War on terrorism calls up expertise
26 June 2002 15:00 EST
by Tabitha M. Powledge,
BioMedNet News
Senior
scientists in the US yesterday prescribed an agenda for combating
terrorism in a report that ranges from biomedical sciences to
nuclear devices and from energy systems to information technology.
The report,
Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in
Countering Terrorism from the US National Academy of Sciences
(NAS), urges biomedical scientists to seize what it labels "urgent
research opportunities."
Among these opportunities are the development of effective
treatments and preventive measures for known and emerging
pathogens like the hemorrhagic fevers. Other vital biomedical
research tasks include new and better protective gear and sensors
for emergency responders, and new and better methods and standards
for filtering air against chemicals and pathogens and for
decontamination, it says.
Richard D. Klausner, former head of the US National Cancer
Institute (NCI), now at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in
Seattle, describes the report as a roadmap for how to best
organize and prioritize what the nation needs to achieve to
protect itself with science and technology.
Klausner, who co-chaired the NAS committee that wrote the
report, says most of the report's nearly 150 recommendations are
aimed at the federal government because of its role in funding
research.
Genome sequences for people, animals, and pathogens, along with
researchers' increasing grasp of molecular mechanisms underlying
pathogenesis and immune responses and new strategies for drug and
vaccine design offer unprecedented ways of fighting bioterrorism,
the reports points out.
"But these same developments also allow science to be misused
to create new agents of mass destruction," it warns.
The US should launch genome sequencing projects for all
organisms (and their natural variants) that have bioterror
potential. Researchers should also investigate DNA-based vaccines
more fully. They should also explore recombinant human antibody
technologies and vaccines against toxins as well as pathogens.
Special research organizations with bioterror expertise should
be created to grapple with both classified and unclassified
issues, the report urges. They should work with both universities
and government agencies and employ special mechanisms for rapid
funding of external research.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) also needs a new
mechanism for funding high-risk, long-term, high-payoff projects,
according to the NAS report. The NIH, for its part, says the
report is under review, and it is too soon to know how the agency
will respond to that proposal. The NIH is already facing possible
transfer of all its bioterror research to the new Department of
Homeland Security recently proposed by US President George Bush.
The NAS committee made no estimates of costs, according to
Lewis M. Branscomb of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard, its co-chair. But the biggest expenses are likely to come
with deployment of new and existing technologies, not in research,
he says.
"What's included in here for research could be done for a small
fraction" of President Bush's proposed counterterrorism budget of
$37.7 billion, Branscomb said.
Budget experts agree.
"My estimates for the current bioterrorism budget show that the
research budget would be smaller than the implementation budget
after totaling up the increased security costs, added public
health infrastructure, vaccine procurement, assistance to first
responders, etc.," Kei Koizumi, who heads the R&D Budget and
Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS), told BioMedNet News.
To ensure public enthusiasm for a big, costly counterterrorism
research investment, researchers and policymakers should be
seeking technologies that "generate ancillary social benefits so
we get more bang for the buck," Branscomb said.
Emphasizing spillover benefits could help to persuade the
public and politicians to support the initiatives, the report
counsels. For example, it suggests, improved monitoring and
detection of biowarfare agents would probably generate new ways of
diagnosing disease. And money spent on coordinating and developing
emergency teams would improve response to natural disasters and
disease outbreaks as well as to terrorist attacks.
Because of substantial uncertainties about mechanisms of
pathogenesis, researchers should design new experiments with
virulent organisms and new animal models of human disease, the
report urges.
After reviewing what is known about pathogenesis and host
response for existing bioterror agents, policymakers should put
together an action plan for lab research. This research, using the
latest tools of molecular biology, should be designed to identify
an agent's points of vulnerability. It should also identify new
targets for diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines.
Boosting R&D on therapeutics and vaccines should mean increased
support of both basic and clinical research, the report says.
Researchers ought to focus on discovering molecular targets in
bacteria and viruses, on developing broad-spectrum antivirals and
antibiotics, and on treatments that enhance or stimulate
protective host responses, it suggests.
That also means using genomics to identify engineered mutations
and altered virulence factors rapidly, and even creating "a
generic platform to develop a vaccine against recombinant
pathogens."
The report stresses the need for microbial forensics as a way
of identifying the source of bioweapons attacks. But forensic
techniques might also help to deter them, it argues. Combining DNA
sequence information and introduced DNA markers to label each
pathogen with a unique tag should make the pathogen, and its
source, instantly recognizable. Defense and national security
agencies should take the lead in establishing this new field, the
report says.
The NAS report also urges what it calls "streamlined" testing
and regulation. This would include exceptions to regulations for
therapeutics and vaccines against bioterror agents. Streamlining
procedures would also include indemnifying producers against legal
action in the case of adverse effects, it says. "The possibility
of encouraging collaboration between pharmaceutical companies in
this area by waiving antitrust restrictions - in specific cases
justified by the national interest - must also be considered," the
report notes.
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