Berlin

Bioterrorism may be the word on everybody's lips at the moment, but Europe needs to put its money where its mouth is, researchers at the continent's first scientific meeting on the topic were told last week.

A lack of investment in bioweapons research could leave Europe vulnerable to attack, speakers at the meeting asserted.

Under the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme for research funding, “virtually no money is specifically earmarked for such research”, said Stefan Kaufmann, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. By contrast, the US National Institutes of Health has earmarked more than $1.5 billion for a very broad programme, he added.

Stefan Kaufmann: Europe must be prepared. Credit: A. ABBOTT

“If there were a bioterrorist incident in Europe there would be uproar,” Kaufmann warned the meeting, “so politicians need to take the issue of research seriously — and now.”

The meeting, a symposium on bioterror and bioweapons held in Berlin on 30 November–1 December, came as Britain revealed that it plans to stockpile about 60 million doses of smallpox vaccine in preparation for a bioterrorist attack.

The sixth Framework, which will issue its first call for applications later this month, supports research into infectious diseases, but focuses on the three conditions linked to poverty — tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS — rather than those with weapons potential, such as anthrax and Ebola. Scientists can apply for funds to study the latter, but only under narrow programmes such as 'rational development of antiviral drugs' or 'combating resistance to antibiotics'.

But researchers at the meeting questioned whether the huge infusion of funds into US bioterrorism research will be used effectively, and said that it should not necessarily be matched in Europe. Critics have also expressed fears that the expansion of such research in the United States will heighten the risk of bioterrorism, by spreading materials and specialist knowledge.

Milton Leitenberg, an arms-control expert from the University of Maryland, College Park, questioned the fundamental philosophy of large programmes specifically targeting bioterrorism. “There would be a greater spin-off for military purposes by putting money into diseases that are the biggest public-health threat, such as HIV and tuberculosis,” he said.