US biodefense budget

Despite the ongoing delay in Congressional action on Fiscal Year 2003 budgets for government agencies involved in biodefense and bioterrorism research, federal officials are optimistic that proposed record-high funding levels will be approved and made available to scientists and institutions soon. Several hundred researchers along with representatives from the major US funding agencies that support them gathered at the "Federal Biodefense Research FY2003" meeting in Washington, DC this week to assess when and where the cash will begin to flow."Investigators should not hesitate to put in applications for grants or respond to RFPs and contracts," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). "You'd be making a big mistake because you may miss a grant or contract cycle if you do that. The president and the Congress both want a budget and it will happen," he told potential applicants at the conference, which was organized by Infocast and sponsored by The Scientist, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Research America.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) proposed FY 2003 budget would open the gates to more than $1.7 billion in biodefense research grants and contracts once Congress and the president approve the appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). "This will be the largest single increase of any discipline, in any institute, for any disease in the history of NIH," Fauci observed.NIAID will oversee the lion's share of the NIH biodefense research portfolio. The agency intends to fund up to $441 million in basic research, $592 million for therapeutics, drugs, and vaccines, about $195 in clinical research (primarily for vaccines and drugs), and about $521 million in facilities and training, assuming the president's budget request is approved soon after the 108th Congress convenes next month.While NIAID is at the center of NIH-funded biodefense research, other agencies, including the Department of Defense (DOD), the newly-created Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others will also be contributing their counter-terrorism resources. The DOD's Chemical and Biological Defense Program alone is up for a near-doubling of its budget to $1 billion for FY 2003."There's a diverse set of tools needed to address bioterrorism," said John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). "There are a lot of turf issues and a lot of coordination is required. But there is a tremendous willingness among agencies to cooperate and work together. I believe it's feasible to have a coordinated biodefense agenda available."Congressional appropriators will have to start over next month drafting new funding bills for the HHS and other agencies that have been running on continuing resolutions (CR) at FY2002 budget levels. The FY2003 budget year started October 1, 2002, but only two of 13 appropriations measures were passed before Congress adjourned last month."There is a misperception that there is no money and therefore everything is paralyzed and frozen," Fauci said. "That's not the case. Now, if we have a continuing resolution that goes until June, that will be a problem. If the CR goes until the end of the year it's going to be an even bigger problem. But if we resolve the budget in a month or so, we'll hit the ground running with everything we planned to do, with possibly some slight delays, but nothing substantive."But Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the AAAS, was not so sanguine, observing that NIAID's 2003 purse may be in jeopardy if the budget process drags on too much. "The longer it gets delayed, there's going to be a lot of competing priorities. Congress could say, 'well, half the year is gone and you don't need the full budget.' NIH may not get the $1.7 billion in biodefense and Congress may siphon off some funds to other areas. If so, NIAID's numbers could be very different," he said. "The 2004 budget proposal comes out in February. We can only hope that 2003 budget is done by then."

US biodefense budget

Funds will flow soon, say research agencies at 2003 biodefense funding conference.

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