Word: anthrax
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...stay that way and reminding them that in the meantime there was no reason to fear the sick. Thompson and Ridge, national doctors without a medical degree between them, have been no match for that kind of performance. Even Satcher has not achieved the same iconic status. During the anthrax attacks, says Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, chief of the CDC, "we found ourselves deploying more and more people just to work on communication issues...
...what to do when patients turn up in their waiting rooms. If HHS, the CDC and other government agencies are jostling one another on the podium, the message is often mixed. And when you toss in the local police and the FBI--as was the case with anthrax--that mixed message turns to gibberish. During the hantavirus outbreak of 1993, the government handled the problem well, with Dr. C.J. Peters, then chief of special pathogens at the CDC, taking the lead in answering questions, even though the HHS Secretary was technically the senior health authority working on the problem...
...seeing to it that that person is the only one who takes the mike during emergencies--is upgrading the public-health system's surveillance powers. The ability to spot new disease outbreaks, diagnose them properly and get word out on the medical wires is central to managing crises like anthrax as well as more routine problems like Lyme disease, tuberculosis and the flu. Emergency rooms often perform this function in an ad hoc way; the emergence of West Nile virus in New York City was first detected by a hospital physician who was suspicious of two cases of encephalitis among...
Cipro was just another antibiotic used mostly for treating stubborn infections when it was catapulted to pharmaceutical stardom by the anthrax attacks. Cipro, it turned out, was the only antibiotic specifically approved by the FDA to treat anthrax, and suddenly it was the hottest drug in town. Doctors were besieged by patients demanding prescriptions "just in case," and pharmacies, particularly in New York, Washington and Florida, couldn't keep up. Other antibiotics, including doxycycline and that old standby penicillin, are just as effective against the particular strain that was showing up in tainted letters, and a few weeks later, when...
...mild symptoms in rodents into a virulent killer that wiped out all their lab mice in less than 10 days. Alarms were sounded, not over the prospect of mouse plague but out of concern that rogue scientists might use the technique to create human pathogens even more lethal than anthrax or smallpox...