According to the report, advances in biotechnology have now enabled a small team of individuals with college-level training, to create deadly biological weapons. A thinking enemy, armed with biological weapons, could change the very nature of Americaour economy, our government, and even our social structure, Graham said. America does not yet have adequate bio-response capability to meet fundamental expectations during a large-scale biological event.
The Report Card offers an assessment of Americas current capabilities in seven crucial categories of bio-response. It also measures these capabilities in relation to the magnitude of potential biological scenariosranging across six levels with increasing severity from Small-Scale Non-Contagious to Global Crisis Contagious. There are 45 letter grades in this report card ranging from Bs to Fs.
Our nations leaders must ensure that those responsible for defending America against bio-terrorism are provided the resources, organizational framework, public policies, and leadership to meet this escalating national security and public health threat, Talent said. We can and must make progress.
In the past decade, the United States government has spent more than $65 billion on bio-defense, and yet it has done so without an end-to-end, strategic assessment of the nations bio-response capabilities.
In its evaluation, the WMD Center recommends focusing on improving response capabilities for large-scale events, as opposed to the most extreme scenarios. The report identifies three strategic priorities:
- Leadership that sets clear priorities and engenders commitment and unity of effort
- Mobilizing whole of nation response planning
- Sustained investment in purpose-driven science.
The Report Card does suggest that the nations ability to respond to a relatively small-scale attack-such as the 2001 anthrax letters--has significantly improved over the past 10 years.
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