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Speaker: U.S. prepared to confront bioterrorism attack with resources
Caskey
cautions against faster
bioterror research
by Emily Baker
Staff Reporter
The
United States has the means to guard against bioterrorism and needs
to help protect the rest of the world, human genetics expert C.
Thomas Caskey said Wednesday morning in the Dee J. Kelly Alumni
and Visitors Center.
The M.J. Neeley School of Business hosted the event as part of the
Charles Tandy Executive Speakers Series.
Caskey, CEO and President of Cogene BioTech Ventures, Ltd., said
U.S. medical centers, particularly those in Texas, have the resources
already in place to manage against a bioterrorism attack. Those
resources include triage centers in case of terrorism acts like
suicide bombs, transplant centers in case of nuclear attack and
isolation facilities in case of the use of infectious agents, he
said.
“There is nothing on this list we don’t handle already,”
he said. “We just have to be prepared.”
Acts of bioterrorism would impact a third-world country more severely
than they would here because the United States has the diseases
caused by infectious agents in biological weapons under control,
Caskey said.
Becky Luce, an assistant professor in the management department,
was in attendance and said some of her fears were quelled.
“I thought it was really interesting,” Luce said. “He
pointed out that the American public is overreacting and that we
are better positioned to handle an attack than we think we are.”
The risk to the United States varies by infectious agent, Caskey
said. He said tuberculosis is a “great world problem”
and that most cases in the United States occur in immigrants.
Smallpox is considered to be a potentially more serious threat,
Caskey said. He said smallpox is not easy to manufacture and that
the United States could handle an outbreak. He said standard medical
practice could contain the problem even back in 1903.
A problem with preparing for a smallpox outbreak comes in the complication
rate in vaccines given to health-care workers, Caskey said. About
1,256 people for each one million vaccinated have complications
from the vaccine, he said.
Deb Baker, director of the Charles Tandy American Enterprise Center,
said the speech was thought-provoking, particularly the ideas presented
about anthrax.
“The reaction to the anthrax scare was pretty high when you
consider only (a few) people died from the outbreak and prevention
could cost billions of dollars,” Baker said.
Federal funding for bioterrorism has become more of a priority in
the last year, Caskey said. More money is now devoted to bioterrorism
research ($1.7 billion) than research for diabetes ($1.6 billion),
a major killer of Americans, Caskey said.
Caskey cautioned against public demand for speeding up bioterrorism
research.
“The best strategy is terrorist intervention — stopping
it from happening,” Caskey said. “Whatever it takes to
determine who these individuals are should be done.”
The next lecture in the Charles Tandy Executive Speakers Series
will be May 8. James Cash, a TCU alumnus and a Harvard faculty member,
will speak about corporate governance.
Emily Baker
e.k.baker@tcu.edu
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