NCJ Number
191222
Journal
Journal of the American Medical Association Volume: 278 Issue: 5 Dated: August 6, 1997 Pages: 373-375
Date Published
1997
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This paper presents developments in medical preparedness to prevent casualties in biological warfare.
Abstract
The military, police, and emergency personnel are unable to quickly detect potentially devastating biological agents and block their effects in exposed individuals. Although the Defense Department is working with officials in 120 cities to develop and train metropolitan medical strike teams to provide emergency medical responses after an attack, it is clear to the military that more innovative approaches are needed to prevent soldiers and civilians from being exposed to biological agents. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with a $2 billion budget, is developing technology for detecting and neutralizing biological weapons. Any success from such work has important implications for the problem of emerging microbial infections arising from "natural" causes. The need to quickly identify the cause of a disease outbreak, prevent its spread, and treat those stricken is the same whatever the source of the infection. Some projects include unmanned remote control mobile laboratories that can identify agents and distinguish live pathogens from their dead counterparts and tools that can detect whether agents are on a battlefield. Rather than conducting research on vaccines for specific pathogens, DARPA is funding projects that would find disease processes so that defenses could be built against multiple agents. DARPA's willingness to fund audacious proposals provides researchers with the freedom to make scientific leaps, rather than be reluctant to apply for funding for projects they fear will be considered too speculative to merit support. One project that has stirred interest is a strategy to use red blood cells to sweep up pathogens in the bloodstream and carry them to the liver to be destroyed. Other investigations are working on strategies that would serve as barriers between exposure to pathogens and infection.