Like a fire bell in the night, the Bruce Ivins case invokes the chilling memories of the 2001 anthrax attacks in New York and Washington shortly after 9/11. We might be mollified with the comforting thought that after seven years the government is now prepared to deal with this type of bioterrorism threat. We might think that but we'd be wrong.If somebody started mailing anthrax around the country in 2008 and President Bush summoned his senior staff into the Oval Office to map out a response, he would find, just as he did in 2001, that there is no new vaccine or new medication to deal with the crisis. After the anthrax crisis in 2001 the government launched with great fanfare Project Bioshield to develop new vaccines and treatment for diseases that could be employed as bioweapons. The one given the highest priority was anthrax. In 2004 the Department of Homeland Security awarded a single-vendor, VaxGen, which had never produced an FDA-approved drug, this critical assignment. In 2007 the contract was canceled for failing to yield results. This is just another example of how the government has failed us in its highly touted "War on Terrorism." I cannot speak for others, but I do not take much comfort in the fact that it took the FBI seven long years to locate the alleged terrorist. That is, if Dr. Ivins was, indeed, the culprit and, if he was, that he acted alone. JERRY McKNIGHT Frederick
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