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Guest Commentary: October 8, 2001
The Biological Threat The Honorable John Edwards
Picture in your mind what a biological attack would look like:
There would be no explosion;
There would be no plane crash;
There would be no catastrophic event;
No, a biological attack would be silent -- and could go undetected for hours or even days.
It would show up as a couple of cases of what appeared to be the flu at a hospital on one side of town... then another case at a clinic on the other side of town... and a few more somewhere out in the county.
The most important question would be -- how much time passes between the first case and when we recognize that it's something more serious than the flu.
The only people who will be on the scene to make that determination are: your local emergency room; your family physician; your county public health office, etc.
And today, few -- if any -- of these people has ever seen a case of smallpox or anthrax, for example. They don't know what to look for; they don't know how to recognize the symptoms; they don't know how to react.
We are not adequately prepared.
These people -- who are on the front lines of a potential biological attack – seldom get the training or the equipment they need. And that's we need to focus our attention.
It's not flashy -- it's not high-tech -- but it is one of the keys to addressing the problem of biological attack. ...
Senator [Chuck] Hagel and I introduced legislation which we hope can make a contribution to this debate.
Our bill would... ensure that $555 million (about one-third) of the resources would be provided directly to state and local governments through a new federal block grant.
Many of these resources are supposed to get to the local level now -- but somehow get caught up in Washington and never make it to the field.
Note: The above commentary has been adpated from testimony Sen. Edwards gave at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Subcommittee on Public Health, October 3, 2001.
