Project Bioshield: Pot o' Gold, But Money Misdirected?
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Almost overnight, bioterrorism prevention has become a multibillion-dollar business. And some biotechnology companies looking for a steady source of revenue and a deep-pocketed customer are paying heed — in some cases, tailoring drug trials and structuring business-development efforts to government plans to create a biotech armory.
In the last four years, the government has opened the spigot for bioterror research, allocating $14 billion to counter a potentially lethal attack. The money — most of it spilling from government coffers since 9/11 — has been earmarked for everything from tackling letter-borne anthrax to inoculating hospital workers against a smallpox assault. Congress set aside $5.6 billion for Project BioShield, a massive effort to stockpile vaccines, antidotes, and tests in a frontline pharma defense against a bioterror attack.
The Biosecurity Center of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center checked the books of government agencies and concluded that civilian bioterror programs consumed $414 million of the federal budget in 2001. Next year, that figure will hit $7.6 billion. The military’s budget for biodefense would add billions more.
That money is helping to fund several biotech start-ups and is encouraging ambitious research and development plans among established drug companies. For them, there are plenty of strings — and no small fears — attached. But this is one opportunity that some biotechs see as simply too good to pass up.
They are, no doubt, buoyed by Congress’s seemingly unbridled enthusiasm. Before being signed by President Bush on July 21, Project BioShield won Senate passage, 99 to 0 (John Kerry was the lone abstention). The House adopted the Senate bill without any changes — something almost unheard of in modern-day Washington — to speed the bill to the president’s desk.
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Author: John Carroll
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2274022353