Abstract
Biodefense benefits
Susan Wright's article in the November/December 2004 Bulletin (“Taking Biodefense Too Far”) highlights the “billions for dubious biodefense” and mentions experiments performed under the guise of biodefense that have drawn domestic and international criticism.
There's another side to biodefense research that deserves highlighting–the benefits of basic research. Recently chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign published a creative way to overcome antibiotic resistance. They used a small molecule to make bacteria eject the acquired pieces of DNA that cause antibiotic resistance, via the bacteria's own natural processes. Once that small piece of DNA is eliminated, the bacteria were treated successfully with standard, inexpensive antibiotics. They did it without using any of the biological agents regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's “Select Agent Program” and without any of the billions of federal biodefense funds distributed over the last four years.
While these chemists might have been motivated by the increasing challenge of antibiotic resistance to bacteria less sensational than anthrax and the plague, the most significant implications for this work may be in biodefense. One of the rationales for Project BioShield and other biodefense initiatives that inject large amounts of federal funding into private pharmaceutical and biotech companies is the suggestion that there may be secondary benefits for fighting other infectious diseases as well as benefits to public health. Perhaps the vector is in the wrong direction. Increased investment in fundamental science will yield biodefense benefits.
Stanford, California
Doomsdazed
Thank you for your excellent analysis of “doomsday” (“Rethinking Doomsday,” November/December 2004). I do think there is one “weapon of mass destruction” that is regularly left off everyone's list, however: the U.S. economy and its impact–combined with that of other highly industrialized nations–on humanity and the global ecosystem.
As Scientific American explained last year, rapid climate change, although unpredictable, is increasingly likely, as a result of global warming. And rapid change, measured not in centuries but in decades, would exacerbate the significant suffering already experienced by the vast majority of the world as a result of the economic dislocations brought about by enforced globalization.
It is time to discuss all the threats that we, as a species, face. To allow global stresses to build is to invite destruction. Whether it is frustrated, angry people with weapons or nature herself that initiates chaos, we should take steps to ameliorate the causes instead of trying to defend against them.
Pouring olive oil in the Atlantic Ocean to “defend” against hurricanes (as some have recently suggested), and threatening the countries of the world with invasion if they disagree with us, are equally mindless. It's time to stop trying to protect ourselves with costly, nonfunctional Band-Aids and to begin changing our own attitudes toward other people and the planet as a whole.
Cottage Grove, Oregon
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Rethinking Doomsday presented a lengthy, somewhat interesting analysis of the risks from weapons of mass destruction. What is missing is the “pinprick” aspect. George W. Bush has furthered his political career by magnifying the impact of fewer than 3,000 deaths on 9/11. Yet we lose 50,000 people a year in automobile accidents and another 100,000 in hospital negligence. This is to say nothing of the 100,000 Iraqi deaths since our invasion. It is time for some perspective. The United States should not be governed by bogeyman politics based on pinprick effects.
Austin, Texas
Correction
Due to an editing error, “Rocky Flats: The Bait-and-Switch Cleanup” (January/February 2005) referred to recommendations made by an Energy Department-created focus group. While the focus group discussed cleanup goals for the site, it never made formal recommendations.