NYT: Frist Backs Initiative on Biodefense

[DeepModem Mom]

Senate Leader Backs Initiative on Biodefense
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: June 2, 2005


BOSTON, June 1 - A federal initiative as ambitious as the Manhattan Project is needed to protect the nation from infectious diseases, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Wednesday in a lecture at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Frist, who studied medicine at Harvard, said the effort would defend against both bioterrorism and diseases that are spread naturally. He said that the United States and the rest of the world were unprepared for a potential pandemic despite signs that emerging viruses like the avian flu are capable of causing sharp losses of life.

"Any number of known and unknown viruses for which at present there is neither immunization nor cure are at this moment cooking in Asia and Africa, where they arise in hotbeds of densely intermingled human and animal populations," said Dr. Frist, who was delivering the Marshall J. Seidman Lecture to the Department of Health Care Policy.

Dr. Frist said he had not yet developed an estimate of the costs to the federal government of his proposal.

Elements of his proposal are incorporated in pending Senate legislation on biodefense, but he said his immediate goal was to open a discussion about the need to take seriously the threat such diseases pose....The senator, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2008, noted that Britain, France and Canada were already far ahead of the United States in trying to secure the scarce supplies of the antiviral agent for the avian flu....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/politics/02frist.html

[wtmusic]

1. So now Bill is an expert on infectious diseases

...whatever.

[rkc3]

2. Could be worse - he could have just said we should annihilate

whole populations in Asia and Africa. They are the problem after all.

I don't get guys like him.

[wtmusic]

4. Sure...that Stalin "no problem" quote still has some legs n/t

[Endangered Specie]

8. you know what they say... "it takes one to know one"

;)

[ltfranklin]

3. How great of Senator Frist.

And I'm sure that the fact that University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Labs are all in Tennessee, and all have Biodefense-related programs, and hence would be up for a lot of the money coming out of this proposal, has nothing to do with his interest in this.

[Demit]

5. "hotbeds of densely intermingled human and animal populations" ?!!??

what the hell is that meant to imply???

[WeRQ4U]

11. I wondered the same thing....

Bestality Swing Parties?

[hector459]

6. More money down a corporate sink-hole. The best defense against

any kind of terrorism is respect other nations and their religions and to get our military the hell out of other countries.

[hedda_foil]

7. A Manhattan Project for Big Pharma.

Sure. That's the ticket Bill.

[Brooklyn Michael]

9. Oh, but you can get AIDS from tears......

.....and make a qualified diagnosis of someone in a persistant vegetative state from watching a few minutes of them on a videotape...

:dunce:

Everytime I hear his "medical background" brought up, I wonder why ANYone would take medical advice from this obvious quack...

[krkaufman]

10. So, yes Bill, please spend more Senate time....

... trying to ram-through more right-wing extremist judges, rather than focusing on the issues threatening the country.

jerk.