“In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar. Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late. Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world. Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”
Presidential Commission on World Hunger, 1980.
Over the last two decades there has been at least SEVEN prestigious and uncontested official reports warning Congress and the American people about the national security threats from newly emerging and reemerging infectious diseases (and the growing risk of accidental or intentional release of infectious agents). While the causes and solutions are widely agreed upon there is also a professional consensus that there has been insufficient government action to these immediate and inevitable threats.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES as a threat to U.S. National Security:
1. Emerging Infections; Microbial threats to health in the United States 1992,Lederberg, Joshua, Oaks, Stanley C., & Shope, Robert E., eds, National Academy of Press, Washington DC. [On-line] http://www.nap.edu/books/0309047412/html/index.html
2. Addressing Emerging Infectious Disease Threats: A Prevention Strategy for the United States 1994, Center for Disease Control (CDC). [On-line] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031393.htm
3. Infectious Disease – A Global Health Threat 1995, Committee on International Science, Engineering, and Technology Working Group (CISET), [On-line] http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OSTP/CISET/html/toc-plain.html Sept 1995
4. America’s Vital Interest in Global Health 1997, Board on International Health, National Academy of Press, Washington DC, [On-line] http://books.nap.edu/catalog/5717.html
5. The Global Infectious Disease Threat and its Implications for the United States. Jan. 2000, NIE 99-17D, [On-line] http://www.dni.gov/nic/special_globalinfectious.html
6. Biosecurity: A comprehensive Action Plan. June 2006. Center for American Progress.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1807025
7. Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future (GHRF Commission) Report title: “The Neglected Dimension of Global Security: A Framework to Counter Infectious Disease Crises” http://nam.edu/initiatives/global-health-risk-framework/?utm_source=National+Academy+of+Medicine&utm_campaign=9c986f06c9-GHRF+report+release&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b8ba6f1aa1-9c986f06c9-129670121 January 2016.
Credible Book: WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP CATASTROPHES By Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, 2017: https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-7-2/Article/1401978/warnings-finding-cassandras-to-stop-catastrophes/ The first 8 chapters detail the millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars lost to catastrophes,– natural and man-made – due to our failure to act on the advance warnings of experts. The last eight chapters estimates the billions of lives and trillions of dollars that could be saved if humanity collectively works to prevent the other dire warnings now given regarding other threats (some existential). Chapter 11 “The Journalist: Pandemic Disease”. Chapter 9 outlines the three cognitive reasons why humans ignore such warnings.
SUMMARY: Human engineered or nature diseases can and will have debilitating economic, social and political consequences on every nation. These growing health threats are inevitable. The only debate is about their magnitude of impact and origin (given conspiracy ideas) . Those who suggest the threat is minimal … don’t know history or fully understand the trends in our current global situation.
ACTIONS: We have three basic choices.
1. We can wait until the infectious reaches our lungs, home or community before taking action. The attacks on 9-11 provides us with a mild example of consequences of the expensive approach of ignoring warnings to a persistent global threat. (Mindset: It hasn’t happened so far…don’t worry about it.)
2. We can try to stop the threat at our boarders. Our success in stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, illegal drugs or weapons across our borders gives one an idea of how effective this approach will be. (Mindset: Our Federal government and our national sovereignty will protect us.)
3. We can go to the source of the threat and create systems that facilitate both prevention and adequate early detection and response efforts. (Mindset: We are one human family. We hang together or we hang separately. See 17 Sustainable Development Goals).
In the closing paragraphs of The Coming Plague (1995), aptly entitled “Searching for Solutions”, Laurie Garrett writes:
The human world was a very optimistic place on September 12, 1978, when the nations’ representatives signed the Declaration of Alma Ata. By the year 2000 all of humanity was supposed to be immunized against most infectious diseases, basic health care was to be available to every man, woman, and child regardless of their economic class, race, religion, or place of birth.
But as the world approaches the millennium, it seems, from the microbes’ point of view, as if the entire planet, occupied by nearly 6 billion mostly impoverished Homo sapiens, is like the city of Rome in 5 B.C. “The world really is just one village. Our tolerance of disease in any place in the world is at our own peril,” Lederberg [Nobel laureate for discovery of DNA] said. “Are we better off today than we were a century ago? In most respects, we’re worse off. We have been neglectful of the microbes, and that is a recurring theme that is coming back to haunt us.”
In the end, it seems that American Journalist I.F. Stone was right when he said, “Either we will learn to live together or we will die together.”
While the human race battles itself... the advantage moves to the microbes’ court. They are our predators and they will be victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities. It’s either that or we brace ourselves for the coming plague.”
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