Administration Creates New
Advisory Board for "Biosecurity"
March 12, 2004 - Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson March 4 announced the creation
of a new National
Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which
will advise on, and recommend, strategies for the oversight
of all federally supported biological research that may also
have a "dual-use" for terrorism. The board will
include 25 voting members appointed by the Secretary with
input from other relevant federal agencies and will be administered
by the NIH. Also speaking at the conference were John Marburger,
director of the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy (OSTP); Ret. Gen. John Gordon, the President's Homeland
Security Advisor; Elias Zerhouni, M.D., director of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH); and Anthony Fauci, M.D., director
of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID). The officials compared the NSABB to the Recombinant
DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) established in 1974 to address
a different set of public health and safety concerns. Like
the RAC, the NSABB will work through local Institutional Biosafety
Committees on matters of policy and guidance involving specific
research projects. Dr. Fauci stressed that the role of the
NSABB in formulating guidance is intended to help enable federally
funded scientists to pursue their investigations, and not
to preempt potential dual use research.
The establishment of this advisory board was the first of
several major recommendations made by a National
Academies committee on bioterrorism, chaired by Dr. Gerald
Fink of MIT, in October 2003.
Information:
Stephen Heinig, Lead Science Policy Analyst
AAMC Biomedical Health Sciences Research
sheinig@aamc.org
(202) 828-0488
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