Global Security Newswire

The problematic response to the H1N1 flu demonstrates that the United States must improve its biodefense capabilities to counter future biological threats, both natural and intentional, former U.S. Senator Jim Talent (R-Mo.) said recently (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2009).

"The H1N1 virus has spotlighted a lack of capability that’s very dangerous for the country," Talent, co-chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, told Missourinet "The fact (is) that we cannot produce vaccines quickly and we have not stockpiled the necessary vaccines or medical therapeutics to respond to a biological attack."

The commission has warned that unless steps are taken, an act of WMD terrorism is likely to occur by 2013 and that a biological incident is more likely than a nuclear strike.

While the United States cannot guarantee it can prevent future biological assaults, the government can move to prepare for their repercussions, Talent said.

"One of the ways you deal with that is you have the medicine stockpiled so you can really minimize the effects of the attack," according to Talent. "We don’t have the vaccines and we’re not pursuing the technologies we need to get the vaccines."

Talent said an estimated $3 billion annually was required to "protect against all the most likely kinds of pathogens."

The federal government has adequate resources to pursue this, the former senator said. "The problem is just focusing their decision-making enough on these high priority items" (Steve Walsh, Missourinet, Jan. 4).

Talent and former U.S. Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the WMD commission's other co-chairman, yesterday called for improving U.S. medical readiness for disease crises.

It takes too long to produce flu vaccines, according to the former lawmakers. Technology for diagnosing the disease is also "outdated ... difficult, expensive and time-consuming," they said in a Washington Post commentary.

"The really bad news is that we are far more prepared to respond to a flu outbreak than to any other biological event, natural or man-made, such as the Ebola virus," Graham and Talent said (Graham/Talent, Washington Post, Jan. 4).