The dispute is diverting attention from the real problem: the health-care system is drastically underfunded. Most homeland-security money is going to “emergency responders” who know how to deal with the aftermath of explosions or other disasters, rather than experts who can detect, respond to and quarantine an epidemic that may take days to spread. “The bottom line,” says Tara O’Toole of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies at Johns Hopkins, “is that hospitals are not prepared. There is no plan to prepare them and there is no one in charge of making it happen.” Contrary to reassurances from national-security officials, it is only getting easier to deliver toxic substances like anthrax. And today’s beefed-up airport- and building-security checks would not stop someone from walking in with a vial of anthrax, which resembles talcum powder.
Ridge denies there is a turf fight and insists that HHS still has authority over disease outbreaks, telling NEWSWEEK, “We leave bioterrorism to the experts, and that’s Tommy Thompson.”
