Tennessee U.S. Sen. Blackburn touts Huntsville’s HudsonAlpha, Redstone Arsenal roles in bringing pharmaceutical manufacturing back to U.S.

One of the vulnerabilities exposed by the outbreak of the COVID-19/coronavirus is how dependent the United States is on China for certain manufactured goods, including pharmaceuticals.

With the United States facing a health crisis, efforts are afoot to bring aspects of manufacturing back to the United States from China, and part of that includes two Huntsville institutions, HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal.

During an appearance on Huntsville radio’s WVNN, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) explained her legislative proposal to make such a transition possible and mentioned HudsonAlpha and Redstone Arsenal by name.

The Tennessee Republican U.S. Senator argued the manufacturing issue should be considered from a national security perspective.

“[M]y legislation says let’s look at this from a national security issue,” she said. “Let’s look at it from a manufacturing issue. Let’s incentivize our colleges and universities to work with pharmaceutical companies, and to establish these protocols that say we can bring this back. We can bring that back. We can find better ways to do just-in-time manufacturing. We can develop new manufacturing capabilities.”

“And you know, there in Huntsville, you have the HudsonAlpha Institute,” Blackburn continued. “And they are a tremendous, tremendous research facility and have done an unbelievable amount of work — both there with the active pharmaceutical industry. They have partnered with Life Sciences, with Vanderbilt University, and with the Life Sciences Center here in Franklin, TN.”

“You also have over at Redstone, DoD — some of the contract work that is being done there,” she continued. “Some of that gets into medical isotopes, and they partner up with some of the work that is being done at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. So, our region of the country is very active in this type of research and very active in teaming up.”

Blackburn said her proposal would bolster these efforts underway in the region.

“My legislation says let’s give this a shot in the arm,” she added. “And let these smart minds that know what we need have the ability to set those protocols and those benchmarks. And then let’s just go ahead and determine that we’re going to be smart about this, and we’re never going to get ourselves in this situation again.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.