San Francisco

A massive infusion of cash for biodefence research, proposed with much fanfare in President George W. Bush's 2003 budget request on 4 February, has a number of US scientists and bioweapons experts on edge.

They worry that the new spending, which includes a sevenfold increase in biodefence funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will stimulate the proliferation of labs that handle dangerous pathogens, and raise the risk of an accidental or deliberate release.

Nearly all of the NIH money for biodefence is to be administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose budget would grow next year by almost 60%, to $4 billion, under the Bush proposal. It includes $430 million in new funds to build secure containment facilities for hazardous microbes, and $533 million for drug and vaccine research. The NIAID would also get $441 million, a sixfold increase, for basic research into the biology of bioterror agents.

But the prospect of dozens of labs across the country handling pathogens such as those that cause anthrax and tularaemia is nothing short of terrifying, says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey.

Ebright says he developed an intense interest in biodefence issues after the anthrax attacks on the United States last October were launched from his state. He argues that although detection techniques are critical for good biodefence, understanding the basic biology of the pathogens is not. “From a security perspective, we would do better to have much more restricted access and less information,” he says.

Officials at the NIAID have defended the increase from criticisms that it might cause security concerns. “The infrastructure that will be put in place will make it extraordinarily difficult for there to be a deliberate release of biological pathogens,” says NIAID director Anthony Fauci.

Nancy Connell, director of the Center for Biodefense at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark, says there is no justification for such a massive increase in spending. “Those kinds of big numbers mean going deeper into the competition,” she says. “We will be starting to fund some bad science.” She also questions whether adequate security can be maintained if the number of labs handling bioterror agents shoots up.

But security may not be of equal concern for all hazardous biological agents, argues Steven Block, a biophysicist at Stanford University in California and a member of the JASON group, which advises the government on technical issues related to defence. Whereas the smallpox virus may be hard to come by, he points out, deadly microbes such as Escherichia coli O157:H7, which can contaminate food, the bacterium Francisella tularensis, responsible for tularaemia, which flared up two years ago in Kosovo, and even the bacterium that causes anthrax, Bacillus anthracis, can be readily obtained from nature.

This distinction may soon be enshrined in law. A bill sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) and Bill Frist (Republican, Tennessee) instructs the health department to work with scientists in drawing up a new list of biological agents that should be subject to tight regulation. Ron Atlas, president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology, says he would hope for a hierarchy of security requirements that would take the varying risk of different agents into account.

Block and others point out that most biological agents pose only a limited threat without the technology to turn them into weapons them. But research into this would also expand under the Bush budget plan, which includes $600 million in new funding related to bioterrorism at the Department of Defense. Part of this would fund studies of “how potential bioterrorism pathogens may be weaponized, transported, and disseminated”, according to a budget fact sheet distributed by the White House.

From an international perspective, the Bush biodefence plan is part of a worldwide trend towards greater funding of biodefence research, says Jean Pascal Zanders of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. At least 12 countries, including Sweden, already have high-containment facilities, known as biosafety level 4 labs, and several others are expected to announce plans this year to build their own, Zanders says. “We could get a sort of arms race on the defensive side,” he says, “and it might spill over into an offensive one.”