A $5.6 billion program designed to protect the United States from bioterror is far from completion according to testimony presented to a congressional panel.
During questioning by a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, a Bush administration official admitted that the U.S. lacks a strategic plan for countering bioterror threats, The Washington Post said Friday.
Alex M. Azar II, a deputy secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, conceded Thursday that lack of a strategic plan promised a draft plan would be made public later this year.
Called Project BioShield, the program created two years ago is aimed at building a national stockpile of drugs and other measures to counter biological and radioactive weapons.
However, the project has been plagued by complaints of delays and bureaucratic inertia in addition to other problems. Drug company and biotechnology executives say they do not know what kind of research to conduct and can't secure funding without a clear set of marching orders, the Post reported.
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