Global Security Newswire

Shortages of the H1N1 vaccine this year demonstrate that the United States has failed to ready itself for a biological terrorist attack, according to the two former lawmakers who lead the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (see GSN, Oct. 22).

Former Senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.) said United States has not yet taken the necessary steps to deal rapidly with a disease outbreak, the Washington Times reported.

"[The H1N1 virus] is an epidemic that didn't just attack us by ambush, we've had much time to prepare, yet many people who want to get the vaccine have been denied so because of inadequate technology," Graham said.

Efforts to produce millions of doses of the H1N1 vaccine have drawn attention to issues with the country's vaccine-production methods. Those processes have been in place since prior to the Cold War and have not been modernized.

"The question is, 'why do you stick with this fragile, yet time-honored process of growing it in eggs?'" said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci.

As vaccines are needed much less often than other, more profitable medical treatments, pharmaceutical companies have not invested the large sums of money required to update production methods, Fauci said.

Though Washington has sought to tackle the vaccine production issue, the government has failed to provide adequate funding for the top initiative, the former senators said.

"To date, the U.S. government has invested the largest portion of its nonproliferation efforts and diplomatic capital in preventing nuclear terrorism," Graham and Talent wrote in the commission's 2008 report. "Only by elevating the priority of preventing bioterrorism will it be possible to substantially improve U.S. and global biosecurity."

The U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has roughly $300 million per year for the Project Bioshield program, which is intended to spur private development of vaccines and other WMD countermeasures. The two former lawmakers have said that the program requires $3.4 billion in the next half-decade in order to produce an adequate number of vaccines to treat no less than 90 percent of the U.S. population in the event of an act of bioterrorism.

"If you can stockpile enough countermeasures, then you can effectively take a (weapon of mass destruction) off the list," Talent said. "It's the urgent crowding out the important, which is a classic problem in government" (Tom LoBianco, Washington Times, Nov. 24).