With the 10 year anniversary of September 11th passing recently, a large debate has sparked in the scientific realm. Many scientists have begun to debate the effectiveness and necessity of our biodefense efforts. Some critics, such as the author of “Biodefense since 9/11”, argue that we have spent an enormous amount of money and we have little, if anything, to show for it. Other scientists, like the author of “Understanding Bush’s Biodefense Budget” have argued that it is too early into our biodefense program to make any substantial evaluations. With our nation’s defense and money at stake, though, we must decide whether we give our biodefense program more time to develop or if we should cut our losses and explore other options.
As aforementioned, the author of the editorial entitled “Biodefence Since 9/11” argues that the government’s spending on biodefense have been squandered thus far. With over $50 billion in expenditures there is some substance to his claim. In the past 10 years, we have only been able to produce a few million vaccines for a handful of drugs, much less than the three hundred million we would need for every person in the United States. He also suggests that the government has run the program very inefficiently since it has begun the program. The author essentially argues the biodefense measures are a good idea in theory, but the execution of these programs has not been done well. The author’s opinion certainly seems to be the popular one.
After searching rather extensively, I finally found an article that argued for increased spending. The author of “Understanding Bush’s Biodefense Budget” argues that the measures since 2001 have been more productive than people give it credit for. At a briefing on Capitol Hill, several doctors that spoke agreed that the budget was originally adequate, but may actually be too small now. One doctor argued that the biodefense funding is inadequate because they are having to spend money to test and evaluate the drugs they have developed. In 2001, the Research and Development, Testing, and Evaluation fund, RDT&E, was used solely for Research and Development since there were no antibiotics to test. With ten years passing though, drugs have begun to make it to the testing and development phase, which means money has to be moved from Research and Development to testing and evaluation, creating a vicious cycle of unbalanced funding.
At the heart of the argument is whether the biodefense programs have been run as efficiently as possible since 9/11. Those who are against the increased spending, point to the $60 billion dollar price tag that biodefense has cost us in the past ten years and how that plays into our countries ever-increasing budget deficit. However, having just read several articles on pharmaceutical drug pipelines, I understand how expensive and time-consuming it is to develop pharmaceutical drugs. I found that it usually costs over half a billion dollars to develop a single drug, and it often takes around ten years to get the product through all the testing phases required by the FDA. It is hard to quantify how efficient the program has been with few drugs to show as real results. It would also seem that when a drug does not make it through the testing phase that it is a failure, but it is much better for our country for ineffective drugs to be sent back to development phase. When we need our biodefense drugs, we would like to be sure that they will work.
With the recent debt debacle, there is a lot of support against any type of government spending that has little obvious benefits There are supposed to be upwards of a trillion dollars worth of cuts in the next ten years, so people will be looking everywhere to find cuts. With this in mind, biodefense measures are unfortunate targets, and can seem somewhat defenseless. The current biodefense programs are just becoming old enough to start producing biodefense antibodies, and it would be unfortunate to cut the programs now. In a little more than a year, we will have our next presidential election, so the debate over biodefense will surely be a hot topic for our country to discuss.
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