Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The findings of a high-level panel that examined strategies to boost security at laboratories conducting research with dangerous diseases will be submitted to U.S. President Barack Obama soon, officials involved in the effort said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 30).

The product of the Working Group on Strengthening the Biosecurity of the United States will likely be reviewed by the Defense and Health and Human Services secretaries and sent to the White House "in a few weeks," said Carol Linden, principal deputy director for the HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, who served on the panel.

A senior administration official said that the document is going through a "final" clearance that should wrap up by the end of the week. He confirmed that the report would be made available online.

Both officials spoke during a biodefense conference organized here by the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity.

The Defense and HHS secretaries were named co-chairs of the working group for administrative purposes, Linden said. The text of the executive order does not specify why those officials were chosen to lead the effort, but both agencies manage high-security biodefense research sites.

The panel, which also included representatives from the State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Energy and Homeland Security departments, was established through an executive order issued in January by then-President George W. Bush (see GSN, Jan. 12).

The order was a response to a rash of security and safety troubles at major disease research facilities. Last year the federal government fined Texas A&M; University $1 million for not telling authorities that researchers had been exposed to -- and in one case, infected by -- disease material. Also in 2008, the FBI identified the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax mailings as a researcher from an Army biodefense site at Fort Detrick, Md. (see GSN, July 28).

In addition, there has been a flurry of government and private studies issued regarding laboratory security. The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, last week said there is no "silver bullet" against a would-be bioterrorist finding a job at a disease research facility.

As of February, roughly 400 U.S. research entities were registered and around 15,300 individuals were cleared to have access to select agents, biological agents or toxins such as anthrax, smallpox and the Ebola virus declared to pose a severe threat to human, animal or plant health.

Bush's executive order stipulated that the working group produce a report six months after its creation, Linden told Global Security Newswire between panel discussions.

On July 9, the panel sent a "draft form" of the document to Gary Samore, National Security Council coordinator for arms control and nonproliferation, and John Holdren, director of the White House Science and Technology Policy Office, she said.

The report was not a "consensus document," according to Linden. She did not elaborate.

When the findings were circulated in recent months to the agencies represented in the working group it was "made clear" that "if anybody has any issues with what's in the report, we're not going to go back to the working group to change the report but you can articulate those issues in the transmittal," Linden said. "We'll make an addendum or something," she added.

Linden said she did not know the exact number of recommendations the working group made but said that they were grouped into four areas: potential regulations for select agents; vetting of personnel who have access to those materials; transportation; and security of facilities that house dangerous diseases.

"We've got some findings and recommendations within each of those areas," she told GSN. No details of the findings or recommendations were immediately available.

Linden said there has been a "fair amount of consistency" across the recent reports that examined laboratory security, including the need for good management, oversight and "creating a culture of responsibility."

"That's going to be helpful to the national security staff," which will combine many of the recent security reports after the president has studied the working group's findings, she said. The White House team will hammer out a strategy for biosecurity after that process, Linden added.

"In those cases where one report says something and three other reports say something different about the same topic, then they can use that as a discussion point," she said.