Bio-shield

In 2004, in the wake of anthrax attacks in New York and in Washington,
the
Congress passed and the president signed into law legislation that was
purported to protect the American people from a biological attack. The
law
created a special reserve fund dedicated to developing medical
“countermeasures” to treat symptoms that came from any biological,
chemical,
radiological or nuclear weapons that might be used by our enemies.

Now, many libertarians might harrumph that the government shouldn’t take
such
an active role in the biological marketplace, but the fact of the matter
is
that the risk of a biological attack is fairly low, so the marketplace
can’t
really support such medical countermeasures without government support.
Also,
one of the purposes of government as defined in our Constitution is to
provide
for the common defense, and well, this fits the bill.

The Bio-Shield Act authorized that about 5 and a half billion dollars be spent
between 2004 and 2013, and since that time about 2.3 billion dollars have
actually been spent.

The program has worked as planned. Over the last six years, procurement
contracts have been reached to find vaccines for anthrax, smallpox, botulinum
and others. Thankfully, we haven’t had to use the program for any emergencies
thus far, but then again, I have fire insurance, and I haven’t had to use that,
either.

Fast-forward to 2010, where we now have a president who is facing intense
pressure to reduce spending and a liberal Congress that is trying to find ways
to spend more money. Both sides seem to have settled on scuttling our
Bio-Defense Fund.

According to the Los Angeles Times: “At issue is a House budget bill that would
cut up to $2 billion from the Project BioShield special reserve fund to buy
drugs and vaccines in the event of a biological attack. The funds were set
aside as a guarantee to private companies that if they produced the medicines,
government money would be available to buy them. … The White House has not
objected to the cut and has criticized the fund. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.),
chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, issued a statement Thursday
protesting the reduction, along with two Republicans, Richard M. Burr of North
Carolina and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who wrote the law that created the
fund in 2004. The statement included a letter signed by seven more Democrats
and six more Republicans. ‘The catastrophic events of Sept. 11 and the
anthrax attacks that followed demonstrated that our government was ill prepared
to deal with the kinds of terrorist attacks we may well face in the
future,’ Lieberman said. ‘We still have no modern vaccine for anthrax
and no countermeasures for dozens of other potential bioterror pathogens. The
BioShield Program was meant to address these serious security
shortcomings.’ Siphoning the funds to other programs, as the House bill
would do, ‘would be frightfully shortsighted and would jeopardize the
security of the American people against a very real and potent threat,’ he
said.”

It seems that the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee wants to cut
this program to spend money on other things, not to strike a blow against the
deficit (no surprise there). Chief among those wish-list items is more money
for the teachers unions.

But cutting this program is kind of like getting rid of fire insurance. It
might seem like a good idea — until a fire destroys your house.

Bob Graham, whom President Obama just appointed to investigate the Gulf oil
spill, and Jim Talent, his former co-chairman on the Commission on the Prevention
of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, said this about the
proposed rescission: “We are deeply concerned to learn that the BioShield
Strategic Reserve Fund (SRF) is once again under attack. The proposal, which
has passed in the House and is now headed to the Senate for action, would
divert funds from the SRF to non-national security programs. While there are
many important elements in a comprehensive biodefense program, none are more
important than the development, production and acquisition of medical
countermeasures.”

I share their concern. We might not have to ever use the vaccines and other
medical “countermeasures” that are being created by the Bio-Shield, but what if
we do have to use them and we don’t have them?

Seems pretty risky to me.

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