of Bioshield contract awards for a therapeutic drug against anthrax, a botulinum antitoxin and a new smallpox vaccine. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said a new countermeasure plan approved this week envisions work on reconstituting bone-marrow stem cells in people exposed to high levels of radiation, among other activities.
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