A cutting-edge biological terror alert system detected a potential threat in the air one morning back in 2008, threatening to derail then-Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver for his party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Initial results from a pricey national air sampling system suggested that bacteria that could cause tularemia had been detected. The microbe, Francisella tularensis, might have been weaponized to cause the infectious disease.

Public health officials sprang into action and tested further samples from the area that triggered the system, but turned up negative results. The alert, like others issued by the system in the past decade, was ruled to be a false alarm. Obama still made his acceptance speech that night, of course, in an open-air stadium as planned. But the system’s critics say BioWatch has repeatedly triggered an alarm when no threat has existed. Now the program faces the scrutiny of Congress.

BioWatch, an alert system designed to be an early detection system for airborne threats such as anthrax and smallpox, was unveiled in 2003 by President George W. Bush. In his State of the Union address, he talked about the system, saying he was, “deploying the nation’s first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack.” Since then the system has cost $1 billion and been met with mixed reviews. A committee convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council said in a 2011 report no expansion of the program should be made without better collaboration with the existing public health system. The panel also called for further analysis of the program and how it could be used to reduce mortality and morbidity.

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