Medicine: Epidemic of Fear

April 13th, 2005 · No Comments· 18 views

The great diseases that our ancestors feared are gone. Smallpox, plague, typhus, polio, measles. Yet people still carry fear of great diseases. People fear the avian flu as much as they might the Black Death. Why? Because the public health Mafia have decided that it is the latest “disease du jour”. Because the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and every Tom, Dick and Harry have decided to issue “cautionary” and “advisory” statements where none are warranted.

It’s irresponsible for public health authorities to use “maybe’s” in order to drum up funds for their projects. The fact of the matter is that public health is funded in all the wrong places, a place of kingdom building and shiny toys. Self promotion has become the sole reason to exist in far too many places. Billions have been spent on bioterrorism prevention, with the result that public health agencies nationwide have new labs, new computers, new departments with department heads, aides and secretaries.

As an EMT I am just as likely to discover a case of smallpox when I run duty on Sunday as I was on September 10, 2001. And I am equally as unprotected.

The powers that be in public health talk a good talk. But, as the flu vaccine shortage last year demonstrates, they are woefully unprepared to take on their original mandate, to protect the public from disease. The true public health authorities in this country are the family doctors, EMS professionals and Emergency Department staff who actually see and treat the sick.

Every single public health agency in this country has enough directors, aides, secretaries and media information staff to handle any sort of disease outbreak. What they lack, have lacked, and continue to lack, are feet on the street. Investigators, epidemiologists, people who are out in the community every single day. New computers are no more likely to resolve an outbreak of avian flu than they are to resolve the teen pregnancy problem. People will do that, feet on the street.

Avian flu has been recognized since 1997. In all that time, less than 200 people have died from it. Nearly all of those people worked directly with poultry. Person-to-person transmission is almost unknown. As of this moment, no scientist anywhere has a shred of evidence that avian flu will be the next pandemic. But, boy, they all sure do want to get a lot of money to study the situation. Venality and greed, not danger, is the name of this game.