Issue Of The Week: Balancing Biotech
Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:
For the first time in years, government officials and the U.S. biotechnology industry are weighing an overhaul of the regulatory framework for federal and private laboratories that work with the world's deadliest biological agents and toxins. At the heart of the matter is concern over securing biological pathogens with dual-use applications, the kind of infectious organisms that have scientific and medical value when used properly but that also can be turned into a weapon to kill or sicken people.
Spurring calls for action, the congressionally chartered Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism predicted in its final report in December that a bioterrorism attack is likely to occur somewhere in the world within the next five years. The panel also reported significant security gaps at U.S. laboratories. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush, in one of his last acts before leaving office last month, established a high-level federal working group that would make recommendations to President Barack Obama within six months on whether laws and regulations governing security at labs should be changed.
And now, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins say they are in the early stages of writ-ing legislation to tighten oversight of so-called high containment laboratories that handle deadly biological pathogens, especially facilities run by private companies. "One of the findings of the WMD Commission is that a lot of the privately operated labs operate for good purposes to develop biotechnology products ... but what they're doing could easy be converted to a biological weapon," Lieberman told CongressDaily.
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