Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- Legislation introduced yesterday to overhaul security at U.S. biological research facilities could enable the United States to become a global leader in a crucial aspect of the fight against bioterrorism, one of the bill's authors said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 8).

"We hope this proposal ... will set an international standard for biosecurity," said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) co-sponsor of legislation that would set security standards for the country's biotechnology industry for the first time.

The legislation would identify the most dangerous pathogens and then require the U.S. Homeland Security Department to establish security standards for laboratories that handle those materials, with measures such as risk assessments, personnel reliability programs and physical security. The bill also proposes providing U.S. technical assistance to countries seeking to bolster security at their laboratories, Lieberman said during a press conference on Capitol Hill.

Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) included the security requirement alongside a host of other proposals aimed at better preparing the nation for an act of bioterrorism. Among their recommendations are using the U.S. Postal Service to deliver medicine and creation of a nationwide communications strategy.

The proposals are intended to implement findings from the congressionally created Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism led by former Senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.). The two testified in December that security at U.S. laboratories was inadequate and predicted a WMD incident would occur somewhere in the world within the next five years, with a bioterrorism attack being more likely than a nuclear strike.

The bill also could allow the United States to take a leadership role at the 2011 review conference for the Biological Weapons Convention, according to Graham.

If the Senate passes the measure "we will go into that 2011 convention with the moral high ground to convince countries, which have been reluctant to undertake these kinds of [laboratory security] initiatives that we're prepared to do it. We're setting the gold standard for the world, they should follow," he said yesterday.

"If we don't set that high standard, I despair as to how effective our leadership is going to be in that critical year of 2011," Graham said.

The Biological Weapons Convention entered into force in 1975 and today has 162 member nations. The treaty prohibits the development, production, stockpiling and use of weaponized disease agents such as anthrax, smallpox or plague, as well as equipment and delivery systems intended for hostile use.

It has no provisions for monitoring compliance. The member states will evaluate the operations of the pact at the review conference.

If enacted, the legislation would mandate security measures at facilities that work with 82 disease-causing select agents and toxins designated by Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments. The lawmakers did not specify what security measures would be required under the bill. Text of the legislation was not made available yesterday. Repeated phone calls to the committee's press office were not returned before deadline.

"We have developed a tiered approach [for security levels] based on the amount and the degree of risk posed by the pathogens being researched at a particular facility," said Collins, co-sponsor of the legislation and ranking member of the homeland security panel.

"The greater the risk the more stringent the security requirements," she said. The measure would affect some 400 research facilities and the nearly 15,000 individuals authorized to handle deadly pathogens, she added. Collins said the legislation was spurred in part by a recent Government Accountability Office report that urged the United States to more quickly implement security recommendations at laboratories handling the most lethal pathogens (see GSN, Aug. 6).

A $50 million grant program over the next four years would be authorized for private laboratories to make the necessary security enhancements, Collins said.

Under the legislation, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would build an "international biosecurity coalition" to provide training and assistance to other countries for laboratory security and global disease surveillance, according to Lieberman.

Domestically, the bill instructs the national intelligence director to improve U.S. intelligence capabilities related to WMD and terrorism and authorizes the establishment of a National Bioforensics Analysis Center to "identify" perpetrators of biological attacks.

It also would require a national strategy for dispensing antibiotics and other medicines to the public via the U.S. Postal Service in the event of a biological attack.

"We are now spending billions of dollars to stockpile these antibiotics and other medicines but we still lack a plan for distributing them quickly and efficiently after an attack or an outbreak of disease," Lieberman said.

The legislation also mandates establishment of a communications strategy that would disseminate information to the public after a biological attack. He did not specify what technology would be employed in such a system.

"Such information would include the direction of deadly radioactive or biological plumes and instructions about whether to shelter in place or to evacuate," according to Lieberman.

Talent said that in the future the United States will have to spend billions more on programs like Project Bioshield, which is intended to promote development of countermeasures against weapons of mass destruction, to stave off the kind of biological attack the commission described last winter.

He added he hoped the House of Representatives would take up a similar biosecurity bill.

Lieberman said he wants to see his legislation move to committee markup this fall and passed by the full Senate before the end of the year. He noted that the measure could face opposition from the life science community, which might oppose federally required security standards, and federal agencies the bill would affect.

The life science community would not oppose the bill if it makes existing laboratory regulations simpler, according to Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity.

Most scientists would go along with "using risk management principles to evaluate how these pathogens should be regulated," Gronvall, who served as a science adviser to the WMD commission, said today in a telephone interview.

A tiered security system is an "excellent idea to focus resources on a truly select group of pathogens that everyone is concerned about," she said. "While every select agent is dangerous, they are not all equal and it's becoming conventional wisdom that either a stratification or a reduction of the select agent list is needed so that resources can be concentrated on where they need to be."