fauci, do you want to excellent on that. >> i agree with what dr. ger steen said, if you look carefully at the policy, the 60 days to give inventory, 90 days to determine how you do a risk mitigation, that was the first cut at making sure we know what's going on right now. i think this will be an evolving process. ultimately we will try and make sure that when you get down to the local level of the institutional biosafety committees a lot of the kinds of monitoring that will be done already essentially automatic by well-trained people. >> i agree. let me ask this question. in your testimony, dr. fauci you discuss nih funded efforts to develop a universal influenza vaccine and dr. ingalls focusing on h5n1 and i wonder whether they will lead organizations that fund vaccine research to increase the priority that you're placing on these kinds of research efforts. >> the answer is a re sounding yes. the situation, there are a couple of ways of getting rid of this problem. one of the them i think mentioned in testimony and discussions we had is kill the c

fauci. that was an excellent introduction to the topic. and i look forward to asking you some questions. next, dr. daniel m. gerstein, deputy undersecretary for science and technology at the u.s. department of homeland security. obviously, sharing with the committee the concern about whether this research represents a real threat to our homeland security and if so, what we should do about it. thanks so much for being here. we welcome your testimony now. >> thank you. good morning, chairman lieberman, ranking member collins. i thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding dual-use life science research of concern. my testimony today will describe both department of homeland security mechanisms for addressing and mitigating dual-use concerns arising from internal life sciences research that dhs funds or performs as well as dhs involvement in u.s. government and other efforts to address security concerns arising from the life sciences research. as the department considers the durc issue, several principles help guide our thinking.

i would extend the moratorium that doctor fauci discussed. those reasons are valid.r ways to not require engineering transmissible strains. if this work is allowed to continue, we should limit it to a small number of labs. the u.k. and canada have indicated their concern by saying it can only be performed in certain labs. we should have this in an open and transparent white. let's decide if there are lines that should not be crossed. should it be made into transmissible strains? should other strains be engineered? should transmissible h5n1 been engineered to make them immune? we should decide now. the u.s. should strengthen exports prepared this effort. carter should include the capacity to manufacture on alar scare, universal vaccines, new antiviral, and federal care of inflected fox. -- flocks. this policy is a good step addressing the kinds of issues raised by the controversy. the success will depend on how it is implemented. i have recommendations and i will highlight four of them. implement at a local level. scientists will be critical to the success of this pol

fauci said. i believe there are some experiments that should not be done. that is a intent of the compliance review group. looking at the nsabb, seven experiments and the type pathogens we typically work with in the analysis and characterizations that we do. so we look at these very hard and make sure we're doing them in the safest possible ways, in the appropriate facilities. as the end of the day, we recognize that national security and assess what sort of frets they pose. city, we're doing in the highest containment, we do most of our internal work in our facilitief. and then the plum island facility, so we're very keen on that. >> okay, we've talked so far about the u.s. government response to this challenge but obviously, scientific research is global and in this case, one team in wisconsin, one in the netherlands, so help me understand and the committee understand for the record, let's just -- scientific bodies, moving to adopt a standard such as the march 29th policy. are there national standards being adopted in the individual countries throughout t

fauci.lent introduction to the topic, and i look forward to asking you some questions. next, doctor daniel gerstein, deputy undersecretary for science and technology at the u.s. department of homeland security. sharing with the committee the concern about whether this research represents a real threat to our homeland security, and if so, what we should do about. thanks so much for being here, and we welcome your testimony now. >> thank you. good morning, chairman lieberman, ranking member collins. i think for the opportunity to testify today regarding dual use life science research of concern. my testimony today will describe both department of homeland security mechanisms for addressing and mitigating dual-use concerns arising from an internal life sciences research, that dhs funds, as well as dhs involvement in u.s. government and other efforts to address security concerns arising from the life sciences research. as the department considers the durc issue, several principles help guide our

fauci pointed out, both institutions were heavily regulated and reviewed. both exceeded the requirements for biological safety that we have in place for these types of experiments. >> okay, dr. kiem and dr. fauci, i want to give you an opportunity to respond to the dissent in the letter which was, i gather, originally a confidential letter and then was leaked from -- from michael ostraholm in his criticism of the nsabb decisions and to some extent, not totally reflected by dr. engelsby, but also dr. engilsby expressing some concern about the decision. dr. keim, why don't you begin? >> first off on the committee, we are again a board of 25 high ly qualified individuals and we rarely agree upon anything. >> sounds like congress. >> i know. awe although we may not be highly qualified. >> i must say we actually embrace this dissent and weep use it and we cherish the different members and their opinions and it's true for this particular example as well. i did, this was in fact, a letter that was meant for an internal type of a process for us to understand in a r

fauci, do you want to comment on that at all?0 days to determine how you're going to do risk mitigation. that was really the first cut in the future we know what's going on right now. i think this'll be an evolving process. ultimately, we're going to try to make sure that when we get down to the local level, the institutional biosafety committees, a lot of the time of monitoring that we be done will be essentially automatic by well-trained people. >> i agree. let me ask this question, in your testimony, travel, and you discuss nih funded efforts to develop the universal influenza vaccine, and dr. inglesby highlights the ongoing efforts to develop vaccines focused on h5n1. i wonder whether the findings of these kind of studies will lead nih and other organizations that fund vaccine research to increase the priority, that you're placing on these kinds of research efforts. >> the answer is a resounding yes. the situation, there a couple of ways of getting rid of this problem. one of them i think dr. inglesby mentioned in his testimo

fauci, you are the one to turn to give us for the record a broader sense of how widely dual-use research is either being done or in federal agencies or funded by federal agencies. >> okay. so that's a very good question, mr. chairman. and it's important, as you did yourself, distinguish between dual-use research and dual-use research of concern. any time you go near a microbe, it's dual-use research. if your talking about dual-use research of concern, we, just for this purpose, as part of the implementation of the march 29th governmentwide policy, we did an inventory of what we do with our own scientists at the nih and at the nih-funded government scientists, as well as the external extramural grantees and contractors. when we did an inventory of what we do mostly on a bethesda campus and in the rocky mountain campus, there were 404 intramural projects that could be dual use, plus 147 manu scripts and nonedual-use resear. when we did the extramural sbrrnt of all of the grantees, there were 381 grantees or contractors. 10 of those grants were designated as durc. seven of them were in infl

public health officials like nih's anthony fauci have struggled with how to communicate the risks of vaccines without causing undue fear from common side effects such as mild fevers and serious adverse events that are extremely rare. >> to say that there is no risk in any vaccine would not be truthful. what is the risk of injecting something into someone's arm? the risk is that a certain proportion of people will get swelling and a little bit of pain, lasting from an hour to a day. that is a very acceptable risk. a very, very, very small percentage of people will get an allergic reaction. namely, there's a component of the vaccine that they didn't realize that they were allergic to. and then there's a subset of a very, very, very, very small percentage of those who actually can get a serious reaction. but if you look at that, the risk of that is so minisculely small as to be completely outweighed by the benefit. >> narrator: the cdc's web site tries to convey all these risks accurately even when scientists are not sure the vaccines are in fact responsible. here's what it says about t

fauci? >> mr. chairman, i don't see any immediate legislative issue that would be appropriate at this point, but i think when you asked if i were on the committee, what would i do, i think what you just did today was really a very important thing. that's really very beneficial to this difficult process that we're going through, particularly with the new policy and trying to get it right and implement it right. and the fact that an important committee like this committee with yourself as chair are actually interested in the subject, are looking at us, and we know that we'll come back to you sometime and maybe soon to just give you follow up about how we're progressing on the implementation of this policy. so you've already done something, i think, that's very important and valuable to us because not only here in the united states, but globally people are aware that the united states senate and this committee is interested in this problem. and that adds a degree of seriousness to it which we apprecia