In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the
subsequent anthrax attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was created. Here are some words from your friendly
Protectors of the Homeland:
Don't Be Afraid, Be Ready
The Department of Homeland Security's Ready Campaign seeks to help American families be better prepared for even unlikely emergency scenarios. We know from intelligence reports that terrorists are working hard to obtain biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, and the threat of an attack is real. One of the primary mandates of the Department of Homeland Security is to educate the public, on a continuing basis, about how to be prepared in case of a national emergency -- including a possible terrorist attack.
Unfortunately, there's a problem:
The United States remains woefully unprepared to protect the public against terrorists wielding biological agents despite dramatic increases in biodefense spending by the Bush administration and considerable progress on many fronts, according to government officials and specialists in bioterrorism and public health.
Some scientists also believe that the increased biodefense spending has spawned additional problems. An article in the May/June 2005 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists tells the story:
To this day, nobody knows who mailed the envelopes laced with anthrax that infected 22 people and killed five in 2001. Well-aware that such an attack could happen again, the federal government poured money into research on "priority" biological weapons agents--pathogens categorized as posing the greatest threat to national security. The number of grants to study these bugs ballooned, as did the number of facilities and researchers conducting biodefense work.
From one perspective, this is good news: More research on bioweapons agents, in theory, will lead to a better biodefense. But critics argue that putting this work in the hands of inexperienced researchers--so-called bug jockeys--not only increases the risk of bioterrorism and of accidental release of deadly pathogens, but also shortchanges public health.
Follow me below the fold.
Here's one of the arguments:
More than 300 institutes and 12,000 individuals now have access to bioweapons pathogens, according to Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who has been critical of the biodefense expansion, and the numbers continue to grow. The
Sunshine Project, a biodefense watchdog group,
found that 97 percent of the "principal investigators" [PIs] who received National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grants from 2001-2005 to study six priority pathogens (anthrax, brucellosis, glanders, plague, melioidosis, or tularemia) are newcomers to such research... Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project's U.S. office, worries that the lack of pathogen-handling experience among "NIAID newbies" may make accidents more likely. Aerosolization, animal testing, and other biodefense research activities are dangerous to begin with, Hammond says, and increasing the number of people and sites performing them compounds the risk.
Before 2001, all anthrax researchers "knew each other by first name," Martin Hugh-Jones, a veteran anthrax researcher at Louisiana State University, told the Baltimore Sun (June 27, 2004). "[Now] I see a lot of names I've never heard of. . . . On a probabilistic basis, there's more of a risk of accidents or attacks."
The Sunshine Project's findings are summarized in the table below. Note that the number of PIs funded to do anthrax research has increased from 6 (before 2001) to 219 (click to enlarge the image):
One of the accidents mentioned in the article involved tularemia:
Last year, three researchers at a Boston University BSL-2 lab were infected with a virulent strain of tularemia, a disease that can cause severe respiratory illness and is highly infectious when aerosolized. The researchers mistakenly thought they were handling a non-infectious strain of the bacterium. The university and the city waited two weeks before notifying public health authorities about the accident, and the public did not find out until the Boston Globe broke the story in January 2005.
"Things like that [the tularemia infections] happen when people are not trained well," explained NIAID Director Anthony Fauci on February 23, 2005. "'They' in this case is an investigator who did not follow protocol, who did not go under the training, who was not working in a BSL-4." Fauci, who was speaking about the BSL-2 where the accidents occurred, also endorsed Boston University's plans to build a BSL-4 lab.
("BSL" refers to "biosafety level". BSL-4 is for work with the biological agents "that pose a high individual risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease.")
What about another risk, the risk to public health funding?
The biodefense funding jump could have other deleterious side effects. As money pours into research on the "bad bugs" of potential biowarfare, it may be draining funds from research on more widespread diseases that affect many more people than those caused by bioweapons agents. From 2002 through 2004, NIAID funding for research on priority bacteria (anthrax, glanders, plague, melioidosis, brucella) shot up to more than $185 million--an increase of 2,400 percent. Funding for priority viruses (smallpox and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Marburg) increased nearly 2,000 percent to $120 million. During that same time, funding for studies of HIV, malaria, hepatitis, tuberculosis, chlamydia, Chagas disease, gonorrhea, and other illnesses decreased significantly. For example, NIAID funding for HIV research dropped from $535 million to $426 million.
NIAD has put forth the argument that funding for biodefense comes from new funding, and is not diverted from NIH research funding.
Here's a question to all Kossacks involved in medical research (yes, I know you're out there - there's at least one of you who does HIV research).
Are Hammond's arguments valid? If your research is federally funded, has it been affected? Let me know what you think about the arguments put forth in the article.
Not to exclude non-scientists, of course. Please let me know what you think as well.
Finally:
What are those diseases?
Here's some info: