UPMC Center for Biosecurity/Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/center/newsroom/index.html http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/bioprep/news/sep2203hopkins.ed.html This group has earned an international reputation for its biodefense work. Faculty from the Center published the definitive papers on public health and medical management of the six major bioweapons-related diseases in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). They also convened the first two national conferences on bioterrorism for medical and public health professionals and the highly regarded and influential Dark Winter exercise, a fictional scenario depicting a covert smallpox attack in the United States. They founded and edit the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to biodefense. Through their work with congressional and administration leadership, state governments and academic and scientific organizations, the Center’s faculty played a major role in increasing federal funding for bioterrorism from $8 million in 1998 to $4.5 billion in 2003.
"Walking a fine line between informing the public and trying to avoid panic, state and local health officials have asked doctors throughout New York to be on the lookout for any unusual symptoms or clusters of diseases that could be linked to bioterrorism."
Beyond "Fortress America" National Security Controls on Science and Technology in a Globalized World, 2009 NAP: global cooperation and national security with that http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12567
Mother Nature as bioterrorist LAT 2004 http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=709262881&sid=17&Fmt=7&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD It's enough to make one wish: If only Al Qaeda, rather than Mother Nature, were the one threatening us with influenza. And what a shame that when it comes to biological threats, the human immune system, unlike U.S. policymakers, doesn't make such distinctions.
"But the potential loss of life should terrorists find a way to distribute infectious diseases in crowded cities is reason enough to go ahead with a national reportable disease law. Senator Chuck Hagel and Representative Lee Terry, both Republicans of Nebraska, plan to introduce legislation that would establish a list of infectious diseases like avian influenza that states must report to the Department of Homeland Security and create a commission that would set guidelines for collecting and reporting such information, including rules on protecting patient privacy."
"Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is developing a similar -- but national -- electronic surveillance system called BioSense that is designed to help health officials spot an outbreak soon after infected people show up at emergency rooms. By the end of the year, BioSense is expected to link 250 hospitals in more than 30 cities to servers at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters. CDC officials will look at disease patterns in several major metropolitan areas at once. State and local health officials will be able to tap into the system to review data collected on symptoms and diagnoses of illnesses in their area."
"That means that public health officials investigating, for example, a flu outbreak in poultry or in humans in a remote Asian or African village will be able to decide quickly whether to kill thousands of birds or to treat hundreds of potentially exposed people with expensive antiviral drugs."
The federal government recognizes the importance of surveillance for infectious diseases that may represent a bioterrorist attack and has created programs to collect data without involving local or state government health officials. But unfortunately, it has done so without any legislative guidelines on how this data is to be collected or used.
Like Dr. Shanley, physicians specializing in infectious diseases have been working to educate residents on the virus, hoping that they can forestall a panic.
On Monday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman proposed a bill in Congress to establish a domestic and global network for avian flu surveillance among wild birds, creating a database for sharing information and pinpointing any mutations in flu. Calling it the Global Network for Avian Influenza Surveillance Act, Senator Lieberman proposed that $10 million be given annually for five years to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the project.
Persons familiar with the planning cautioned that many of the investments in vaccines will take years to complete. Given the heightened concern, the plan emphasizes surveillance and containment of the disease, both overseas and in the U.S.
Expanding an old weapon in the struggle against infectious disease, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened 10 new quarantine stations at major ports of entry in the past 18 months and plans to add several more in the coming year.
Long-nurtured fears of big government -- traditionally equated with godless socialism -- have already blocked the creation of a national healthcare system capable of combating a pandemic.
The vexing parallels between the current administration's approach to national health care (''The Perplexing Pandemic Flu Plan,'' editorial, Nov. 20), the war in Iraq, homeland security and...
"Pandemic viruses aren't the only threat. Drug-resistant bacteria and terrorist attacks spreading anthrax, smallpox or other deadly substances are also big worries in Washington. The emerging consensus: Private drug makers have to be encouraged to produce more medicines protecting public health -- even as critics of the pharmaceutical industry are wary of handing it too many incentives.
''Any number of known and unknown viruses for which at present there is neither immunization nor cure are at this moment cooking in Asia and Africa, where they arise in hotbeds of densely intermingled human and animal populations,'' said Dr. Frist
To counter the scary stories, Mr. Lobb pointedly calls the disease the "Asian bird flu," with the emphasis on Asian. He notes that the government is testing tens of thousands of wild birds to try to get an early warning of the virus's arrival in the U.S.
To head off a global pandemic of avian flu, some scientists are advancing a novel strategy: that poultry workers and farmers in Asia get the same vaccine that Americans and Europeans are given to protect against conventional flu.
…The goal, these virologists say, is to keep the Asians from becoming ''mixing vessels'' for human and bird strains.
"Also, experts said, the task is likely to be overwhelming, because the Chinese eat about 14 billion chickens a year, so mass vaccinations would have to be repeated again and again, while the risk of the disease being reintroduced by migratory birds, in which it is now endemic, would be constant."
In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examine the role of gender and race in conceptions of infectious disease in the context of this era’s heightened attention to “national security”. In the U.S., growing concern over the rise in infectious diseases accelerated rapidly with the post-9/11 focus on “biological threats”—infectious diseases and potential biological warfare agents such as anthrax, smallpox, SARS and flu.Through textual analysis of mass media, law, science journals, and internet blogs, I focus on the ways in which “biological threats” have been imbricated with newly formed U.S. “biosecurity” measures that rely on women as health guardians of the nation against infectious disease threats represented as emanating largely from transnational Middle Eastern male (bio)terrorists and diseased Asian Others. I illustrate the role that these representations have played not only in generating media-driven scares in the U.S., but also in shaping the contours of post-9/11 U.S. Empire and nationhood.
Drawing heavily on feminist theory, theories of Empire, and cultural studies, my dissertation project contributes to an understanding of racialized geographies of disease and gendered economies of health. The processes of racialization and gendering occurring in the less visibly impacted realms of biomedicine and public health are in fact formative in shaping post-9/11 U.S. racial and national politics. In biomedicine, where funding has been diverted towards the dangerous arena of research and development of biological weapons, biosecurity measures have come to rely on laboratory safety policies based on excluding a stereotyped Middle Eastern bioterrorist.In public health, biosecurity measures focus on containing disease in the Orientalized locales of China and Asia.Women have been variously implicated in the defense against these racialized biological threats, both in their actual roles as front-line health care providers and as symbol of a white nation under siege by these transnational "Oriental" Others.Thus, my research shows that the discourse of “biological threats” intertwines with existing racist and sexist notions (Middle Eastern terrorists, disease-ridden Chinese and Asians, women as symbols of national purity and caretakers of national health) to produce a type of “microbial citizenship”, where national belonging is dependent on perceptions of one’s status as potential health-security risk.My research was funded by the UCLA Institute of American Cultures.
In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examine the role of gender and race in conceptions of infectious disease in the context of this era’s heightened attention to “national security”. In the U.S., growing concern over the rise in infectious diseases accelerated rapidly with the post-9/11 focus on “biological threats”—infectious diseases and potential biological warfare agents such as anthrax, smallpox, SARS and flu. Through textual analysis of mass media, law, science journals, and internet blogs, I focus on the ways in which “biological threats” have been imbricated with newly formed U.S. “biosecurity” measures that rely on women as health guardians of the nation against infectious disease threats represented as emanating largely from transnational Middle Eastern male (bio)terrorists and diseased Asian Others. I illustrate the role that these representations have played not only in generating media-driven scares in the U.S., but also in shaping the contours of post-9/11 U.S. Empire and nationhood. Drawing heavily on transnational feminist theory, postcolonial theories of Empire, and cultural studies of science and medicine, my dissertation project contributes to an understanding of racialized geographies of disease and gendered economies of health.
