But, like anything else in these unsettled times, uncertainties abound in the biotech world. It is not at all clear that this increased attention on biosecurity will benefit the biotech industry as a whole. And no one can say whether the government's planned countermeasures for producing vaccine and stockpiling antibiotics will be sufficient to respond to any future bioterrorist attacks.
"We are likely to see a lot of financial activity related to vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, antibiotics, and antivirals," says Brent Erickson, director of industrial and environmental biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), an industry group in Washington, D.C. "And on the military side, we will see a lot more work on detection systems and diagnostics," he says.
"Biotech companies already are responding very quickly to the needs of the government," adds Calvin Chue, an adviser to the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "Some of them ...
