06.17.10
Nuisance bioterror defense legislation
Plain and simple, the Graham-Talent bioterror defense lobbying group is a nuisance to good governance.
It began life as a commission to describe the risk of WMD’s and make policy recommendations. And it was funded by the US government.
However, it was quickly taken over by a small part of the bioterror defense industry lobby, its staffers and direction provided by people from Tara O’Toole’s Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The Center for Biosecurity, along with its industry group, the Alliance for Biosecurity, existed to work the political levers to grease accelerated and expanded taxpayer funding of its bioterror defense initiatives and facilities.
Earlier this year, the US government stopped funding the Graham-Talent commission. While it existed as a government funded agency, it did only one thing. It bashed the Obama administration on a regular basis for unpreparedness and larded the mainstream media with opinion pieces and repetitive news stories which repeated the same script.
Graham-Talent has always worked the directive that the truth and certainty of a thing is determined by how many times you get to plant a frightening scenario pertaining to bioterrorism, one boosting your interests, in newspapers. The list of citations on it is here.
Now officially defunded, the Graham-Talent lobbying group has enlisted two minor congressmen in the House to put together what amounts to nuisance legislation, a bill that serves mostly as advertising for the alleged wisdom of Graham-Talent.
You really have to see it to believe it.
The summary is here and every graf in it directly references Graham-Talent’s World at Risk report. It’s an odious piece of work and again serves only a narrow purpose — to advance the agenda of the small Graham-Talent special interest group and afford an opportunity for its two congressional “authors,” one of whom is GOP extremist Peter King of New York, to put a blunt stick in the eye of the administration with what is the legislative process equivalent of vexatious litigation.
At Armchair Generalist, Jason Sigger succinctly calls it “a load of shit.”
There’s no better way to say it.
He writes:
Most of the direction in the legislation are aimed at things already being done within DHS and DHHS, for example, implementing the BioWatch program, conducting a biennial bioterrorism risk assessment, assessing commercial emergency responder equipment, using hazard plume models for CBRN terrorism response, developing cleanliness standards, and so on …
I’m not against congressional interest in this area, but I am against Congress directing specific policy actions with inaccurate and limited policy analysis. And no, I don’t count the “World at Risk” report as adequate policy analysis.
A few other observations are worth making.
We must now change the definition of WMD to mean only biological weapons, since that what this legislation deals with specifically, to the exclusion of all else. That’s the clear mark of Graham-Talent lobby dictation lessons and journalists should recognize it as such.
The legislation also purports to compel the government to share informationwith biosecurity and biopreparedness ‘stakeholders.’ “Stakeholder’ is undefined. Presumbably, it can mean Graham-Talent cronies in the biodefense industry.
There is a call for creation of a ‘national forensic repository of biological organisms.” There are already plenty of places with sufficient repositories and the scientists who must know where they are, do.
It would be pointless to create yet another place for potential diversion, just because another agency — like the Department of Homeland Security, must have its own pile of pathogens. Indeed, there’s no compelling scientific argument to be made for it.
There is also a vague call to loosen up BARDA some more — which is a UPMC/Alliance for Biosecurity industry party favor.
The only other question that comes to mind is who took the dictation from Graham-Talent and whether they did it by phone, e-mail or in meeting. It’s such a piece of toady work, someone ought to fess up on the details, if only for the sake of taking proper credit for the political manipulation.
Again, it’s an example of really bad government — legislation solely for the agenda of a special interest, a special interest which has no measurable public support.
On the Graham-Talent bioteror defense industry lobbying group — from the archives.
Dick Destiny » The Bad Penny turns up on the BP Commission said,
June 21, 2010 at 12:13 pm
[…] And although defunded, last week DD wrote of its latest piece of mischief, political legislation as advertising for the alleged wisdom of itself here. […]