Judd Gregg: “I rise to address the issue which is being debated here relative to the amendment by Senator Harkin regarding the avian…”

“I rise to address the issue which is being debated here relative to the amendment by Senator Harkin regarding the avian flu and how we are going to address this very serious potential pandemic. We all recognize this is a threat of dramatic proportions, not only to our society but to the world generally. As a Congress, we have tried to begin to address this matter relative to other issues that could have an equal impact, involving biologics that could be used against our society in a terrorist attack. Three years ago I authored a bill called the BioShield bill. Along with a number of Members of this Senate, including Senator Kennedy, who was the ranking member of the committee I chaired at that time, the HELP Committee, we put together a package which basically created a structure which we hoped would lead to development of vaccines to address the threat which was posed by the use of biological weapons against our country, specifically things such as smallpox, anthrax, botulism, and plague. That proposal, the BioShield bill, was funded at $5.6 billion, which is a lot of money. The reason we put that much money in the pipeline was because we wanted to create an incentive for the pharmaceutical industry and for startup biological companies to begin to develop vaccines. Our country, regrettably, has seen basically a devastation of the vaccine industry. We used to have 30 to 40 companies that were involved in the production of vaccines.…”