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Posted on 08/14/2004 12:58:15 AM PDT by Che Chihuahua
Bioterror Defense - Forbes staff, 08.13.04, 6:00 AM ET
NEW YORK - Pharmathene is one of a smattering of small and undercapitalized biotechnology outfits trying to develop either vaccines or antidotes for anthrax, which remains, in the opinion of a lot of experts, the most likely weapon to be used against the U.S. in a bioterror attack.
The threat of biological attack is considered so serious that President George W. Bush in late July signed Project Bioshield, creating a $5.6 billion fund to stockpile treatments for smallpox, botulism and anthrax over ten years, without the need for approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. This fall, Washington will start to free up hundreds of millions of dollars to stockpile anthrax antidotes and $1.4 billion to buy vaccine doses.
The Congressional Budget Office figures the bill could come to $8 billion over ten years. The National Institutes of Health will spend another $1.6 billion this year, up from $291 million in 2002, on bio-defense work.
A mason jar of anthrax sprayed over an urban area could infect 400,000 urban residents and possibly kill half of them in less than two weeks. Such a dispersal would be hard to pull off, but certainly not impossible. A 9/11 Commission staff report concluded in June that al Qaeda "was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to September 11" and cited former CIA director George Tenet as warning that an anthrax attack is "one of the most immediate threats the U.S. is likely to face."
Anthrax is relatively easy to mass-produce. The naturally occurring bacterium, which infests soil and is contracted by grass grazers like cattle or sheep, can be extracted from the blood of an infected animal and grown in petri dishes. An attack might not be detected until people started getting very ill.
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