Global Security Newswire

>WASHINGTON -- Leading bioterrorism experts yesterday criticized the Obama administration's apparent willingness to support a measure that could strip $2 billion from the coffers of programs to develop WMD countermeasures and fight pandemic flu (see GSN, July 9).

The proposed transfers of funding from the biodefense and flu accounts are included in a House appropriations bill passed July 1. The measure could shift money away from the Project Bioshield Special Reserve Fund. Those dollars would instead go toward preventing teacher layoffs, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

The legislation authorizes Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to decide how to reach that $2 billion figure from the funding available in the Bioshield and pandemic flu programs, which together total more than $6 billion.

"Raiding the Bioshield SRF for nonbiodefense programs will drive a stake through the heart of America's fledgling biodefense efforts," former Senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.) wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. The missive was also sent to Sebelius, deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and Management and Budget Office director Peter Orszag.

Graham and Talent led the congressionally mandated Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which concluded that an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction is likely to occur somewhere in the world by the end of 2013 unless security measures are enhanced. The panel also stated that there was a greater likelihood of a biological attack than a nuclear strike because of the availability of deadly pathogens and other disease materials.

The commission in January gave the White House an "F" in a final "report card" for failure to develop a comprehensive strategy against a disease-based attack (see GSN, Jan. 26).

Earlier this year, the Health and Human Services Department launched a review to reassess the nation's strategy for producing treatments for biological weapons and other public health threats (see GSN, Feb. 5). The results of the review are expected to be released soon.

"If the Bioshield program is defunded now, before your new strategy is even given a chance to work, we will have to find a grade lower than an 'F' for our next report card," said the former lawmakers. The two have created their own nonprofit organization, dubbed the WMD Center, and will issue an annual report card on biodefense activities starting next year, center chief executive officer Randall Larsen told Global Security Newswire.

Graham and Talent urged the president to intervene on the House legislation in order to avoid a "self-inflicted wound to America's national security."

The White House has threatened to veto the legislation because it would take money from Obama's education goals, not because of the bioterrorism cuts.

"Project Bioshield is a key procurement component of an end-to-end process that has many stages, including basic science research and advanced development," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said today in an e-mail message. "We learned from the H1N1 pandemic and through the Bioshield program itself that there are some critical enablers we need to put into place to enhance our overall success in producing rapid, reliable and affordable vaccines and other medical countermeasures."

The administration's countermeasure review efforts are aimed at eliminating delays and enhancing public-private collaboration in the vaccine and drug development process to better protect the country from bioterror attacks, pandemics and emerging infectious diseases, as well as other public health threats, he said.

Established in 2004, Project Bioshield was intended to receive about $5.6 billion over 10 years to purchase medicines designed to protect U.S. citizens from the effects of a WMD attack. The program was designed to provide biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies with confidence the federal government would buy successful countermeasures, bolstering those firms' willingness to pursue such products.

The effort has had mixed results (see GSN, March 8, 2007). To date it has bought about $2 billion worth of countermeasures for the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile of drugs and other medical supplies.

Last year, Congress stripped roughly $609 million from Project Bioshield to fund operations within the Health and Human Services Department (see GSN, Jan. 8). That move left the program with about $2.4 billion in the bank.

It is unclear if the latest cut would effectively end the purchasing program as the Senate has yet to take up its version of the spending bill, according to Larsen.

Graham and Talent warned that even if all other elements of the biological attack response chain are improved, a lack of proper medical countermeasures would be a like "well-trained, well-led army without ammunition."

"While there are many important elements in a comprehensive biodefense program, none are more important than the development, production, and acquisition of medical countermeasures," they wrote.

The way the legislation is written leaves HHS Secretary Sebelius with "a real 'Sophie's Choice' here," Larsen said in a telephone interview. "Which child do you love the most -- pandemic flu or Bioshield?"

The latest move further undercuts the system the federal government stood up specifically to instill confidence in the private sector, which would rather spend its dollars on more lucrative medicines for high cholesterol or male erectile dysfunction, he said. Larsen predicted that at least $1 billion would be taken from the Bioshield program.

Experts within the biodefense field agreed with the former lawmakers' criticisms.

"The sharks are no longer circling; they've moved in for the kill," Gerald Epstein, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said by e-mail. "This diversion would represent the death of the Bioshield concept ... before demolishing Project Bioshield, it is incumbent on the federal government to first come up with some other credible way to engage the technical expertise in the private sector that is necessary to preparing us to deal with a bioterrorist attack."

"Bioshield is a critical national security program that should be properly supported and funded," Brad Smith, a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity, told GSN in an e-mail message.