Research
Biological Warfare
United States Ill-Equipped To Face Bioterrorists, Hopkins
Expert Warns
 03-01-1999
- D.A. Henderson, M.D., one of the nation's leading
authorities on threats to the public's health and the
man credited with the success of the smallpox eradication
project a quarter century ago, says the virus is once again
a threat to the United States and the world -- this time
as a weapon of bioterrorists.
Writing in the Feb. 26 issue of Science, Henderson, the
director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense
Studies and former dean of the Hopkins School of Public
Health, says recent disclosures of a massive bioweapons
industry in the former Soviet Union, a smaller but equally
disconcerting Iraqi program, and expanding bioweapons research
in 10 other countries should focus particular attention
on U.S. cities as targets for bioweapons.
While planning by the military and intelligence communities
to predict and forestall biological weapons attacks has
been under way, such efforts have generally excluded the
front line and "first responders" -- namely physicians,
hospitals and public health workers. They, too, Henderson
says, are ill-prepared to deal with anthrax and smallpox,
identified by experts as the top two bioweapon threats.
|
|
"There
are three kinds of weapons of mass destruction," Henderson
notes, "nuclear, chemical and biological. The biological weapons
are most feared, but the country is least equipped to deal with
them."
In his Science report, Henderson calls on the private sector,
and on federal, state and local governments and medical and public
health authorities to provide resources for training emergency
room doctors and nurses to recognize symptoms caused by biological
weapons; to improve diagnostic techniques; to develop, produce
and stockpile improved vaccines and treatments; to rebuild the
infrastructure of public health agencies and to develop communications
and health care delivery guidelines specifically related to biological
terrorism.
Unlike a chemical attack, the release of a bioweapon would be
invisible, silent, odorless and "almost certainly" undetected,
writes Henderson. But in a few days or a week, patients would
appear in emergency rooms and doctor's offices with rarely
or never-before-seen symptoms. Without any experience dealing
with smallpox, eradicated in the late 1970s, or any other possible
bioweapon, doctors may not realize the extent of the problem until
lives are unnecessarily lost.
"Just
as in the 1980s the medical community rallied to educate policy
makers about the dread reality of a nuclear winter, the same needs
to be done for the remote -- but real -- threat biological weapons
pose," says Henderson.
Henderson's Science report follows a conference held Feb.
16-17 to grapple with these issues. Nearly a thousand doctors,
public health workers, military officers and policy makers attended.
The conference was presented by the Hopkins Center for Civilian
Biodefense Studies and co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, the Infectious Diseases Society of
America and the American Society for Microbiology.
Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies Web site,
which features a full Netcast of the Feb. 16-17 conference: www.hopkins-biodefense.org/.
Note:
This story has been adapted from a news release on bioweapons
issued by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions for journalists and
other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part
of this story on bioweapons, please credit Johns Hopkins Medical
Institutions as the original source. This article was taken from
Science Daily, www.sciencedaily.com.
Next
- Back
to Biological Warfare Research
