IT SURE is an interesting time to be an American. Not yet recovered from the shock of the unprecedented terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that shook our nation but a month ago, our country is now faced with the reality of a new threat: biological terrorism. The discovery of several cases of anthrax poisoning across the country over the past few days has aroused yet more fear in the hearts of many of our citizens. More importantly, however, it has shown that the United States is not equipped to deal with biological attacks on a large scale.
Wednesday morning, officials confirmed that a letter sent to the office of Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) contained anthrax, thus prompting security officials to close the offices of several other senators as a safety precaution. Disturbing as this is in and of itself, it unfortunately is not an isolated incident. In the last few days, a contaminated letter was found in NBC studios in New York City, the 7-month old son of a freelance news producer that had been inside ABC studios was diagnosed with anthrax poisoning, and a mail-room worker in Boca Raton Florida was found to have contracted anthrax as well.
Now thirty employees of Sen. Daschle's office have tested positive for anthrax. The culprit? While many are quick to jump to the conclusion that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks, others caution about jumping to conclusions. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says, "It would be hard to be blind to that link [between the anthrax cases and bin Laden], given what happened on Sept. 11. But there isn't any hard evidence at this point" ("In Shift, Officials Look Into Possibility that Anthrax Cases Have bin Laden Ties," The New York Times, Oct. 16).
Postal authorities emphasize the probable insufficiency of the resources that their inspectors have at their disposal for finding the individuals responsible for mailing these letters. At this point, all that is known is that two of the letters were mailed from Trenton, New Jersey. While it is probable that these were mailed by the same individual or group of individuals, President Bush notes that there is "no hard data yet."
This puts America in a difficult position. While there is no indication that these biological attacks through the mail will become widespread, there is no assurance that they will not. This forces on our country a sort of wait-and-see position not altogether different from our situation in regard to the more concrete Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. While the United States' air strikes on Afghanistan continue, it is difficult to gauge the effect that the nation's military action is having on an extremely elusive and seemingly death-indifferent group of terrorists.
The scariest thing about this whole situation is that the country is not prepared for it. Ignoring the pleas of conservatives such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan for high post-Cold War defense spending, funding for national security has dropped steadily since 1991. Of course, no one could have anticipated the exact events that have transpired in our country of late, but because we relaxed in a time of relative peace, we have now been caught off guard and left extremely vulnerable to a group of terrorists.
Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said Wednesday that the recent anthrax "threats were straining the nation's public health infrastructure, including the nation's network of 81 laboratories that are capable of testing for germ attacks" ("Echoes of Anthrax Scare Reverberate Across Nation," The New York Times, Oct. 16). Basically, if these attacks were ever to erupt on a large scale, the United States would not be even close to equipped to handle them.
Another disturbing fact concerning biological attacks on the United States is the inability of the nation's medical professionals to identify the illnesses that come forward at a fast rate. Because medical conditions such as anthrax poisoning are so rare in the United States, the vast majority of doctors have never seen one. They have not been heavily trained in this area and thus will not tend to recognize these kinds of situations immediately. While many may be keenly aware of the symptoms of anthrax poisoning due to recent events, this is by far not the only possible agent of biological warfare. As was the case in New York this week, cases of other illnesses of this type could easily go untreated or be misdiagnosed, a blunder which could be fatal to the unfortunate victim.
We as a nation need to make some serious changes. An increase in defense spending goes without saying. We are in a time of war, and this inevitably will come to pass, but when the strife of the present time passes away, we need to remember the lesson of the need for constant vigilance in national security matters that our current situation can teach us.
To try to make the best of our position right now, we need to make sure that our medical professionals nationwide are given a crash-refresher course in the symptoms caused by the ingestion of the potential agents of biological warfare. In an interview with CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports," Dr. Sanford Kuvin, a former vice chairman of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, says that "the bad news is that the United States is unprepared for bioterrorism."
It is not enough to bomb Afghanistan; we do not yet know what, if any, effect this is going to have. Our government needs to realize that we are facing dangers that we potentially are unprepared to deal with and that it therefore needs to mobilize all available resources within the United States quickly and fully in order to best counter the threats we are under.
(Laura Parcells' column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at lparcells@cavalierdaily.com.)
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