8 Biocrisis immigration, and commerce, would be at significant risk unless positive measures were undertaken. Among the implications to U.S. national secu- rity was the “probability of a bioterrorist attack” against U.S. security inter- ests “as more states and groups develop a biological warfare capability.”16 After 9/11, President George W. Bush had to address the challenge of anthrax-filled letters being mailed to the offices of politicians and media centers. While only five individuals died from cases of pulmonary anthrax, the lack of an attributable source caused nationwide panic for years. After a lengthy and circuitous investigation, the FBI alleged that a U.S. Army scientist was the prime suspect.17 Prior to the nation going to war against Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration released the National Strategy to Com- bat WMD, expanding the DoD’s counterproliferation program to a “whole of government” effort against adversaries armed with nuclear, biologi- cal, and chemical weapons. The U.S. military was now better prepared for a state adversary’s biological weapons program than it was in 1990. But then again, Iraq did not have an active biological weapons program, so the actual threat was much less than had been anticipated. The Bush administration’s development of a national smallpox vaccination program for the military and emergency responders failed in execution due to poor communication and public concerns about the vaccine’s side effects. In 2004, the Bush administration’s Biodefense Strategy for the 21st Century was released as a direct response to the 2001 anthrax incident. In addition to promoting Project BioShield (promoting research and development for medical countermeasures) and Project BioWatch (establishing a number of city-based air samplers) efforts, the administration established a National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center at Fort Detrick, Mary- land, as well as a National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. Funding for bioterrorism boomed after 9/11—by one government report, federal funding expanded twentyfold between 1999 and 2004.18 A group of more than 750 scientists wrote an open letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health criticizing the increase of funds as det- rimental to the real threat of natural disease outbreaks. The number of academic grants for biological disease outbreaks had decreased by 47 per- cent while those addressing biological warfare agents had increased by 1,500 percent. This funding shift from probable (natural) biological threats to possible (deliberate) biological threats seemed illogical, given that the deaths caused by the former greatly outweighed deaths caused by the lat- ter.19 However, the public health community began championing this shift in focus, using Congressional concerns to get more funds by stressing how their programs, addressing natural disease outbreaks, actually enhanced bioterrorism response efforts. The WMD Commission released its “World at Risk” report in 2008, which stressed the need to enhance government oversight of biosecurity issues. While this report emphasized the threat of WMD terrorist attacks,
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