BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!!! Budget Cuts "Eroded Our Ability to Respond" to Ebola, Says Top Health Official & Weaponized Ebola: Is It Really a Bioterror Threat? 3OKT&25SEP14

MAYBE we'll start hearing that call across America, reminiscent of the call that echoed in the cities, towns and villages of Europe in the plague years. Not really, but there is a real danger to more people getting Ebola and dying from it in this country than necessary because of sequestration and the budget cuts demanded by the congressional repiglicans and tea-baggers, agreed to by the cowardly third way democrats and Pres Obama. Sequestration was a wet dream come true for grover norquist and his cabal of neo-con plutocrats. People are scared, but are they scared enough to remember who made this heath crisis possible in the U.S.? THINK, because it's patriotic and VOTE on 4 NOV 14 because democracy is not a spectator sport. From +Mother Jones & +Scientific American .....

Budget Cuts "Eroded Our Ability to Respond" to Ebola, Says Top Health Official

—By Gabrielle Canon

| Wed Oct. 1, 2014 6:00 AM EDT

The CDC's Dr. Jordan Tappero, about to don his goggles just prior to entering the Ebola treatment unit CDC/Sally Ezra

On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States; the infected patient was a man who traveled from Liberia to visit family in Texas. It's the latest development in the ever-worsening outbreak of the virus, which so far has sickened more than 6,500 people and killed more than 3,000. The United States government has pledged to send help to West Africa to help stop Ebola from spreading—but the main agencies tasked with this aid work say they're hamstrung by budget cuts from the 2013 sequester.
On September 16, the Senate Committees on Appropriations and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a hearing to discuss the resources needed to address the outbreak. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) asked NIH representative Anthony Fauci about sequestration's effect on the efforts.

"If even modest investments had been made…the current Ebola epidemic could have been detected earlier, and it could have been identified and contained."

"I have to tell you honestly it's been a significant impact on us," said Fauci. "It has both in an acute and a chronic, insidious way eroded our ability to respond in the way that I and my colleagues would like to see us be able to respond to these emerging threats. And in my institute particularly, that's responsible for responding on the dime to an emerging infectious disease threat, this is particularly damaging." Sequestration required the NIH to cut its budget by 5 percent, a total of $1.55 billion in 2013. Cuts were applied across all of its programs, affecting every area of medical research.
Dr. Beth Bell, director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, testified before the committee, making a case for increased funding. Her department, which has led the US intervention in West Africa, was hit with a $13 million budget cut as a result of the cuts in 2013. Though appropriations increased in 2014 and are projected to rise further in 2015, the agency hasn't yet made up for the deficit—according to Bell, $100 million has already gone toward stopping the Ebola epidemic, and much more is needed. The United Nations estimates it will take over $600 million just to get the crisis under control.

Bell also argued that the epidemic could have been stopped if more had been done sooner to build global health security. International aid budgets were hit hard by the sequester, reducing global health programs by $411 million and USAID by $289 million. "If even modest investments had been made to build a public health infrastructure in West Africa previously, the current Ebola epidemic could have been detected earlier, and it could have been identified and contained," she said during her testimony. "This Ebola epidemic shows that any vulnerability could have widespread impact if not stopped at the source."

Still, CDC officials have pledged to do everything in their power to stop Ebola in its tracks. "The sooner the world comes together to help West Africa, the safer we all will be," Director Tom Frieden says in a statement released in early September. "We know how to stop this outbreak. There is a window of opportunity to tamp this down—the challenge is to scale up the massive response needed."

Gabrielle Canon

Editorial Fellow

Gabrielle Canon is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones. Follow her on Twitter @GabrielleCanon. RSS | Twitter

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Weaponized Ebola: Is It Really a Bioterror Threat?

What would it take to hijack the virus in west Africa and turn it into a bioterror agent elsewhere?

Sep 25, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

Airman Walker/Wikimedia Commons

Ebola's exponential spread has rekindled fears that terrorists may seek to turn the virus into a powerful weapon of mass destruction. Such talk has occurred on Capitol Hill and in national security circles. But the financial and logistical challenges of transforming Ebola into a tool of bioterror makes the concern seem overblown—at least as far as widespread devastation is concerned.

National security and infectious disease experts agree the obstacles to a large-scale assault with Ebola are formidable. For starters, a bioterrorist would have to obtain the virus and be able to grow a massive supply in large vats, an extremely costly endeavor. While the virus is easily spread through personal contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, it would be difficult to manipulate and control.  Put simply, a large amount of Ebola in the hands of a rogue group would more likely end up killing the plotters than making it to the endgame of a bioterrorism mission. To be successful, “it would take a state-type [agent]" with more extensive resources, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Congressional committee last week.

Already there is historical precedent for states trying—and failing—to tap the virus for bioterror. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was “growing up large amounts of microbes for potential use in bioterrorism. That was known through intelligence,” Fauci told Scientific American. The Soviets attempted to cultivate smallpox, anthrax, tularemia, botulism and hemorrhagic fevers including Ebola, he says. Yet exactly how the country would have deployed the microbes remains an area of speculation. The Soviets eventually dropped the project, but they were not the only ones interested in the microbe’s potential.

The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo—infamous for setting off sarin gas in a Tokyo subway in 1995—also looked into Ebola as a potential biological weapon. In 1992, they sent a medical group of 40 people ostensibly to help provide aid during an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their real purpose, however, was to collect some Ebola virus, as Amy Smithson, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, noted in her 2000 report Ataxia. The effort was a “flagrant failure,” she says. "They did not get their hands on a culture.”

Even if Aum Shinrikyo had managed to gather samples of the Ebola virus, it would have been extremely difficult to kill large numbers of people in countries with a strong health infrastructure such as Japan. Once the virus had been identified and patients isolated, the pathogen would have been unlikely to spread widely. Still, any terrorist attempting to stoke fears rather than accrue a high body count could have some modicum of success with Ebola. “When talking about bioterror, it’s more about the terror than it is the bio,” Fauci says.

Interviews with Fauci and other infection and security experts suggest that the virus could potentially be used for small-scale Ebola attacks in about three different ways—although each approach would run up against substantial logistical, financial and biological barriers. First, Ebola could be weaponized by taking large quantities of it and inserting them into a small “bomblet” that, once detonated, would spray the virus perhaps 30 feet—potentially infecting people as it landed on their faces, on cuts or on hands that they might then touch their eyes with. “That would be like a hundred people simultaneously touching an Ebola-infected person,” says Fauci. Ebola would not need to be altered in any way to make such a plot work. The virus is already so capable of spreading from person to person via contact with bodily fluids that in its natural state it could do some serious damage. “Ebola is a very lethal pathogenic virus," says virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University. "It’s basically weaponizing itself.”

The second, and perhaps easiest, small-scale bioterrorism option would be to recruit individuals for Ebola suicide missions. Such a plan would hinge on injecting Ebola virus into a limited number of people, who would then need to leave west Africa (or wherever the outbreak may be) before becoming symptomatic. Then those individuals would have to get into a public space and projectile vomit or bleed onto others to infect them. Obviously the plot would need to overcome substantial technical challenges including the extreme weakness that arises from Ebola. If it did succeed, this mode of transmission would not kill thousands of people, but it would set off significant fears.

The third bioterrorism method appears to be the most unlikely: genetically modifying the virus to enable it to spread more readily, perhaps through the air. As Scientific American reported on September 16, transforming the Ebola virus from a pathogen that primarily affects the circulatory system to one well suited for the respiratory system would be a major research undertaking. While theoretically the microbe could be manipulated to act in that way, it would be a demanding choice for nefarious actors looking to stockpile harmful materials.

With an Ebola outbreak that has already killed more than 2,800 in west Africa and laid siege to the health care systems of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it is clear that already Ebola is terrorizing thousands. Nevertheless, the possibility of rogue organizations sowing this terror on a similar scale seems largely out of reach.
FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.....

This article is from the In-Depth Report Ebola: What You Need to Know 

Weaponized Ebola: Is It Really a Bioterror Threat?

What would it take to hijack the virus in west Africa and turn it into a bioterror agent elsewhere?

Sep 25, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

Airman Walker/Wikimedia Commons

Ebola's exponential spread has rekindled fears that terrorists may seek to turn the virus into a powerful weapon of mass destruction. Such talk has occurred on Capitol Hill and in national security circles. But the financial and logistical challenges of transforming Ebola into a tool of bioterror makes the concern seem overblown—at least as far as widespread devastation is concerned.

National security and infectious disease experts agree the obstacles to a large-scale assault with Ebola are formidable. For starters, a bioterrorist would have to obtain the virus and be able to grow a massive supply in large vats, an extremely costly endeavor. While the virus is easily spread through personal contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, it would be difficult to manipulate and control.  Put simply, a large amount of Ebola in the hands of a rogue group would more likely end up killing the plotters than making it to the endgame of a bioterrorism mission. To be successful, “it would take a state-type [agent]" with more extensive resources, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Congressional committee last week.

Already there is historical precedent for states trying—and failing—to tap the virus for bioterror. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was “growing up large amounts of microbes for potential use in bioterrorism. That was known through intelligence,” Fauci told Scientific American. The Soviets attempted to cultivate smallpox, anthrax, tularemia, botulism and hemorrhagic fevers including Ebola, he says. Yet exactly how the country would have deployed the microbes remains an area of speculation. The Soviets eventually dropped the project, but they were not the only ones interested in the microbe’s potential.

The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo—infamous for setting off sarin gas in a Tokyo subway in 1995—also looked into Ebola as a potential biological weapon. In 1992, they sent a medical group of 40 people ostensibly to help provide aid during an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their real purpose, however, was to collect some Ebola virus, as Amy Smithson, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, noted in her 2000 report Ataxia. The effort was a “flagrant failure,” she says. "They did not get their hands on a culture.”

Even if Aum Shinrikyo had managed to gather samples of the Ebola virus, it would have been extremely difficult to kill large numbers of people in countries with a strong health infrastructure such as Japan. Once the virus had been identified and patients isolated, the pathogen would have been unlikely to spread widely. Still, any terrorist attempting to stoke fears rather than accrue a high body count could have some modicum of success with Ebola. “When talking about bioterror, it’s more about the terror than it is the bio,” Fauci says.

Interviews with Fauci and other infection and security experts suggest that the virus could potentially be used for small-scale Ebola attacks in about three different ways—although each approach would run up against substantial logistical, financial and biological barriers. First, Ebola could be weaponized by taking large quantities of it and inserting them into a small “bomblet” that, once detonated, would spray the virus perhaps 30 feet—potentially infecting people as it landed on their faces, on cuts or on hands that they might then touch their eyes with. “That would be like a hundred people simultaneously touching an Ebola-infected person,” says Fauci. Ebola would not need to be altered in any way to make such a plot work. The virus is already so capable of spreading from person to person via contact with bodily fluids that in its natural state it could do some serious damage. “Ebola is a very lethal pathogenic virus," says virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University. "It’s basically weaponizing itself.”

The second, and perhaps easiest, small-scale bioterrorism option would be to recruit individuals for Ebola suicide missions. Such a plan would hinge on injecting Ebola virus into a limited number of people, who would then need to leave west Africa (or wherever the outbreak may be) before becoming symptomatic. Then those individuals would have to get into a public space and projectile vomit or bleed onto others to infect them. Obviously the plot would need to overcome substantial technical challenges including the extreme weakness that arises from Ebola. If it did succeed, this mode of transmission would not kill thousands of people, but it would set off significant fears.

The third bioterrorism method appears to be the most unlikely: genetically modifying the virus to enable it to spread more readily, perhaps through the air. As Scientific American reported on September 16, transforming the Ebola virus from a pathogen that primarily affects the circulatory system to one well suited for the respiratory system would be a major research undertaking. While theoretically the microbe could be manipulated to act in that way, it would be a demanding choice for nefarious actors looking to stockpile harmful materials.

With an Ebola outbreak that has already killed more than 2,800 in west Africa and laid siege to the health care systems of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it is clear that already Ebola is terrorizing thousands. Nevertheless, the possibility of rogue organizations sowing this terror on a similar scale seems largely out of reach.