CIDRAP – Before adjourning last week, the US Senate passed and sent to President Bush a bill providing $3.8 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness and a controversial liability shield for those who produce and administer drugs and vaccines used in a declared public health emergency.
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Washington Post – An editorial that asks a pertinent question that desperately needs to be answered: “Even today, it still is unclear who in the government — the White House, the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Health and Human Services — is really in charge of defense against bioterrorism.”
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Chicago Tribune – Russia’s reluctance to allow the United States access to nuclear and biological weapons sites severely hinders efforts to secure weapons-grade nuclear material and biological pathogens from terrorists and rogue states, according to a new report released by NATO.
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Christian Science Monitor – A measure to shield drug manufacturers from lawsuits in an effort to encourage them to develop new vaccines is likely to be quietly attached to a “must pass” defense appropriation bill within the next few days.
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Boston Globe – Boston public health authorities will propose today sweeping new safety regulations governing more than 1,000 research laboratories working with dangerous germs in universities, hospitals, and biotechnology companies across the city.

The proposed rules emerge 10 months after public disclosure that three Boston University scientists had fallen ill while working with tularemia, a lethal bacterium. City health authorities acknowledged yesterday that the proposal is a direct response to the tularemia exposures, as well as long-festering concerns from neighbors about the development of a high-security lab at BU where scientists would be capable of working with some of the world’s deadliest germs.
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National Press Club – At the National Press Club today, a panel of three internationally known biodefense experts and vaccine thought- leaders discussed the implementation of Project BioShield, the procurement process for biodefense vaccines, and recommendations regarding the need for a science-driven, systematic and impartial process for comparing the risks and benefits of current and new medical countermeasures to protect America from biological threats.

The panel recommended the adoption of an independent advisory oversight board be included in the decision making process for government-funded biodefense programs because federal policy and planning, rather than traditional market forces, drive the development of public health countermeasures.
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Mercury News – A bill moving through Congress to speed production of bird-flu vaccines and other drugs has ignited alarm from critics who claim it would not only shield manufacturers from lawsuits, but also prevent the public from learning if the medicines hurt people more than help.
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Azertac – Republican anti-plague station of the Ministry of Health together with the specialists of US Department of State works out a new program on revelation and studying of biological pathogens.
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Associated Press – People injured by a vaccine against bird flu or anthrax would have to prove willful misconduct to bring a claim for damages against drug manufacturers or distributors, according to legislation being drafted behind the scenes by Republicans.
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Global Security Newswire – The Defense Department has been increasingly engaged in efforts to secure from proliferation dozens of former Soviet pathogen collection and research stations.
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UPI – Brand-name drugmakers are finding themselves at odds with business groups over pharmaceutical patent extensions contained in a pending Senate bill intended to fight bioterrorism.
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Washington Post – For almost a year, the small California drug company Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals waited anxiously to see how much of its promising medicine against acute radiation sickness the government might want to purchase under the federal Project BioShield program???On Friday, the company learned to its dismay that the government proposed to buy only 20,000 to 200,000 doses of its type of drug — not nearly enough to make final development economically feasible???Some on Capitol Hill worried that the BioShield program, which has been in trouble because large drug companies have generally declined to participate, was headed for even rougher waters.
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Associated Press – The Red Cross on Tuesday called for more efforts to regulate government biological weapons programs, saying they pose a bigger threat to the world than bioterrorism.
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BBC – The US government’s focus on the war on terror has diverted funds from healthcare, leading to many deaths, a leading health expert claims. The expert goes on to claim that public health experts are concerned about “disproportionate” US government funding of bioterrorism prevention, rather than other public health care.
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Chicago Tribune – More than 60 dangerous and deadly bacterial strains that are a legacy of the former Soviet Union’s elaborate biological weapons program were transferred Friday to the United States from Azerbaijan as part of the two countries’ joint fight against the threat of biological terrorism.
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Knight Ridder – The Bush administration backed away Tuesday from claims that Cuba has an offensive biological weapons effort, acknowledging in a report to Congress that “there is a split view” among intelligence analysts on the question.
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Washington Post – The United States and Ukraine agreed yesterday to work jointly to prevent the spread of biological weapons, signing a pact that clears the way for Ukraine’s government to receive U.S. aid to improve security at facilities where dangerous microbes are kept.
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Washington Post – In 2000, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board concluded that to successfully respond to a bioterrorist attack, the United States would need 57 specific drugs, diagnostic tools and vaccines. At the time, only one was available. Five years later, officials say that number has increased to two.
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Associated Press – In the event of a flu pandemic or a bioterrorism attack, help could arrive via door-to-door mail delivery or from a local fire station, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said yesterday.
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Reuters – Companies seeking government contracts under the new Bioshield law designed to create a biosecurity industry complained on Thursday that bureaucracy was slowing them down.
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Wall Street Journal – Almost four years after anthrax attacks hit the U.S., a $5.6 billion federal program designed to produce new vaccines and drugs to counter biological threats is struggling, leaving the nation behind in efforts to build a promised defensive stockpile???Big drug and biotechnology companies largely have shunned the program, known as Project BioShield and overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, amid concerns over legal liability, high costs and limited potential for profit. That has left the government highly dependent on fragile, little-known biotech companies — which all too often are run on a shoestring budget and dependent on government orders simply to stay in business.
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Knight Ridder – The quest for a successsor to the Bioshield bill begins.
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CIDRAP – The Bush administration has proposed cutting funds that support state and local preparedness for bioterrorism and other health emergencies in fiscal year 2006, drawing protests from public health advocacy groups. However, the proposal for the fiscal year that begins next October would increase funding for the nation’s emergency stockpile of drugs and medical supplies by more than 50%.
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UPI – The United Nations is considering lending support to international quarantines and mandating that nations in the midst of disease outbreaks open their borders to U.N. health officials as part of an expanded response to epidemics and bioterrorism.
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UPI – A new report recommends the substantial amounts of federal bioterrorism money being sent to state and local public health offices continue for the foreseeable future, but warns the money should not be tied so closely to biodefense that it cannot be used for “maintaining and expanding other vital functions of the public health system.”
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UPI – Two new committees on Capitol Hill will simplify the funding and oversight of biodefense programs, but not enough to avoid significant duplication of effort.
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United Press International – There needs to be more planning over the best ways to spend biodefense dollars and there needs to be more coordination between the various agencies (DHS, DOD, DHHS) involved in biodefense spending.
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Boston Business Journal – More descriptions of what is wrong with Project Bioshield.
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The Independent – The world faces a growing risk that terrorists will use new biological weapons created by genetic engineering, the British Medical Association will warn this week.
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Associated Press – Project BioShield is falling short of the expectations set for it. However, many individuals are not surprised???
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[Biosecurity and Bioterrorism] – The United States has improved its odds of defeating a biological attack from agents such as smallpox or anthrax, a report being released today concludes.

But scientists and biotechnology specialists still think the nation is woefully ill-equipped to handle a more sophisticated — and, perhaps, more likely — terrorist attack using newer bioengineered germs or other unanticipated pathogens, according to the report by the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
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The Scientist – At a sparsely attended Senate hearing on potential improvements to the BioShield legislation signed into law in July, several pharmaceutical manufacturers pleaded for stronger liability protection, while an infectious disease expert urged a broadening of the provisions to encourage antibiotic development. Only a handful of senators attended the hearing off and on, as Congress is busily trying to finish its business before the election.
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The Times – A call for more microbiologists to be trained in Britain.
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Small Times – A look at some of the practical problems with Project Bioshield, from private industry’s perspective.
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New York Times – The Bush administration, using stringent standards adopted after the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq, has conducted a new assessment of Cuba’s biological weapons capabilities and concluded that it is no longer clear that Cuba has an active, offensive bio-weapons program.
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Reuters – A month after a new U.S. law encouraging the development of medicines to counter bioterrorism, some drugmakers are lobbying for more incentives to make products that may never be used.
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AMA News – Billions of dollars back this initiative to spur development of bioterrorism countermeasures. But new vaccines and treatments are only one aspect of readiness.

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Washington Post – Bioshield, which was signed into law last week and which the government has billed as the first step in creating a biodefense industry in the United States, has received a largely lukewarm response from the companies it was designed to help.
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United Press International – A look at the CDC’s proposed Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, and what effect it could have on a bioterror event.
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Associated Press – The Project Bioshield Act passes Congress.
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Arms Control Today – Preventing a biological weapons attack-long a terrifying battlefield danger and now a serious threat to civilian populations as well-is a major contemporary global security priority??? In the past few years, the United States has responded to the threat from biological weapons by pouring more than $14 billion into attack response preparedness and biodefense programs under the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. However, neither the United States nor its key allies have taken the step of creating an effective forward line of defense against bioterrorism by rapidly accounting for and securing known stockpiles of pathogens on foreign shores.
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Christian Science Monitor – Project Bioshield is the latest piece of America’s homeland defense. But first, the US has to entice firms to take on the work.

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BBC – Britain’s National Health Service would struggle to cope if terrorists launched a major attack in the UK, it has been claimed.
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Tri Valley Herald – Experts suggest a fine line between offense and defense when it comes to the purpose of current and future biodefense projects.
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Parameters – Does Russia still have an active offensive biological weapons program?
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Associated Press – The discovery of sarin gas in Iraq and the use of anthrax and ricin against Congress spurred the Senate Wednesday to approve $5.6 billion for Project Bioshield to help prepare for possible germ or chemical attacks on American soil.
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AHRQ – Coordinating resources across local and state lines-also known as regionalization-may benefit some bioterrorism preparedness and response capabilities, but more research is needed to find the best ways of coordinating those resources, according to a new report released today by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

A summary of the report may be found here.
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Los Alamos Monitor – If forewarned is forearmed, it’s almost reassuring to hear a deeply pessimistic view of very troubling prospects on the global bioweapons front. Paul Kraemer, a retired microbiologist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, gave a nod to a recent effort by the National Research Council to sort out some of the stubborn issues that have arisen in the age of bioterrorism, but he suspects that most people have long ago clamped their hands over their ears, unable to understand, much less do anything about the hypothetical threat.
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Washington Post – Yet another look at President Bush’s announcement yesterday.
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CIDRAP – The Bush administration today released a long catalog of what it considers the nation’s biodefense and public health preparedness gains over the last 3 years and promised more improvements to come.

More on this story from the Associated Press.

More on this story from the Department of Health and Human Services: Public Health Emergency Preparedness: “Transforming America’s Capacity to Respond”

Transcript of a joint press conference describing this in more detail with the Assistant Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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