Brian Behnke, Illustration Works The US Congress refused to authorize $250 million (US) intended to fund development of a second-generation anthrax vaccine this year because of a misunderstanding over the meaning of a single word, "procurement," according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). But the administration did not reduce the agency's responsibilities for developing that vaccine or for boosting bioterrorism research, Fauci say

New approaches for speeding vaccine discovery and development proposed

Ned Shaw US scientists have reason to feel both heady and scared. The federal government recently released unprecedented billions of dollars to fund bioterrorism research. Yet, the merits of this sudden shift in focus are being debated, and some worry that the money will be squandered or wasted. "I have been really very upset by the focus on bioterrorism," says Stanley Falkow, professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at Stanford University. "Everybody's talking about it, but th

Questions for Richard Ebright, a lab director at Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who studies transcription in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The Scientist: The Bush Administration's program calls for spending $1.75 billion annually over the next three years to fund bioterrorism research through the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) alone. That part of the plan directs the Institute to discover

Questions for Matthew Meselson, Thomas Dudley Cabot professor of the natural sciences at Harvard University, who has been outspoken on the topic of bioterrorism and traveled to Sverdlosk, in the former Soviet Union, to study an anthrax outbreak there in 1979. The Scientist: The Bush Administration's program calls for spending $1.75 billion annually over the next three years to fund bioterrorism research through the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) alone. That pa

Questions for Stanley Falkow, professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at Stanford University, who studies the genetic and molecular mechanisms by which bacteria become pathogenic. The Scientist: The Bush Administration's program calls for spending $1.75 billion annually over the next three years to fund bioterrorism research through the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) alone. That part of the plan directs the Institute to discover and produce al