If taxpayers are slow to recognize that billions of their tax dollars are being poured into hundreds of biological cesspools, some scientific bodies are not. According to the nonprofit Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (CAC) in Washington, DC, in 2001 the U.S. government spent $1.6 billion to address the threat of biological weapons. By 2006 total spending had reached $36 billion, with a record $8 billion more earmarked for FY 2007. As noted, one of the leading agencies allocating such funds is the NIH, billed as "the steward of medical and behavioral research for the Nation." Two years ago, the growing slice of the NIH budget being shifted to biodefense research--money that has traditionally gone to fighting diseases such as cancer--prompted 750 of the 1,143 NIH-funded scientists studying bacterial diseases to write an open letter to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni charging that the research center's emphasis on biodefense had diminished their efforts to achieve basic research breakthroughs

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