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Thursday, January 12, 2006The Maginot Line built by the French in the 1930s serves as a symbol of static defenses designed to protect against known threats. Although these elaborate fortifications bought the French some time, the advancing German army maneuvered around them. Similarly, the creation of static defenses can be justified for clear, imminent, and potentially catastrophic biologic threats — including avian influenza virus and prominent drug-resistant bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, as well as anthrax and smallpox. For the vast array of other potential threats, however, we should invest even more in flexible, dynamic defenses, which will rely on integrative science, new insights into biologic systems, and advancing technology. We need methods and technologies that can generate effective diagnostics, therapeutics, and prophylactics against a new or variant infectious agent within days or weeks after its characterization. He makes a persuasive argument that we need to be thinking about the potential for new, unheard of threats that can be manufactured with gene altering technology that's not all that difficult to come by or to use. Right now, most of our preparedness strategy focuses on organisms and agents that have been used or developed in the past - anthrax, plague, smallpox, ricin, mustard gas, etc. But with today's technology someone could easily design their own weapon - be it a virus or a gas. And they can come up with better ways of delivering it. We would be well served to concentrate on improving treatment, prevention, and diagnostic technologies. That approach has the added advantage of being useful to society even if there never is a bioterror attack. posted by Sydney on 1/12/2006 10:57:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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