Infectious Diseases

WASHINGTON - The government is likely to be overwhelmed in the event of a bioterrorism attack because of serious shortages in skilled medical and scientific personnel, according to a study by a public service advocacy group. "Perhaps more than any other terrorist threat, bioterrorism will place huge burdens on small pools of medical, scientific and technical expertise," the study concluded. "These organizations are already exhibiting hairline cracks - some would say fractures - that may presage disaster."

IN 1993, physically fit Navaho Indians began dying from mysterious cases of an illness resembling pneumonia or flu. With the help of Navaho medicine men, health authorities were able to pin the blame on a rural deer mouse native to most of North America. In an article on the resurgence of infectious diseases around the world, Anne Platt, a research associate at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., calls for more awareness of the connections between disease and disruptions in the environment:"When we begin routinely to take health impacts of our industries and societies into account, the outbreaks of disease that now shock us won't seem so puzzling.

Peter H. Duesberg is an accomplished Berkeley virologist who has challenged the concept that HIV causes AIDS. He is a respected scientist, but now seems willing to sacrifice his integrity among peers to become the darling of an anti-cult determined to dispute a substantive scientific fact.He has been doing this since 1987 and has achieved substantial media hype as well as a small gathering of followers including an occasional Nobel laureate. Among scientists and physicians in the field of HIV, his views were at one time considered provocative, but now are generally viewed as antiquated at best, and dangerously irresponsible at worst.

In The Region Aether's president quits in move tied to sale of division George M. Davis, president and vice chairman of Aether Systems Inc., stepped down yesterday from the Owings Mills wireless data communications services company and resigned as a board member. In light of the recent sale of Aether's Enterprise Mobility Solutions Division to TeleCommunication Systems Inc. of Annapolis, Davis and Aether management decided that the "time was right for him to pursue new opportunities and challenges," according to a company statement.

The debate over confirmation of Dr. Joycelyn Elders as surgeongeneral speaks volumes about the evolution of that office and its position in the contemporary health establishment. Only in recent times, shorn of most of its original administrative functions, has the office emerged as "First Doctor" to the nation and vocal advocate for health reform.The surgeon general, usually a three-star commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, is the lineal descendant of the "Supervising Surgeon" of the "Marine Hospital Service."

FREDERICK -- A few weeks ago their world was all bioterror. They were fighting smallpox and other infectious diseases that could threaten U.S. troops. Today, the Army's top scientists may also be the best hope in the fight against an enemy that no one expected -- the deadly virus responsible for SARS. "When the fire bell rings, you go down the pole. It's the right thing. It's a clear public health emergency," says Peter B. Jahrling, principal scientific adviser at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine is competing for federal money to build a $200 million high-security laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground to conduct bioterrorism research and treat victims of any future attack, officials said yesterday. The proposed National Biocontainment Laboratory would be one of a handful of Biosafety Level 4 facilities in the country, equipped to work on the deadliest organisms on earth, including the Ebola and smallpox viruses. The 150,000-square-foot building would be located on a well-guarded 10-acre site at the Edgewood Area of the proving ground.

WASHINGTON -- An influential committee of health experts recommended to state and federal health officials yesterday that girls ages 11 and 12 routinely receive a new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer. The panel, whose decisions carry great weight with government health departments and private health insurers, said girls as young as 9 and women up to age 26 could be given the vaccine if doctors approve. Anne Schuchat, an official at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hailed the move as a "huge breakthrough for women's health" and said 11- and 12-year-olds were targeted to gain "the maximum preventative impact."

In Washington Secretary of Army flew in military jet to Colo. house sale Army Secretary Thomas E. White Jr. and his wife took a military jet to a Colorado ski resort where they wrapped up a $6.5 million house sale, a newspaper reported yesterday. The stop in Colorado this month came during an official trip to Seattle, The Washington Post reported. The Army Gulfstream jet carrying the Whites landed in Grand Junction, Colo., on March 1, Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Larry Gottardi told the newspaper.

Atlanta.-- Few noticed, but in 1990 America passed a gri milestone. In at least two states, Texas and Louisiana, the leading cause of death by injury was not motor vehicles but guns.Mark Rosenberg noticed. He is a doctor at the Centers for Disease Control, specializing in injury prevention, particularly the prevention of violence. Violence is epidemic and epidemiologists' skills are relevant to rendering violence a treatable public-health problem.Throughout mankind's history, the leading causes of premature death have been infectious diseases and injuries.