[editor's note, by DemFromCT]Cross-posted to The Next Hurrah, where I will be an occasional contributer. I will also continue to post here and remain a community member.
Bioterrorism is the bogeyman that has been a boon to Bush Administration officials desiring to reshape political and scientific priorities in the medical community. However, since 2000, there are two glaring examples of failure (with scant corresponding successes) to the Bush approach to bioterror.
The NIH has spent effort, time and money creating a complete website and clearinghouse for bioterror. However, the campaign to vaccinate civilians was a failure because of lack of volunteers (the Bush Administration never persuaded civilian medical personnel of the need, and the risks to people, e.g., with skin conditions, or around pregnant women, was small but real (see Smallpox Vaccine Policy Is Bad Science in previous link).
The second failure, of course, was the failure to capture or even identify the source of the anthrax contamination that shut down Congress in 2001, as well as the less than stellar treatment of postal workers during the scare:
Employees at a U.S. postal facility that processed anthrax-laced letters told researchers they failed to get adequate information during the 2001 attacks, several comparing themselves to blacks who were denied treatment during the government's notorious Tuskegee experiments.
A Rand Corp. study released Tuesday found public health officials gave "very little useful information" to employees at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington and to U.S. Senate staff members who might have been exposed to anthrax spores.
Today's WaPo has an article about how scientists feel about the Bush policies:
More than 750 scientists have signed an open letter to National Institutes of Health Director Elias A. Zerhouni saying a funding shift that has directed large amounts of money to study a few microbes considered bioterrorism risks has substantially reduced federal support for research on other microbes that are arguably a greater danger to the public.
The new policy, implemented after the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, has resulted in a 1,500 percent increase in grants to study six microbes that the government has said are prime bioterrorism threats, including those that cause anthrax, plague and tularemia, the scientists state in their letter, to be published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. It was released yesterday.
The contents of the letter (which will be published in Science on March 4) speak for itself:
"The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance represents a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbiological research," the letter said.
"Five people died in the anthrax attacks, but thousands and millions die from malaria and cholera and all kinds of other infectious diseases every year, including many in this country," said Bonnie L. Bassler, a Princeton microbiologist who signed the letter. "There are microbes much worse than anthrax, and in the long run America is going to suffer from these decisions."
Well, America is already at risk from avian flu. Comments from Chemical and Engineering News include this complaint:
Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, Piscataway, N.J., who spearheaded the open letter, tells C&EN that the NIAID decision "is unsupportable on grounds of science; unsupportable on grounds of public health; and, importantly, unsupportable on grounds of biodefense."
He and his fellow signers offer Zerhouni two key policy recommendations. First, broaden the definition to include biodefense-related work on model microorganisms and on other pathogenic organisms. And second, combine the grant review panels for biodefense with those for model microorganisms and related pathogenic organisms to ensure a uniform standard of evaluation and merit.
Sounds like someone complaining about politics interfering with science in the Bush Administration. I'm shocked.