Biodefense Strategy And Implementation Plan

COVID-19 has demonstrated the enormous dangers posed by biological threats, impacting virtually every community in the world. Mitigating these risks remains an urgent domestic and global imperative. Decisive action is required to build on the investments made for, and the lessons learned from, the COVID-19 response to protect the Nation and our partners from the full range of biological threats to humans, plants, animals, and the environment. Through this Strategy, the U.S. Government will optimize its own efforts and harness the work of essential partners—inside and outside government, domestically and internationally – to assess, prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from biological events, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate, that can harm the American people and the global community.

In the United States, the National Biodefense Strategy is a biosecurity strategy that the federal government was directed to adopt by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017. Following the congressional directive, in September 2018, President Trump announced and issued the strategy. The strategy placed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in charge of leading the federal government's biodefense efforts, and designated HHS to lead a committee of high-level officials from the Defense Department, Agriculture Department, and Homeland Security Departments, to review the biodefense capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community and 15 other executive branch agencies.

GAO has reported on the inherent fragmented nature of the federal and nonfederal resources needed to protect the nation from potentially catastrophic biological threats. GAO called for a strategic approach to help the federal government better leverage resources and manage risk The White House issued the National Biodefense Strategy and the Presidential Memorandum on the Support for National Biodefense to promote a more efficient and coordinated biodefense enterprise. This report addresses the extent to which the Strategy and implementation efforts are designed to enhance national biodefense capabilities and any implementation challenges that exist. GAO is making four recommendations to the Secretary of HHS, including working with other agencies to document methods for analysis and the processes, roles, and responsibilities for enterprise-wide decision making.

In recent years, substantial efforts have been initiated to develop new drugs, vaccines, and other medical interventions against biological agents that could be used in bioterrorist attacks against civilian populations. According to a new congressionally mandated report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council of the National Academies, to successfully develop these drugs, vaccines, and other medical interventions against biowarfare agents, Congress should authorize the creation of a new agency within the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense. The committee recommended that Congress should improve liability protections for those who develop and manufacture these products, to stimulate willingness to invest in new research and development for biowarfare protection. Giving Full Measure to Countermeasures also identifies other challengesâ€"such as the need for appropriate animal models and laboratories equipped with high-level biosafety protectionsâ€"that will require attention if DoD efforts to develop new medical countermeasures are to be successful.

Scientific advances over the past several decades have accelerated the ability to engineer existing organisms and to potentially create novel ones not found in nature. Synthetic biology, which collectively refers to concepts, approaches, and tools that enable the modification or creation of biological organisms, is being pursued overwhelmingly for beneficial purposes ranging from reducing the burden of disease to improving agricultural yields to remediating pollution. Although the contributions synthetic biology can make in these and other areas hold great promise, it is also possible to imagine malicious uses that could threaten U.S. citizens and military personnel. Making informed decisions about how to address such concerns requires a realistic assessment of the capabilities that could be misused. Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology explores and envisions potential misuses of synthetic biology. This report develops a framework to guide an assessment of the security concerns related to advances in synthetic biology, assesses the levels of concern warranted for such advances, and identifies options that could help mitigate those concerns.

The Cold War phrase “weapons of mass destruction” continues to be used despite significant changes in international political cultures, military concepts of operation, and technology advances. Today, the term “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) is used to address many things, from grams of ricin and barrels of industrial chemicals to megaton nuclear weapons. As a direct result of the decision to refer to all nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons as well as biological, chemical and radiological (CBR) hazards as “WMD,” we have lost the ability to accurately develop, assess, and discuss policy concerns relating to the contemporary use of unconventional weapons on the battlefield and within the homeland. This book uses a public policy framework to examine how the U.S. government, and in particular the U.S. military, should address the potential use of unconventional weapons in the 21st century. It defines the problem, identifies the policy actors and reviews policy options. It discusses past policy efforts before offering a critical review of current strategies and how WMD issues are integrated into the current military Joint Operating Concepts (deterrence, cooperative security, major combat operations, irregular warfare, stability, and homeland security), and proposes new national framework for countering WMD. The aim is to answer such questions as what does counterproliferation mean and whether the U.S. government is adequately prepared to protect U.S. citizens and its armed forces from adversaries developing unconventional weapons.