The Threats 

The United States faces unprecedented risks to national security in the 21st century posed by the clear and growing danger of bioterrorism or a destabilizing infectious disease pandemic. Our nation’s vulnerability to biothreats is so severe simply because most of the vaccines and medicines that will be needed to protect our citizens during and after such events do not now exist, and will likely require several years and several hundred million dollars each to successfully develop and produce.

Alliance Activities

Much can and should be done by public and private partners in advance of a bioterrorist attack or natural pandemic to minimize illness and death, as well as catastrophic social, economic, and political disruption. The Alliance pursues opportunities to partner with government and other stakeholders to develop new solutions aimed at greatly enhancing our country’s ability to defend itself against biothreats. Sample Alliance activities include:

• Educating members of Congress and other government stakeholders about biosecurity and drug development issues.
• Promoting the successful implementation of the Biodefense Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within HHS.
• Publishing a piece in Nature Biotechnology about the challenges of using the Animal Efficacy Rule and presenting proposed solutions.
• Pursuing the creation of a shared database of animal model data to advance the science of animal model development, accelerate medical countermeasure development, and reduce the use of animals.
• Providing venues for stakeholder dialogue about key issues and challenges of animal model development for vaccines countermeasures.
• Developing and presenting consensus policy proposals to government.