By Zachary Zagger

Law360, New York (May 16, 2014, 5:15 PM EDT) -- With emerging diseases and the spread of scientific cabilities to develop biological weapons, the U.S. Department of Defense must do more to protect troops from these biological threats, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report released Thursday.

The 2001 anthrax attacks on U.S. soil, the potential emerging H5N1 bird flu and H1N1 swine flu pandemics, the spread of Middle East syndrome coronavirus since 2012, and increased capabilities around the world to profliferate biological weapons have made the U.S. vulnerable to biological threats, the GAO report said. While the DOD has improved its coordination with other agencies to design medical countermeasures, it must do a better job of prioritizing these various threats to ensure the billions of dollars in budget funds allocated to develop effective medical countermeasures are being properly spent.

"By not following its directives and regularly updating its biological threat list and priorities, DOD cannot be fully assured that its investments and allocation of resources — and those of its partners — are being applied toward developing these countermeasures to respond to the most serious and likely biological threat agents," the report said.

Between fiscal years 2001 and 2013, the DOD received more than $4.3 billion in total funding to research, develop and make available medical countermeasures that respond to biological threat agents, out of which $3.75 billion was used to develop new medical countermeasures, according to the report.

The DOD's Chemical and Biological Defense Program has obtained U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for medical countermeasures to 10 of 19 identified potential biological threats to troops, according to the report. Also, the DOD is developing more than 40 candidates for countermeasures, 13 of which use technologies that enable them to respond to new emerging or genetically modified biological agents.

However, while the DOD has made progress in researching and developing medical countermeasures and improved coordination with other agencies, particularly with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, the department has not followed its own guidance for annually updating biological threat priorities, the report said.

This has led to times when the list has been updated without input from key stakeholders such as officials from the CBDP Executive Agent and military service officials from the chemical and biological countermeasure community, according to the report.

The GAO recommended that the secretary of defense direct DOD officials to implement a new process to update and validate the biological threat list in accordance with department directives.

"By following DOD guidance for updating its biological threat list or by revising the list development process to reflect its emphasis on capabilities- and risk-based planning, DOD could help ensure that the list remains current and is validated regularly using input from all key stakeholders," the report said. "This, in turn, would help DOD sustain the progress it has made in planning for medical countermeasures against biological threat agents."

In written comments to the GAO on the report, the DOD said that it concurred with the recommendations and would review its procedures.

"The department will review the directives addressing biological warfare threats to ensure they align with current capabilities-based planning processes to reflect a holistic threat-informed, risk-based assessment," the comments said.

--Editing by Elizabeth Bowen.

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