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Diane Barnes

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Experimental Drug Could Treat Child Bioterrorism Victims

May 28, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow The United States on Friday announced a $17.7 million push to secure federal licensure of an experimental antibiotic officials believe could treat young victims of anthrax or tularemia bacteria. Announcement of the two-year research and development deal with a North Carolina pharmaceutical firm came weeks after congressional investigators warned that ...

HHS Bets on New Model to Fund Biodefense Drug Development

May 24, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow The Obama administration on Wednesday said it is putting down $40 million on a first-of-its-kind plan for a major drug maker to pursue an assortment of experimental bioterrorism antibiotics, drawing from a single funding pool as it studies newly discovered formulations and abandons any found to show little promise. The ...

Study Points to Faster Acting Anthrax Vaccine

May 13, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow A new anthrax vaccine additive could help to guard people exposed to the lethal bacteria with fewer shots than a widely used formulation delivered in five doses over a year and a half, according to a new study made public on Friday. Vaccine with the "CPG 7909" adjuvant prompted a ...

East Coast 'Well Protected' Without Proposed Antimissile Site, Official Says

May 10, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow The eastern United States is already "well protected" against long-range missile threats without a new interceptor site pushed by some GOP lawmakers, a senior Defense Department official told lawmakers. The United States is covered by 30 silo-based ballistic missile interceptors at two existing locations, and 14 more are slated for ...

Lawmakers Fault Pre-Boston Attack Intel Sharing

May 9, 2013 An early dissection of what federal authorities learned in past years about the accused perpetrators of last month's Boston Marathon bombings reveals how far the United States still has to go in sharing and making sense of leads on suspected terrorists, current and former lawmakers said on Thursday. Russia warned ...

Days After Ricin Mailings, Pentagon Says it Wants a Vaccine

April 30, 2013 The United States needs a vaccine to protect troops against ricin, the Defense Department said in an announcement issued days after envelopes filled with the deadly toxin were mailed to President Obama and two Mississippi public officials. No antidote or means of prevention yet exists for ricin, which can be ...

Tired, Poorly Trained Guard Dogs Could Endanger Nuclear Arms Site

April 29, 2013 A U.S. nuclear arms site in Tennessee could be working its guard dogs to exhaustion during vehicle checks and skipping steps in their training, raising the risk that intruders or explosives could slip into the facility unnoticed, the Energy Department inspector general said in a recent report. "We found that ...

How Pressure Cookers Get Classified as a WMD

April 23, 2013 Accusing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of carrying out a WMD strike at the Boston Marathon could offer prosecutors a clear route to a conviction, even though the two pressure-cooker devices used in last week's attack do not fit the accepted definition of a "weapon of mass destruction," academics and former federal prosecutors ...

Pentagon Saves National Guard WMD Unit That Helped in Boston

April 16, 2013 The U.S. Defense Department was poised as recently as last month to dismantle a National Guard crisis team that assisted in the emergency response to the bombings at Monday's Boston Marathon. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on March 29 informed lawmakers in writing of plans to dismantle the New York-based 24th ...

Pentagon Seeks High-Tech Nuke Radiation Defenses

March 29, 2013 The Defense Department this week said it is looking for technologies to protect people against potentially deadly radiation near the site of a nuclear strike or other atomic disaster. Proposals from government, academic, and private-sector sources could provide fodder for a possible government push to devise new means of "enhancing ...