[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 21394]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              BIOTERRORISM

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, a short while ago on the floor of the 
U.S. Senate, my friends and colleagues on the Health, Education, Labor 
and Pensions Committee, our chairman, Senator Enzi, and Senator Burr 
brought to the Senate's attention what we call the bioterrorism BARDA 
legislation, S. 3678. I am a strong supporter of that legislation. I 
believe that legislation provides a rather unique process by which 
outstanding opportunities for breakthroughs in vaccines and other 
medical technologies can be developed and furthered. This can be 
enormously valuable and helpful against any bioterrorist threats, 
pandemic flu, or other kinds of diseases or pandemics we might face in 
the future.
  There are several of our colleagues who want to have an opportunity 
to improve and strengthen that legislation. Obviously, they are 
entitled to do so. But I want to underscore the strong work that has 
been done to date by our chairman, Senator Enzi and also by Senator 
Burr in developing this legislation. The BARDA concept is very close to 
what was done a number of years ago with DARPA, the Department of 
Defense's advanced research program, which has demonstrated enormous 
success in finding new technologies that are used by the military. It 
is a very commendable concept and offers us great hope down the line.
  This legislation also recognizes that we are going to develop 
capacity to contain whatever danger there may be in local communities 
by strengthening support for hospitals, containment, and the public 
health infrastructure. Prevention, detection, containment, and support 
for the health facilities, are all interrelated--they are enormously 
important.
  So I hope that as soon as we return in the lame duck session, this 
will be a first order of business. I have talked with our leader about 
this issue. I look forward to, in the course of these next few weeks, 
talking to some of our colleagues who have offered amendments to see 
how we might be able to proceed, even in this limited amount of time, 
to ensure that we have effective legislation.

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