WP: White House Admits Lag in Bioterror Effort

[DeepModem Mom]

White House Admits Lag in Bioterror Effort
House Hearing Decries Lack of a Strategic Plan
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 7, 2006; Page A11

The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it still lacks a strategic plan for countering bioterror threats two years after Congress created a special program and appropriated billions of dollars for the purpose, and it pledged fresh efforts to speed up and streamline the troubled Project BioShield.

Under sharp questioning on Capitol Hill from members of both parties, the administration conceded many of the criticisms that have been leveled against Project BioShield by the drug and biotechnology industries in recent months. That $5.6 billion program is meant to build an elaborate national stockpile of drugs and other measures to counter biological and radioactive weapons, but corporate executives have complained of delays, bureaucratic inertia, and other problems in the way the program is being run....

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....some experts declared at yesterday's hearing that shuffling people and paper within HHS won't be enough to solve the BioShield problems. Congress needs to rewrite laws to give the government more authority to subsidize expensive, risky research that small companies are having trouble financing on Wall Street, some experts said.

And Tara O'Toole, head of a University of Pittsburgh unit in Baltimore that studies biodefense issues, said that HHS simply lacks the personnel to manage the $5.6 billion program efficiently, estimating that another 100 employees are needed. About 40 people are devoted to the task now, an HHS spokesman said....

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She and other speakers noted that the $5.6 billion, though it sounds like a lot, is spread out over 10 years and is not much in the context of the vast expenditures on pharmaceuticals in this country. O'Toole said sharp increases will be necessary if the government is serious about building national defenses against biological, chemical and radiological weapons....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040601992.html