INFECTIOUS
DISEASES
COUNTERING MICROBIAL THREATS U.S. and world not ready to prevent or control emerging diseases
A
S A MYSTERIOUS MICROBE
was spreading disease around the globe and the Senate was marking up President George W Bush's BioShield proposal, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report warning that the U.S. is woefully unprepared to meet the challenges of emerging infectious agents. The highly contagious disease dubbed severe acute respiratory syndrome, first seen in Asia but now diagnosed in several other countries, underscores the report's key point: More must be done to improve the public health and medical communities' ability to prevent, detect, and control emerging and resurging health threats posed by wily microbes. Because we all live on the same global microbial real estate, "one nation's problem soon can become every nation's problem," warns Margaret A. Hamburg, cochair of the panel that produced the report, "Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection & Response." "Global problems require global solutions," and, as a first step, the report calls on the U.S. to strengthen international disease surveillance, explains Hamburg, who is the Nuclear Threat Initiative's vice president for biological programs. The 396-page report—a follow-on to IOM's 1992 report on infectious diseases—also calls for policies to control antibiotic misuse to stem rising drug resistance, including a ban on use of antibiotics as animal growth promoters. Other suggested measures include a national strategy for vaccine development and the stockpiling of vital drugs against a realm of microbial diseases. The panel suggests the stockpiling of drugs for naturally ocairring and intentionally released HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
microbes. However, the Administration's heightened concern about bioterrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has focused on the stockpiling of available vaccines and antidotes for weapons of war or terror such as smallpox and anthrax. In February, President Bush sent Congress his BioShield plan, a $6 billion R&D effort to produce new vaccines and drugs against bioterror agents. Of concern to senators and others is whether liability protection is adequate and antitrust hurdles can be overcome to prod the production of needed countermeasures. T h e threat of bioterrorism adds to several other factors in enhancing and expanding the role microbes play in disease, disability, and death, Hamburg says. Infectious agents can destabilize economies, populations, and governments, so "the prevention and control of infectious diseases are IRAQ
fundamental to individual, national, and global security," she says. Of particular concern to Hamburg and other panel members is the "serious crisis" in vaccine and drug development, production, and distribution. Here, chemists can play a role. "There is an urgent need for the development of new antibiotics and antivirals for naturally occurring and intentionally released infectious agents," Gail H. Cassell, panel member and vice president for scientific affairs at Eli Lilly tells C&EN. "Successful development of countermeasures will require the collaboration of the best and brightest chemists and engineers working in industry, academia, and government."—LOIS EMBER
PREVENTION Nurses wear protective masks at Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital, where patients are treated for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
CONFLICT
SNPE Refutes Charge Of Illegal Sales To Iraq
T
he French state-owned chemical and explosives firm SNPE is denying a recent report that it is involved in the illegal sale of 99% unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), a missile fuel, and ammonium perchlorate, an oxidizer for solid propellant missiles, to Iraq. The denial comes in response to accusations in an editorial by syndicated columnist William Safire in the March 13 New York Times. Safire did not reveal the source of his information, writing that he has been "poking around for only about a week, starting with data originating from an Arab source." Bernard Roussel, SNPE's vice president of communications, provided C&EN with details to support the firm's claim. Roussel says SNPE formerly manufactured UDMH for the European civilian rocket, Ariane 4, and as a
raw material for daminozide, an agricultural chemical. However, production was halted two years ago when the Ariane U program was terminated. The Ariane 5 uses no UDMH, he says. Ammonium perchlorate is manufactured at SNPE's Toulouse facility. That plant was shut down in September 2001 after an explosion at the neighboring Grande Paroisse fertilizer facility and resumed operations only recently. Roussel says inventories of ammonium perchlorate are "so low that we cannot fulfill the French needs, and we buy this material from the U.S. to complement our production." Roussel adds that all sales of these materials are regulated and approved by the French government, safeguards that he claims preclude the chance of sales to Iraq through a third party.-RICK MULLIN
C & E N / MARCH 2 4 , 2003
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