British Scientists Recommend WMD Response Agency

The United Kingdom needs a new national agency to coordinate responses to a potential chemical or biological attack, an organization of British scientists said today (see GSN, April 19).

The Royal Society, an academy of leading scientists, today released a study calling for better organization across industry, academia and government to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

“The U.K. needs to have a new center to harness all the expertise that already exists,” said Herbert Huppert, leader of the working group that produced the paper (Patricia Reaney, Reuters, April 21).

The report, Making the U.K. Safer: Detecting and Decontaminating Chemical and Biological Agents, identified specific areas where improvement is needed, including increased training for emergency service personnel and more realistic exercises dealing with simulated attacks.

The center would need more than $35 million annually over 10 years to fund its work offering expert advice, developing procedures and performing research (Royal Society study, April 2004).

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