Posted on 02/27/2005 12:09:12 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., talked broadly about health care Monday when he visited Rocky Mount, reprising a familiar call for medical liability reform and sounding an alarm about prescription drug costs to the public.
But standing in front of the Rotary Club microphones, he didn't talk about what might be his most important job in government ? his role as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health.
While serving in Congress, Burr sponsored the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, a set of laws to provide money to train first responders and stockpile vaccines, along with a government-wide response plan if the nation came under biological attack. Burr also was the chief sponsor of legislation giving legal protection from lawsuits to medical personnel and drug companies offering smallpox inoculation by providing injury compensation from government funds.
The next task for the committee will be to write the next iteration of laws to build defenses against biological attack, Burr said. The first version, Bioshield, passed in 2004 and provided $5.6 billion for the government to buy vaccines and antiviral agents while curbing the procurement and liability rules for drug makers.
Bioshield II will bring $6 billion more to the table, Burr said.
The program has controversies. Although the government must commit to buying millions of dollars worth of vaccine doses for diseases such as smallpox or anthrax in order to convince drug makers to manufacture the medications, critics argue that the act of stockpiling vaccines itself encourages terrorists to engineer resistant variants.
"It's the best plan we have," Burr said. Biological defense is a messy business of guesswork and probabilities without clear answers, he said. "You're only as good as your level of imagination."
North Carolina is in good shape, he said, a result of a heavy military presence and advanced response teams in places like Winston-Salem.
"The problem we will run into is the limited decontamination capabilities in any one place," he said. "This is where the advocates of only sending money to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other big cities are wrong."
If an attack spread nuclear or chemical contamination throughout a metropolitan area, its first responders ? the fire fighters, medics and doctors in the city ? are as likely to be compromised as anyone else, he said. Response capability must be regional to provide surge capacity when the resources in any one area are overburdened, he said.
"I'm hopeful that we have the infrastructure to react," he said.
Bioterrorism responders said the state benefits in other ways by having a well-developed response.
"It's not just for bioterrorism, it's for anything that might happen," said Lyle Johnson, eastern region hospital bioterrorism coordinator. "Our No. 1 enemy here is the hurricane."
The 'weak' (soft) direct-access target area's against the U.S.A. are Canada and Mexico .....THEY are our 'downfall' backdoors!
IMO
/NAFTA
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.