don't forget about this one folks...it is one of my largest positions and i only carry a few jumbos at any given time...bio defense is going to be big and after you do some hard digging on hdrn you will find i think that they are WELL POSITIONED....
COMTEX) A: Panel will call for $3.2 billion in biological defense
A: Panel will call for $3.2 billion in biological defense
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) - A panel of senior advisors to the Defense Department
is urging the Pentagon to create a massive new $3.2 billion program to protect
the country from terrorists armed, not with bombs, but with engineered diseases
that could kill thousands or even millions of people before the man-made
outbreaks are detected.
The Defense Science Board will recommend in a report to be made public later
this month that the Defense Department create a new organization to oversee the
development of a data base of biological weapons, a computer chip to
automatically diagnose the diseases in patients, and a computer network that
will rapidly warn health care centers about man-made outbreaks.
United Press International obtained a draft copy of the report, entitled "Task
Force on Defense Against Biological Weapons."
The science board says the United States is wholly unprepared for an attack of
any magnitude, asserting a wave of 100 to 1,000 cases of one of these diseases
in a single city would collapse the health care system.
The board warns there are massive shortfalls in medical supplies to address a
"significant bio incident" and no plans to address the shortage.
The science board paints a grim picture of the brutal effectiveness of
biological warfare: An attack on a city with 100 kilograms of bioagent would
kill one to three million people, twice the number of fatalities that would
result from a one megaton nuclear weapon.
Moreover, because of the commercial nature of the ingredients needed to
manufacture viruses and pathogens, biological weapons are harder for governments
and monitoring regimes to track and control than nuclear weapons development.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and its robust germ warfare program makes the
possibility of such weapons getting into the hands of terrorists or criminals
even more likely. At one former biological warfare center in Almaty, Kazakhstan,
there are 900 strains of the plague, 300 of anthrax, 200 of tularemia and 200 of
cholera.
The first step recommended by the board is for the Defense Department to create
a "Bio-Print" database that would create "signatures" of the to 50 bioagents
that cause human disease.
It says an "urgent priority" would be acquiring and profiling former Soviet
strains and agents, which would not only yield medicines and vaccines against
them but also help track leakage of the diseases into "states of concern" like
Iraq and terrorist groups.
At the same time, it would profile the signatures of organisms used in the
private sector for legitimate purposes.
This project would cost about $675 million over five years to map about 1,350
genomes, according to the report.
Only 100 microbial genomes have been sequenced to date, according to the report
which warns of a "massive capacity gap in public and private sector."
The next step would be to create the diagnostic "Zebra Chip" - a reference that
compares discerning a zebra from a pack of horses to discerning a bioagent from
a multitude of natural human infections.
The miniaturized zebra computer chip would provide immediate diagnoses of
diseases documented in the Bio-Print database, flagging manmade or unusual
diseases to health care workers even before there are symptoms. It would be
non-intrusive and disposable, working with a sample collected from a patient
during a routine clinical screening.
The chips would be introduced in the DOD health care system which serves 4.4
million people, and eventually transferred to the civilian health care system.
The same computer chips could also be used to screen immigrants and visitors to
the country to detect whether they have been handling or exposed to biological
weapons, according to the panel's report.
The science board estimates these chips could be produced for between $1 and $2,
with 12 million produced the first year for DOD patients.
If the "front line" zebra chip detected bioagents, the Defense Department would
then deploy more sophisticated forensic zebra chips designed to probe for the
specific agent in question. The Defense Science Board estimates those chips
would cost around $52 million.
Once a biological agent has been confirmed, the information would be broadcast
on the Biological Warning and Communication System (BWACS), which would warn all
DOD health care organizations, military bases, the Reserves and the Center for
Disease Control and other civilian health organizations.
With a staff of 150 and an initial investment of $300 million, the BWACS would
gobble the lion's share of funding, requiring $1.5 billion over five years.
At the same time, the science board is recommending the Pentagon invest heavily
in research and development for bioagents drugs and vaccines, and work with the
Food and Drug Administration to accelerate the review process. It also
recommends the Pentagon fund a $50 million to $100 million manufacturing
facility for vaccines or after-exposure drugs in order to speed production.
Overseeing all this development would be a new organization called the Joint
BioDefense Organization. The JBDO would direct the military response to a
bioagent outbreak and would coordinate efforts with the civilian sector and
media, and would report directly to the president and the defense secretary
through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The study was chaired by George Poste, chief executive officer of Health
Technology Networks, a consulting group that specializes in the impact of
genetics, computing and other advanced technologies on healthcare research and
development. He was previously the president of research and development at
SmithKline Beecham and was involved in the Human Genome Project. |
