[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 93 (Tuesday, July 12, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H5714]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             PUBLIC HEALTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk on a subject 
which is not often addressed on the floor of the House, which is public 
health, particularly public health as relates to threats of 
bioterrorism or naturally occurring events.
  Today, and I am a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, we 
had some rather disturbing revelations of the lack of progress with 
Operation BioShield, which seems to have done more to enhance the 
profits of the pharmaceutical industry, to engage in some exotic forms 
of research, to ignore some off-the-shelf remedies which could deal 
with very real and horrible threats, such as the potential for a 
nuclear device that could deal with the radiological aftermath and 
things of that nature.
  Now, the Committee on Homeland Security will continue to investigate 
those areas and deliberate in those areas, and that is good, because we 
need to improve how we target those funds, how they are spent, and how 
we assess the threats to the people of the United States. More than $12 
billion was spent on smallpox and anthrax, the anthrax attack 
apparently perpetuated by somebody who perhaps stole that from Ft. 
Detrick, Maryland; and smallpox, of course, is not yet known to be a 
threat.
  The administration, however, has ignored a very real threat to the 
American people. Many of us experienced the fact that last year there 
was not enough flu vaccine, because we have left it to the private 
sector, free markets, and competition to provide flu vaccine; and it is 
not working real well. This is not the first shortage in recent years, 
not the first series of price gouging for vulnerable people. It has 
become recurrent year after year.
  Last year, I did not get a flu shot, as many other Americans did not, 
in order to give up our doses for those who might be more at risk.

                              {time}  1930

  The system is broken. We can only hope that the Bush administration 
will begin to take more definitive action and introduce legislation 
along those lines.
  But even more threatening than the annual flu occurrence is the 
prospect of H5N1, the avian flu virus, mutating and becoming the next 
pandemic attacking people around the world. It is estimated that 30 to 
70 million people could die, many here in the United States, similar to 
the 1917, I believe, epidemic.
  The Bush administration has been charged, granted we have known about 
H5N1 for quite some time, and the Clinton administration did very 
little in this area, so there is blame to go around. But it has become 
more persistently reported. It has reached more epidemic proportions. 
There have been more human infections, more reports of possible human 
infections being concealed by the Chinese communist government, as they 
often do in these matters. And the Bush administration in the last year 
spent a total of $110.3 million, $70.5 million for vaccines, and $15.6 
million for antiviral drugs. Despite the fact that the World Health 
Organization tells us we should be stockpiling these drugs, the Bush 
administration is not stockpiling these drugs.
  Mr. Speaker, $15.6 million for antiviral drugs. That is less than 
half of what they spent on adolescent family life prevention projects. 
They spent nearly twice as much money on abstinence-only education 
money in America as on all flu vaccine spending.
  A looming pandemic, and the Bush administration and Health and Human 
Services are off worried about abstinence-only education, as opposed to 
an extraordinary threat to millions of Americans.
  This could become an incredible problem as early as this year, but 
this administration seems determined to just bumble along until the 
time when the pandemic begins, and then it will be too late. There is 
only one producer overseas. Other nations have lined up to buy their 
production. The United States of America has not. The pharmacies will 
run out quickly. We do not have adequate hospital surge capacity. We 
are vulnerable in so many ways, but the Bush administration thinks it 
is more important to spend money on abstinence-only education than 
preserving the health of the American people in the face of these 
deadly threats.
  Hopefully they will begin to do better, and, if they cannot, perhaps 
the Republican leadership in Congress will allow us to move legislation 
that will force them to do better in the future to protect the American 
people.

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