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Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and the General Accounting Office are questioning the Bush administration's plan to move bioterrorism-related functions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to the proposed Homeland Security Department.

At a hearing Tuesday, White House Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said the new department would "unify much of the federal government's efforts to develop and implement scientific and technological countermeasures against human, animal and plant diseases that could be used as terrorist weapons."

The new department, Ridge said, would also "sponsor and establish national priorities for research, development, and testing to invent new vaccines, antidotes, diagnostics, therapies and other technologies against bioterrorism" and "set standards and guidelines for state and local biological preparedness and response efforts."

But Kennedy said he has concerns that "legislation establishing the new department does not undermine important ongoing programs at HHS to enhance our national preparedness for bioterrorism."

Kennedy said many health organizations have reached the "overwhelming conclusion ... that transferring public health preparedness programs away from CDC or stripping NIH of its ability to make key decisions about the nation's bioterrorism research program would do a disservice to the goal of enhancing our security," an opinion that was shared by GAO's Janet Heinrich.

"We have concerns about the proposed transfer of control of public health assistance programs that have both basic public health and homeland security functions from HHS to the new department," Heinrich said in her testimony. "These dual-purpose programs have important synergies that we believe should be maintained."

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