Looks Harmless
Bite Me
I posted the first page of the below article. It's seven pages long but well worth the read.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/21-days/381901/
21 Days
A biological warfare expert's warning against false comfort in Ebola messaging
James Hamblin Oct 26 2014, 4:30 PM Est
“I want to be pleasant through this whole thing,” California representative Darrell Issa said on Friday, unpleasantly, to a panel of medical experts at a congressional oversight-committee hearing. “But,” he continued, scalding from his perch, “we have the head of CDC—supposed to be the expert—and he’s made statements that simply aren’t true.”
During the tense four-hour session, the subcommittee challenged almost every element of the United States’ response to its domestic Ebola cases so far. Most pointedly, chairman Issa criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s messages to the public.
“Doctor,” Issa said, turning slightly to address assistant secretary of the department of health and human services Nicole Lurie,” You can get Ebola sitting next to someone on a bus if they, in fact, throw up on you, can’t you? That’s reasonable?”
Lurie responded deliberately, after a brief pause, “The way you get Ebola is by exposure to bodily fluids, yes.”
“Okay. So. When the head of the CDC says you can’t get it from somebody on the bus next to you, that’s just not true,” Issa concluded. “When the head of the CDC says we know what we’re doing, but, in fact, health-care professionals wearing what they thought was appropriate protective material get [Ebola], that means he’s wrong. When the head of the CDC goes on television and says sometimes less protection is better, and then has to reverse the protocol so that we no longer have nurses who have their necks exposed, that was just wrong, wasn’t it?”
“Those nurses were not protected,” Deborah Burger, a co-president of National Nurses United, responded.
Even since they were revised (“tightened”) last week, the CDC’s official guidelines for how to safely care for a person with Ebola are hazy with regard to what protective equipment must be used. It has become difficult to distinguish science from politics in the word that has gone out to the public in the wake of the domestic Ebola cases. Democratic messaging tends to be supportive of CDC handling and quelling of outbreak anxieties: If you have not had intimate contact with a person who is severely ill, you have no cause for concern. The quintessential Republican message, meanwhile, is one of mishandling and incompetence: Readily transmissible, even “airborne” Ebola virus is a legitimate concern. And, with that, obviously, comes fear. But it is not only Republican politicians who are baldly criticizing the American response to the outbreak and inconsistent public messaging.
This week I received a "monograph" for review from an unlikely, politically removed scientist. It was plainly titled "Summary of Ebola Virus Disease," and written in exhaustive scientific detail. The author was Dr. Steven Hatfill.
If the name rings a bell—I don’t want to dwell on this, but it's germane to the context of his perspective I'm sharing here—it’s because he was very publicly, very falsely accused of killing several people with anthrax in 2001.
"Leading health authorities have made far over-reaching statements and assumptions that are not fully supported by scientific literature.”
Hatfill is rightly wary of the media that overwhelmingly convicted him in the court of public opinion, driving him to despair before his acquittal and much less-publicized redemption. But not as wary as he is of his knowledge and perspective on the Ebola outbreak going unheard. His 11,000-word textbook-like research review made several points that are contrary to the mainstream public messaging about Ebola transmission. As he wrote in an accompanying lay explanation: “The initial response to the outbreak of Ebola in the United States has been badly designed, and poorly and incompetently implemented. In their effort to minimize public concern or even panic, the leading health authorities of the United States have made far over-reaching statements and assumptions that are not fully supported by the existing scientific literature.”
For one objection, Hatfill wants it known that, while it must be emphasized that airborne droplet and particle transmission between humans has not been evident in this outbreak, aerosol droplet transmission of Ebola virus has been shown in animal studies. “It is therefore irresponsible for government health officials to emphatically state that aerosol transmission does not occur,” he writes. He also believes the argument against a national quarantine is “inexcusable in light of the size of the current West African epidemic.”
Hatfill’s concerns are backed by some compelling evidence and the clout of a long, storied career. It was actually his unique expertise in biomedical warfare—his extensive experience studying the world’s deadliest infectious agents—that led to his implication in the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks. His training was in military special operations and tropical pathology, and after serving as an overwinter physician in Antarctica, he obtained master’s degrees in microbial genetics, medical biochemistry, and hematological pathology, including postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford University, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Research Council, in addition to over 15 years of clinical work in Africa.
In the wake of 9/11, attorney general John Ashcroft made a rare move in publicly naming Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the investigation that desperately demanded a lead. Five people were dead and 17 sickened by anthrax sent via U.S. mail during an unprecedented crisis of confidence in domestic security. As writer David Freed recounted the story in our magazine in 2010, it was the only time an attorney general ever gave a person that designation during an active criminal investigation. The FBI trailed Hatfill everywhere he went for more than a year. Members of the media widely condemned him. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times even implored the FBI to dig deeper on Hatfill in 2002, making outlandish accusations: “Have you examined whether [Hatfill] has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978–80?”
Page 1 of 7
Looks Harmless
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/21-days/381901/
21 Days
A biological warfare expert's warning against false comfort in Ebola messaging
James Hamblin Oct 26 2014, 4:30 PM Est
“I want to be pleasant through this whole thing,” California representative Darrell Issa said on Friday, unpleasantly, to a panel of medical experts at a congressional oversight-committee hearing. “But,” he continued, scalding from his perch, “we have the head of CDC—supposed to be the expert—and he’s made statements that simply aren’t true.”
During the tense four-hour session, the subcommittee challenged almost every element of the United States’ response to its domestic Ebola cases so far. Most pointedly, chairman Issa criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s messages to the public.
“Doctor,” Issa said, turning slightly to address assistant secretary of the department of health and human services Nicole Lurie,” You can get Ebola sitting next to someone on a bus if they, in fact, throw up on you, can’t you? That’s reasonable?”
Lurie responded deliberately, after a brief pause, “The way you get Ebola is by exposure to bodily fluids, yes.”
“Okay. So. When the head of the CDC says you can’t get it from somebody on the bus next to you, that’s just not true,” Issa concluded. “When the head of the CDC says we know what we’re doing, but, in fact, health-care professionals wearing what they thought was appropriate protective material get [Ebola], that means he’s wrong. When the head of the CDC goes on television and says sometimes less protection is better, and then has to reverse the protocol so that we no longer have nurses who have their necks exposed, that was just wrong, wasn’t it?”
“Those nurses were not protected,” Deborah Burger, a co-president of National Nurses United, responded.
Even since they were revised (“tightened”) last week, the CDC’s official guidelines for how to safely care for a person with Ebola are hazy with regard to what protective equipment must be used. It has become difficult to distinguish science from politics in the word that has gone out to the public in the wake of the domestic Ebola cases. Democratic messaging tends to be supportive of CDC handling and quelling of outbreak anxieties: If you have not had intimate contact with a person who is severely ill, you have no cause for concern. The quintessential Republican message, meanwhile, is one of mishandling and incompetence: Readily transmissible, even “airborne” Ebola virus is a legitimate concern. And, with that, obviously, comes fear. But it is not only Republican politicians who are baldly criticizing the American response to the outbreak and inconsistent public messaging.
This week I received a "monograph" for review from an unlikely, politically removed scientist. It was plainly titled "Summary of Ebola Virus Disease," and written in exhaustive scientific detail. The author was Dr. Steven Hatfill.
If the name rings a bell—I don’t want to dwell on this, but it's germane to the context of his perspective I'm sharing here—it’s because he was very publicly, very falsely accused of killing several people with anthrax in 2001.
"Leading health authorities have made far over-reaching statements and assumptions that are not fully supported by scientific literature.”
Hatfill is rightly wary of the media that overwhelmingly convicted him in the court of public opinion, driving him to despair before his acquittal and much less-publicized redemption. But not as wary as he is of his knowledge and perspective on the Ebola outbreak going unheard. His 11,000-word textbook-like research review made several points that are contrary to the mainstream public messaging about Ebola transmission. As he wrote in an accompanying lay explanation: “The initial response to the outbreak of Ebola in the United States has been badly designed, and poorly and incompetently implemented. In their effort to minimize public concern or even panic, the leading health authorities of the United States have made far over-reaching statements and assumptions that are not fully supported by the existing scientific literature.”
For one objection, Hatfill wants it known that, while it must be emphasized that airborne droplet and particle transmission between humans has not been evident in this outbreak, aerosol droplet transmission of Ebola virus has been shown in animal studies. “It is therefore irresponsible for government health officials to emphatically state that aerosol transmission does not occur,” he writes. He also believes the argument against a national quarantine is “inexcusable in light of the size of the current West African epidemic.”
Hatfill’s concerns are backed by some compelling evidence and the clout of a long, storied career. It was actually his unique expertise in biomedical warfare—his extensive experience studying the world’s deadliest infectious agents—that led to his implication in the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks. His training was in military special operations and tropical pathology, and after serving as an overwinter physician in Antarctica, he obtained master’s degrees in microbial genetics, medical biochemistry, and hematological pathology, including postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford University, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Research Council, in addition to over 15 years of clinical work in Africa.
In the wake of 9/11, attorney general John Ashcroft made a rare move in publicly naming Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the investigation that desperately demanded a lead. Five people were dead and 17 sickened by anthrax sent via U.S. mail during an unprecedented crisis of confidence in domestic security. As writer David Freed recounted the story in our magazine in 2010, it was the only time an attorney general ever gave a person that designation during an active criminal investigation. The FBI trailed Hatfill everywhere he went for more than a year. Members of the media widely condemned him. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times even implored the FBI to dig deeper on Hatfill in 2002, making outlandish accusations: “Have you examined whether [Hatfill] has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978–80?”
Page 1 of 7
Looks Harmless