Scientific advances have increased the threat of a bioterror attack, according to panelists who testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

"The potency and accessibility of these weapons...will increase as the bioscience revolution proceeds," said Tara O'Toole, the Homeland Security Department's under secretary for science and technology. "In the 1990s, it took a decade and a billion dollars to decode the human genome. We could now do that for a thousands dollars in about a week."

"This progress is happening globally," she added.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs Alexander Garza agreed, saying that the curve for biotechnology is "much steeper than Moore's law," the dictum that computing power doubles roughly every 2 years.

Panelists also made a point of highlighting progress since the anthrax attacks 10 years ago.

O'Toole recalled the instances of confusion and alarm over suspicious powdered substances in the wake of those attacks. She said that since then, more effective and efficient tools for testing substances have been deployed.

Additionally, Nicole Lurie, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Health and Human Services Department, said the various agencies involved in preparing for a bioterror attack are well coordinated.

"Because we work so closely together now day-to-day on all of these other issues," such as the H1N1 pandemic and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, "it's not like you've needed to corral people to sit them down at the table and make them talk to each other, because we do that all the time."

For more:
- go to the hearing page to watch the webcast and read testimony

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