The highest priority of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is the development of countermeasures against bioterrorism agents that are highly infectious when dispersed in aerosol form. However, the development of drugs to prevent or treat illnesses caused by bioterrorism agents requires that their effectiveness be tested in animals because human clinical trials would be unethical. At the request of NIAID, the National Research Council conducted a study of appropriate testing in animals. The report provides recommendations to researchers on selecting animal models, aerosol generators, and doses of bioterrorism agents to closely mimic disease processes in humans. It also urges researchers to fully document experimental parameters in the literature so that studies can be reproduced and compared. The report recommends that all unclassified data on studies of bioterrorism agents--including unclassified, unpublished data from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)--be published in the open literature. The report also calls on the Food and Drug Administration to improve the process by which bioterrorism countermeasures are approved based on the results of animal studies.
http://www.nae.edu/19582/Reports/25541.aspx?layoutChange=Normal
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