Finding the edge of the cloud

摘要

Talk about the unthinkable: one letter con-taining a potent, "militarized" form of anthrax was sent to the office of the Senate Majority Leader and, postal machine by postal machine, envelope by envelope, it spread to other federal buildings throughout the capital, contaminating a large area and, temporarily, bringing some government operations to a halt. Point proven: Terrorists, whether domestic or foreign, had access to bioter-ror weapons―and to an easy and frightening method of distributing them. It was clear to anyone who watched the sorry case unfold that the nation was vulnerable and that methods of detecting attack were largely reactive: evaluating patients who turned up sick, and sweeping buildings for contamination that had already occurred. The questions that any citizen, any homeowner who had shelled out $60 to protect three levels of his or her house, might ask are these: How close are we to producing the bioterrorism equivalent of a smoke detector? When will there be an inexpensive way to get an early warning of a dangerous pathogen in our midst? These are good questions, because, as with so many things medical, the earlier you detect the problem, the greater the likelihood of minimizing the damage.