Animal Disease Project Aids Effort to Investigate Anthrax Attack

The use of anthrax, a livestock disease, as a biological weapon against American citizens sent journalists scrambling for information on the pathogen and its availability to terrorists, and led members of Congress to propose tighter restrictions on the transfer of biological material out of germ banks maintained by laboratories and other facilities. The FAS Animal Disease Project moved quickly to supplement anthrax information on our website (Mapped Outbreaks in the US 1997-2001, and Misconceptions About Anthrax) and to create a resource section on agroterrorism.

In addition to the website and response to media inquiries, the project was successful in working with staff of Senator Dianne Feinstein on S. 1661. The new bill seeks to expand the select agent regulations that went into effect in 1997. The proposed legislation would require all laboratories working with listed biological agents to register with the Department of Health and Human Services. Such a requirement would yield information on who is working with what, but would not necessarily document which strains are held by each laboratory, how they were obtained and with whom they have in the past been shared - information that could be invaluable in the event of future events, and highly recommended as a way to close existing gaps in information resources identified by the current bioterrorism investigation.

Beyond informing questions raised by Senator Feinstein in a hearing on bioterrorism before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information ("Germs, Toxins and Terror: The New Threat to America") on November 6, FAS has also recommended that the administration of the transfer rules be taken from the CDC (for which it has been an unwelcome assignment) and given to a new office of laboratory security created within HHS. The project worked with staff of Senator Harkin on bioterrorism legislation sponsored by Senators Kennedy and Frist, and with the General Accounting Office, which is exploring the potential for terrorist attacks on US crops and livestock production.