NYT-Fauci

NYT, Feb 4, 2002:  Spending to protect the United States against germ weapons began increasing under President Bill Clinton, .. but many of Mr. Clinton's requests were cut by his own Office of Management and Budget or the Congress, which remained skeptical.

Spurred by the spate of anthrax-filled letters that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has decided to seek $11 billion over two years to protect the nation against biological terrorism, a far larger amount than even bio defense experts had expected. 

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said the huge infusion of federal aid for basic and applied research was likely to be ''transforming.''

Dr. Fauci:  The $1.75 billion request for the National Institutes of Health alone is the biggest single-year request for any discipline or institute in the history of the N.I.H.  This is the first time that an extraordinary amount of money is being increased expressly for bioterrorism rather than for the general enhancement of capabilities.

NYT:  The budget also calls for increasing the national supply of ''push packs'' -- the preassembled packages containing life-saving antidotes, drugs and other medical supplies that can be sent to the sites of terrorist attacks or mysterious infectious outbreaks

Dr. Fauci is expected to travel with President Bush to Pittsburgh on Tuesday to announce details of the administration's biodefense plans.

Dr. Fauci:  You need appropriate facilities to work on dangerous microbes that can be used for weapons, and we must jump-start our efforts to get new facilities and expertise into existing centers of biological excellence

NYT:  Dr. Fauci said he was putting the final touches on a strategic plan for spending the new money at his institute, which is scheduled to receive a 61 percent increase.

He said he would spend about $441 million of the $1.75 billion budget on basic research, some $592 million on drug and vaccine discovery and development, $194 million on trials of new drugs, and $522 million on new research laboratories at federal, university and industry facilities.

Some $600 million will go to the Pentagon, .. much of it at the United States Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., which conducted biological weapons research before such weapons were banned in 1969, and now develops antidotes to and defenses against such pathogens. The laboratory has been heavily involved in trying to analyze the origins and source of the anthrax letters sent to the Senate and to media outlets in New York and Florida.*

The budget also devotes $10 million to creating a team of epidemiological scientists .. who will work with their foreign counterparts (on) .. mysterious disease outbreaks and share news about promising new drugs and antidotes.

It earmarks another $20 million for the centers' Epidemiological Intelligence Service, established in 1951 as an early-warning system against biological warfare. *

Dr Fauci, 2011, 10-year anniversary:  What stands out most to me about the 2001 anthrax attacks is the notion that from that point on, bioterror was a reality and no longer an abstract concept. .. (T)he attacks really were a wake-up call.

Through the anthrax response, we built both a physical and an intellectual infrastructure that can be used to respond to a broad range of emerging health threats.

The result is that today we are in a much better position — from the perspective of both the research pipeline and public health preparedness.

* Fort Detrick, Md., was the laboratory heavily involved in the origin of the anthrax letters.

* Seeding money for the Prox-O-5, EcoHealth