Biosecurity

What should the US national biodefense strategy look like?

Like many other countries, the United States faces a wide range of growing biosecurity threats, from pandemics to laboratory accidents to deliberate attacks by governments, militant groups, and even rogue individuals. Currently, a hodgepodge of federal agencies deals with these dangers, with no one person or entity effectively in charge of biosecurity. Back in 2004, apresidential directive assigned responsibility for coordinating operations against bioterror attacks to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In theory, this made sense, but in practice, it didn’t work out so well. In 2009, then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano took charge of the interagency response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic. The DHS had only limited success in coordinating interagency efforts, making last-minute changes to previously established plans and forcing the White House to take charge. In 2015, the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense concluded that the United States still needed a single coordinated biodefense strategy.