Kennedy Urges Effective Action to Prepare for Potential Biological Attack

New legislation signed into law earlier this month by President
Clinton aims at boosting the ability of the U.S. public health network
to cope with the growing threat of potentially devastating terrorist
attacks with biological weapons.

Senator Edward Kennedy, who is co-author - with Senator Bill Frist
(Republican, Tennessee) - of the Public Health Threats and
Emergencies Act, said November 29 that he is hopeful that the new law
"will begin to give the nation's dedicated medical and public health
professionals the support they need for effective defenses against
bioterrorism."

Terming biological weapons "the ultimate in stealth technology,"
Kennedy observed that a bioterrorist attack would produce "no sudden
explosion or flash of light to announce that a terrorist attack has
taken place." Rather, he said, "a bioterrorist attack could announce
itself slowly and quietly, when patients begin to arrive at hospitals
and clinics with symptoms as seemingly innocuous as mild fever,
headaches or muscle pains."

"In the wake of a bioterrorist attack, medical professionals will have
to act quickly to recognize the signs and symptoms of exposure to a
biological weapon," Kennedy continued. "Hospitals and public health
laboratories will need to identify the pathogens used in the attack.
Public health agencies must monitor the disease outbreak and mobilize
the medical resources to contain it. The special skills of federal
health agencies must be ready to supplement state and local efforts."

Kennedy said funds under the new law can be used to add needed
equipment and train personnel. On that latter point, he cited a recent
study showing that "more than 90 percent of the doctors in some
hospitals had received no training in recognizing the symptoms of
exposure to a biological weapon - and over 60 percent did not even
know where to report such symptoms if they were detected."

The senator said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
(CDC) own facilities "are in an alarming state of disrepair,"
compromising that agency's vital role in minimizing the damage from a
potential terrorist attack. For example, he said, "Some of the world's
most dangerous microbes are kept in buildings with less security than
a county courthouse."

The new law, he said, "authorizes an extensive modernization and
security upgrade of CDC's laboratories, so that its scientists can
work in secure facilities with state of the art equipment." He called
on Congress to provide full funding to make sure that the law's
provisions are translated into effective action.

Kennedy made his comments in a speech, delivered by telephone from
Boston, at the Second National Symposium on Bioterrorism, held in
Washington under the sponsorship of the Johns Hopkins Center for
Civilian Biodefense Studies, the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The Massachusetts Democrat's strongly worded concerns were right in
line with the thrust of presentations at the two-day conference by
public health and medical officials, research scientists, law
enforcement officials and national security experts - many of whom
warned that the United States is simply not ready to deal with what is
a very real and grave terrorist threat.

Speaking earlier, an expert in defense preparedness at Harvard
University told the conferees that "U.S. biodefense is disorganized
and excessively fragmented," leaving it unclear who would be in charge
in the wake of such a terrorist attack.

George Poste, chief executive officer of Health Technology Networks, a
consulting group based in Scottsdale, Arizona, advised his audience to
"be paranoid," flatly warning them that "we are vulnerable."

And Dr. Jeff Koplan, head of the CDC, said that, despite new infusions
of federal dollars, "we are barely getting started" in dealing with
the potential problem. Koplan observed that efforts are accelerating
to improve monitoring efforts, develop tests to detect deadly agents,
and set up laboratories capable of rapid response when threatening
specimens show up.