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By Category: Public Health

Public health agencies learned to work together after Sept. 11, anthrax attacks

(The Augusta Chronicle) Pam Tucker remembers people undressing outside businesses and being sprayed down with firehoses. “Not to take any chances of course, measures were taken to decontaminate people who may have been contaminated with anthrax,” she said. “We just didn’t know.” The fearful and sometimes chaotic response to those anthrax letters in October 2001 Read More »

September 6, 2011
| Filed under North America and Public Health
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Anthrax vaccine in works in NC

(News & Observer) North Carolina was not targeted in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people in Florida and the Northeast. But the Triangle is home to the development site for a new vaccine against the deadly bacterial powder …

September 6, 2011
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, and Public Health
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Reinventing Project BioShield

(Science Now) In the wake of the fall 2001 anthrax letter attacks, protecting against future bioterrorism attacks became a top priority for the US government, resulting in the creation of Project BioShield. This effort was intended to make available effective …

September 2, 2011
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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The Smallpox Vaccination Program: Public Health in an Age of Terrorism

This report discusses lessons learned from the smallpox vaccination program, concludes that there is a need to balance scientific communication with national security imperatives in the context of such programs, and recommends that smallpox preparedness should be comprehensively assessed.

August 30, 2011
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, and Public Health
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The New Generation of Microbe Hunters – New York Times

New York TimesThe New Generation of Microbe HuntersNew York TimesDETECTIVE Dr. James M. Musser, second from right, put DNA sequencing to work in a Houston case involving lethal bacteria that looked like anthrax. The culprit turned out to be a closely related strain of Bacillus. What would they do if something like …and more »