01.17.11
Bioterror defense research produces zip
If you’ve read DD stuff for the last few years you have maybe formed the conclusion that bioterror defense funding has been niche science welfare spending. And of virtually no benefit to the middle class or social good in the US.
An article from the Boston Globe states something no one could have put in print during the last decade: “$1b effort yields no bioterror defenses.”
“The Pentagon is scaling back one of its largest efforts to develop treatments for troops and civilians infected in a germ warfare attack after a $1 billion, five-year program fell short of its primary goal,” it reads.
“Even the heavy infusion of research cash and a unified effort by university labs and biotech companies from Boston to California were insufficient to break through limitations of genetic science, according to government officials and specialists in biological terrorism.”
Back in the old days of the war on terror — old days, I like that — great promises were made. Genetic technology would allow everything. The sky was the limit.
It was a hype job, a rush at the trough. Virtually nothing has come from bioterror research.
Anthrax vaccine work and a business war among the small company players in it for the entire piece of any pie involved in future formulations. A couple anti-botulism nostrums to stockpile. A ricin vaccine that has been in development for over a decade with taxpayer money propping up a company, Soligenix, that’s produced nothing.
What the Globe story shows is that the companies involved in bioterror defense are now rapidly scrambling to change the wording of their research descriptions. Soon they will all be rationalizing the need for continued funding by emphasizing their alleged capability to identify emerging disease and potential cocktails of deadly microorganisms — as if the latter actually exists somewhere out there.
It’s kind of like passing themselves off as souped-up high tech private sector mini-National Institutes of Health.
“Scientists initially set out to develop new medicines capable of attacking viruses that might be altered by terrorists to make them more deadly,” reports the Globe.
This was alway bullshit. In the last decade not a single terrorist has shown facility with germs in any kind of lab setting. Genetically altered viruses were and are fantasy for the purpose of this discussion.
“But after more than 50 research projects by more than 100 contractors — including biotech firms, pharmaceutical companies, and universities, including several in the Boston area — only two experimental medicines have shown promise,” reports the Globe. “And even those are far from being ready for limited clinical tests, according to project officials.”
The retooled Pentagon bioterror defense strategy still shows a great deal of delusional thinking. One cannot blame the institution too much.
The bioterror defense lobby is strong, always there with scare stories about how the pace of biotechnology is putting Pandora’s Boxes full of horrors within range of anyone puttering away in the garage or a cave.
The Globe:
The new focus of the program will be making a “cadre of investments that are able to take an unknown sample that may contain different agents, and be able to determine very quickly what is in there,’’ Rudolph said. “It is our intent to continue to grow this capability.’’
He added the ultimate goal will still be to someday develop therapeutic remedies that could treat someone infected with any number of deadly viruses — what the Pentagon called “one size fits all’’ or “one drug, many bugs.’’
Here’s a prediction you can take to the bank. No revolutionary advances in public health or the treatment of disease will come from any of this. That’s zero.
It’s still science welfare. And there will be no benefit to the middle class except for the relatively small number of jobs it sustains for the scientists and support staff involved in it.
“These are not going to be blockbuster drugs,’’ said one Pentagon official with candor.
At Secrecy blog, Steven Aftergood has put an updated copy of a Congressional Research Report on ricin on-line.
It accurately limns the threat — or lack of one — posed by malevolent use of ricin.
A quick read shows the perceptive that there’s zero need for a ricin vaccine as the only at-risk people likely to benefit from it are those who are doing research on the ricin vaccine. And maybe the run-o-the-mill neo-Nazi survivalist kooks from the American fringe who are arrested every year for pounding castor seeds into a powder.
Only bioterror defense industry scenarios posit ricin as a WMD. Which completely does away with any rationale for continuing to fund a company like Soligenix.
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