ACCELERATED COUNTERMEASURE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.

SEC. 125. ACCELERATED COUNTERMEASURE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. Section 319F(h) of the Public Health Service Act, as redesignated by section 104(a)(2) of this Act, is amended to read as follows: “(h) Accelerated Research and Development on Priority Pathogens and Countermeasures.— “(1) In general.—With respect to pathogens of potential use in a bioterrorist attack, and other agents that may cause a public health emergency, the Secretary, taking into consideration any recommendations of the working group under subsection (a), shall conduct, and award grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements for, research, investigations, experiments, demonstrations, and studies in the health sciences relating to— “(A) the epidemiology and pathogenesis of such pathogens; “(B) the sequencing of the genomes, or other DNA analysis, or other comparative analysis, of priority pathogens (as determined by the Director of the National Institutes of Health in consultation with the working group established in subsection (a)), in collaboration and coordination with the activities of the Department of Defense and the Joint Genome Institute of the Department of Energy; “(C) the development of priority countermeasures; and “(D) other relevant areas of research; with consideration given to the needs of children and other vulnerable populations. “(2) Priority.—The Secretary shall give priority under this section to the funding of research and other studies related to priority countermeasures. “(3) Role of department of veterans affairs.—In carrying out paragraph (1), the Secretary shall consider using the biomedical research and development capabilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in conjunction with that Department’s affiliations with health-professions universities. When advantageous to the Government in furtherance of the purposes of such paragraph, the Secretary may enter into cooperative agreements with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to achieve such purposes.116 STAT. 615 “(4) Priority countermeasures.—For purposes of this section, the term ‘priority countermeasure’ means a drug, biological product, device, vaccine, vaccine adjuvant, antiviral, or diagnostic test that the Secretary determines to be— “(A) a priority to treat, identify, or prevent infection by a biological agent or toxin listed pursuant to section 351A(a)(1), or harm from any other agent that may cause a public health emergency; or “(B) a priority to diagnose conditions that may result in adverse health consequences or death and may be caused by the administering of a drug, biological product, device, vaccine, vaccine adjuvant, antiviral, or diagnostic test that is a priority under subparagraph (A).”.