Letters: More on bioterrorism
Re “Raising an alarm — and his income,” May 19
Your article alleging that I didn’t adequately reveal a conflict of interest doesn’t mention that the “About the Author” page of my 2003 bioterrorism report explicitly stated that I was “a director of the Human Genome Sciences Corporation.”
Moreover, readers who pursue your article to its 58th paragraph will find that it acknowledges that in the 2003 report, far from obscuring any conflict, I wrote: “As a member of the Board of Directors of Human Genome Sciences, a NASDAQ listed company, I have encouraged the company in its efforts to develop an anthrax antitoxin. I do not believe that my views on this point are distorted by any financial interest, but readers will want to make their own determination.”
The article notes that I wrote six other reports on bioterrorism without flagging my director status, but the only one cited as relevant and posted on The Times’ website referred just tangentially to antibiotic-resistant anthrax, and actually argued against the strategy of buying specific drugs for specific pathogens for anthrax. The report criticized this approach, saying, “This is like strengthening forts along the Maginot Line.”
Finally, the article deprecates the risk of antibiotic-resistant anthrax. Yet in 2006, the secretary of Homeland Security determined that this was a material threat. And last year, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences concluded: “The level of microbiologic knowledge needed to create [multi-drug resistant] anthrax is not high, and descriptive methodology is available in the open literature.”
Richard Danzig
Washington
The writer, a former secretary of the Navy, is a biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.
The article describes Danzig in ways completely contrary to our experience. For more than a decade we — along with dozens of other experts in the private, not-for-profit and academic sectors who have read and agree with this letter — have worked with him in a broad effort to reduce the risks of bioterrorism. We do not all share the same perspective of the threats or the solutions, but we do value the openness with which the dialogue takes place.
The article implies that Danzig inflated the risk of antibiotic-resistant anthrax without adequately disclosing that he was associated with a company that could profit from attention to the risk. Our experiences don’t bear this out.
The article neglects to say there is a consensus of scientific thought that the risks of antibiotic-resistant anthrax are real; that dissent about the plausibility of this and other propositions was encouraged by Danzig himself; and that he neither originated the issue nor was he particularly associated with it but instead drove discussion about many aspects of protecting civilian populations from the threat of deliberately released biological agents.
Danzig’s fostering of discussion and honest debate on topics central to national security has become a role model for many of us. As active participants in the discussions on bioterrorism, none of us has ever found him to be misleading or self-serving.
Michael Goldblatt, Mary Esther, Fla.
Michael Hopmeier, McLean, Va.
Randall Larsen, Alexandria, Va.
ALSO:
A cure for the common opinion
Get thought-provoking perspectives with our weekly newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
