Word: thompson
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...Tommy Thompson has his own war room now--though the low-key Health Secretary prefers to think of it as a mere operations center. Whatever it's called, it's a conference room across from his office humming with computers, printers, fax machines and televisions and tended by a team of round-the-clock staff members. It has the look of a place where a war is being waged--just not necessarily one that's being...
...most measures, the early performance of the federal department in charge of protecting the nation's health in the face of its first bioterrorism attack was not reassuring, mostly because Thompson, the former Governor of Wisconsin, has sometimes seemed utterly overtaken by events. His early statements that the government was prepared to deal with any biological emergency never squared with the facts. In a conversation with TIME, he admitted that his new position was nothing like what he had imagined it would be. "When I was asked to take this job," he says, "I never expected I was going...
...that's what Thompson's job has become, and the confusing and sometimes conflicting information coming out of Washington has caused some who remember the avuncular and authoritative former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop to wince. "There has been a breakdown in the public-diplomacy aspect of [the bioterrorism] issue," says Elisa Harris, a veteran of the Clinton Administration's National Security Council. "What's needed is a constant, calming presence...
...Thompson hasn't always been good, however, this time around he's been lucky. The anthrax scare has been a decidedly small one, with only eight infections so far and all but one caught in time. And while HHS, an amalgam of a dozen divisions that deals with everything from aging to drugs, has never been the smoothest-running machine in Washington, so far it has effectively mobilized its resources and overseen the testing of thousands and the treatment of all who have needed it. The small scale has also let Thompson maintain that we have enough antibiotics to handle...
...disastrous in a bigger emergency. In that sense, the current, manageable alarm may actually serve as a sort of bureaucratic vaccine, exposing the government to a low dose of what a real bioterror attack is like so that it can fortify itself against a bigger hit later. If so, Thompson's department, which seems so unsure of itself now, will have to gain its footing in a hurry. Says Democratic Congressman Sherrod Brown of Ohio: "This should serve as a call to action...