Secrecy News
Confronting Neglected Tropical Diseases
February 3rd, 2011 by Steven Aftergood There are seventeen so-called Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), such as Chagas disease, dengue fever and leprosy, that are found in some 149 countries, a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service explains.
“Estimates indicate that some 2 billion people are at risk of contracting an NTD, of whom more than 1 billion people are afflicted with one or more. Roughly 534,000 people are believed to be killed by an NTD annually. Although these diseases are concentrated among the world’s poor, population shifts and climate change increase the vulnerability of the United States to some of these diseases, particularly Chagas disease and dengue,” the CRS report said.
Efforts to combat the diseases, and the challenges facing those efforts, are described by the CRS in “Neglected Tropical Diseases: Background, Responses, and Issues for Congress,” January 21, 2011.
February 3rd, 2011 by Steven Aftergood In order to help determine the origins of microbial threats in terrorist incidents or epidemics, it would be useful to have a deep archive of various strains of lethal bacteria, the JASON defense advisory panel told the National Counterproliferation Center in a newly released 2009 report (pdf).
Because of the natural variation in the microbes of interest, “we believe that a ‘Library of Congress’ for microbial pathogens is needed,” the JASONs said.
“This library would consist of strains collected worldwide by methods that preserve sample properties, and capture all relevant data (e.g. geolocation, local environmental conditions). It should include laboratory isolates, natural isolates, and DNA sequence data.”
Actually, it seems that the nucleus of such a library already exists.
“We were impressed with the efforts of the National Bioforensic Reference Collection along these lines. The NBRC was initiated in October 2005 to receive and store reference materials for forensic analyses. It currently has more than 30,000 samples of bacteria, viruses, and toxins, from both select and non-select agents, and is authorized to handle classified materials,” the JASONs said.
The JASON report assesses the current state of “microbial forensics,” which refers to the characterization of microbe samples in terrorism or law enforcement cases to establish their origins.
For reasons explained in the report, the forensic task is not a simple one. In fact, “it is never possible to definitively link a sample to an attack based on genetic evidence alone.”
A copy of the JASON report was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act. See “Microbial Forensics,” JASON report JSR-08-512, May 2009.
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