Responding to service members' complaints of program insensitivity to adverse health effects, inadequate medical record-keeping, & heavy-handed program operation, the Committee initiated an oversight investigation into the design & implementation of the DoD force-wide, mandatory Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program. The Committee measured the program against this standard: any expanded use of the same vaccine should be undertaken only with the greatest care & only to the extent necessary. As currently designed & implemented, the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program fails on both counts. The Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program lacks a consistent standard of care & is designed to reach far beyond those at risk.

In recent years, substantial efforts have been initiated to develop new drugs, vaccines, and other medical interventions against biological agents that could be used in bioterrorist attacks against civilian populations. According to a new congressionally mandated report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council of the National Academies, to successfully develop these drugs, vaccines, and other medical interventions against biowarfare agents, Congress should authorize the creation of a new agency within the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense. The committee recommended that Congress should improve liability protections for those who develop and manufacture these products, to stimulate willingness to invest in new research and development for biowarfare protection. Giving Full Measure to Countermeasures also identifies other challengesâ€"such as the need for appropriate animal models and laboratories equipped with high-level biosafety protectionsâ€"that will require attention if DoD efforts to develop new medical countermeasures are to be successful.

This collection of essays is a current and comprehensive review of what scientists and scholars know about WMD terrorism and America's options for confronting it. Complete with mathematical methods for analyzing terrorist threats and allocating defense resources, this multidisciplinary perspective addresses all forms and defenses of WMD, and the role of domestic U.S. politics in shaping defense investments and policies. Also identified are multiple instances in which the conventional wisdom is incomplete or misleading.