n light of recent global events, the threat of international terrorist activity has not only risen to a new height in terms of the sheer volume of attacks, but has also taken on a more insidious quality. As countermeasures have been improved to address the threat of the more overt physical methods usually employed by terrorist groups, such as bombings and hostage-taking, they have begun to shift to the more subtle and deadly approach of employing biologically harmful agents as their weapons in what they perceive as a war.
To defend against this rising threat, the United States government has begun a program of giving research grants to various private firms which will seek to find countermeasures against biological weapons and end the threat of bioterrorism
To date, the estimated budget being allocated by the government for anti-terrorism grants is over 11 billion dollars. Several firms have already won part of these research grants, and more and more applicants are entering the field in an attempt to provide solutions for what is rapidly becoming a national threat.
The projects that have been so far successfully endorsed include antidotes to various known biological agents, usually meant to counteract the toxins even at a near-fatal level of exposure. Aside from the antidotes, which are meant to be taken by an inflicted person on an individual basis, more far-spanning research currently being undertaken includes airborne and waterborne neutralizing agents meant to counteract biologically engineered viruses which may be intoduced to a city's water supply or even into the atmosphere. These types of countermeasures are not remedies for those already inflicted, but are meant instead to stem the viruses before they can actually affect people. Another type of countermeasure that is rapidly gaining ground in the research fields is the attempt to create a medicine that, when taken, will permanently strengthen the overall immune system of the body of the recipient, increasing the chances of resisting or even altogether neutralizing a harmful virus. The reason for the increase in popularity of this particular research field is that such a medicine is beneficient to it's recipient not only in preventing a biological weapon's effects, but against sickness and disease in general.
Lastly, a relatively minor but nonetheless important area where the government is allocating a budget for bioterrorism grants involves the use of international private investigative and law enforcement firms to try and pinpoint the actual physical locations of the terrorists themselves as well as that of the storage and manufacturing facilities they are using to generate these weapons. | | Author Info: David is the owner of Government Grants Made Easy, A website devoted to help the average person get grants. |
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