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82–748PS 2003

THE NEED TO DEVELOP EDUCATION AND

TRAINING PROGRAMS ON THE MEDICAL

RESPONSES TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF TERRORIST ACTIVITIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 14, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

Serial No. 107–17

(
COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman

BOB STUMP, Arizona

MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

STEPHEN E. BUYER, Indiana

JACK QUINN, New York

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

HOWARD P. (BUCK) MCKEON, California

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

LANE EVANS, Illinois

BOB FILNER, California

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas

CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas

RONNIE SHOWS, Mississippi

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

BARON P. HILL, Indiana

TOM UDALL, New Mexico

PATRICK E. RYAN, Chief Counsel and Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

STEPHEN E. BUYER, Indiana, Chairman

BOB STUMP, Arizona

MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

BARON P. HILL, Indiana

TOM UDALL, New Mexico

(II)
(III)

C O N T E N T S

November 14, 2001

Page

The Need to Develop Education and Training Programs on the Medical Responses to the Consequences of Terrorist Activities ......................................... 1

OPENING STATEMENTS

Chairman Buyer ...................................................................................................... 1

Prepared statement of Chairman Buyer ........................................................ 69

Closing statement of Chairman Buyer ........................................................... 71

Hon. Julia Carson .................................................................................................... 4

Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, Full Committee on Veterans’ Affairs .. 6

Hon. Lane Evans, Ranking Democratic Member, Full Committee on Veterans’

Affairs .................................................................................................................... 8

Hon. Baron P. Hill ................................................................................................... 22

Hon. Vic Snyder ....................................................................................................... 25

WITNESSES

Blaser, Martin J., M.D., Professor and Chairman, Department of Medicine,

NYU School of Medicine ...................................................................................... 63

Prepared statement of Dr. Blaser, with attachment ..................................... 109

Cohen, Jordan J., M.D., President, American Association of Medical Colleges . 60

Prepared statement of Dr. Cohen ................................................................... 104

Cooksey, Hon. John, a Representative in Congress from the State of Louisiana ......................................................................................................................... 9

Eisold, John F., Attending Physician to Congress, Rear Admiral, United

States Navy Medical Corps ................................................................................. 11

Prepared statement of Adm. Eisold ................................................................ 72

Hemming, Val G., M.D., Dean, F. Edward He ́bert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Department of Defense .. 42

Prepared statement of Dr. Hemming .............................................................. 87

Hill, J. Edward, M.D., Chairman-elect of the Board of Trustees, American

Medical Association .............................................................................................. 58

Prepared statement of Dr. Hill ........................................................................ 89

Matcha, Susan J., M.D., Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser

Permanente ........................................................................................................... 32

Prepared statement of Dr. Matcha ................................................................. 78

Murphy, Frances M., M.D., Deputy Under Secretary for Health, Veterans

Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, accompanied by

Susan Mather, M.D., Chief Officer, Public Health and Environmental Hazards, Veterans Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs,

and Kenneth H. Mizrach, Director, VA New Jersey Health Care System,

Veterans Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs ................. 40

Prepared statement of Dr. Murphy ................................................................. 82

Omenaca, Carlos, M.D., Miami Heart Center, Miami Florida ............................. 29

Prepared statement of Dr. Omenaca .............................................................. 75

Shaw, Jr., E. Clay, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida ..... 28

Weldon, Hon. Dave, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida .... 13

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Written committee questions and their responses:

Chairman Buyer to Adm. John Eisold ............................................................ 121

Chairman Buyer to Dr. Carlos Omenaca ....................................................... 122
Page

IV

Written committee questions and their responses—Continued

Chairman Buyer to Dr. Susan Matcha ........................................................... 124

Congresswoman Carson to Dr. Susan Matcha ............................................... 126

Congresswoman Carson to Dr. Frances Murphy ........................................... 126

Congresswoman Carson to Mr. Kenneth Mizrach ......................................... 131

Chairman Buyer to Dr. Val Hemming ............................................................ 134

Chairman Buyer to Dr. Jordan Cohen ............................................................ 138

Congresswoman Carson to Dr. Jordan Cohen ............................................... 140

Congresswoman Carson to Dr. Martin Blaser ............................................... 141

Congressman Evans to Dr. Martin Blaser ..................................................... 142
(1)

THE NEED TO DEVELOP EDUCATION AND

TRAINING PROGRAMS ON THE MEDICAL

RESPONSES TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF

TERRORIST ACTIVITIES

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2001

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS, Washington, DC

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

334, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Stephen E. Buyer (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Buyer, Carson, and Hill.

Also present: Represenatatives Smith, Evans, Snyder, and Shaw.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN BUYER

Mr. BUYER. This hearing will come to order.

This is the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the

Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Good morning.

Today’s hearing will examine a very important question which

affects not only those of us in this room, but all Americans.

We must answer the fundamental question: Is the U.S. medical

community prepared for biological, chemical, and radiological acts

of terrorism?

Since September 11th, our country has been in a constant state

of fear and anxiety of not only flying the so-called friendly skies,

but also opening our mail.

We are fighting a two-front war, not only here in America, but

also abroad. It is clear our health care providers are not resourced

or trained with the proper tools to detect, diagnose, and treat casualties in the face of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons.

The purpose of this hearing is to review the critical roles that the

VA and DOD should play in providing our Nation’s medical students and the current health care professionals with the education

and training programs necessary to respond to terrorist activities.

Before I continue with my statement, I would like to extend a

warm welcome to our distinguished panelists.

I know Adm. Eisold is presently here, and we are waiting on two

members, Dave Weldon of Florida and John Cooksey of Louisiana.

I would like to extend a special welcome to Adm. Eisold, who is

our Attending Physician to Congress.
2

Since the Office of the Attending Physician was established in

1928, this will be the first time someone in your position, Adm.

Eisold, will testify before a House committee or a Senate committee.

However, given the importance of the subject matter of this hearing, and your personal and professional interests over these last

weeks, I know it is critically important and the perspective that

you have to share with us on this critical subject will be

substantive.

I also would like to recognize two physicians who are on the front

lines in this medical war on terrorism.

First is Dr. Susan Matcha, who diagnosed and treated two employees at a Washington, DC area Postal facility who contracted

the anthrax virus.

Second is Dr. Carlos Omenaca, who diagnosed and successfully

treated one of the first victims of inhalation anthrax in the Miami,

FL area.

A welcome should also be extended to the VA Deputy Under Secretary for Health, Dr. Fran Murphy, and her staff.

Dr. Val Hemming, the Dean of F. Edward He ́bert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

(USUHS).

Dr. Edward Hill of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Jordan Cohen of the American Association of Medical

Colleges.

Dr. Martin Blaser of New York University.

They are all here today because this hearing will provide us, as

well as the American public, with information crucial to the new

war on terrorism.

Your testimony will help the subcommittee better understand the

alleged shortcomings of the medical community’s educational institutions and how the VA and DOD can assist and coordinate expertise to help a new generation of doctors detect, diagnose, and treat

these new threats to public health.

Experts have been warning us for years that our health care system is not prepared for a chemical, biological, and radiological

event that terrorists or otherwise.

I would like to share with you a foretelling statement made by

Dr. Tara O’Toole in 1999. Dr. O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Center

for Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said, I quote,

‘‘Media coverage of modern epidemics will have a profound influence on the outcome of response efforts should a biological attack

occur. The number of people who were ill and in need of hospital

care would likely be exceeded by the individuals seeking care, because they were fearful of being sick.’’

And I believe that this was the public response to the recent anthrax attacks. I firmly believe that physicians and the entire health

care community must be educated about the potentially devastating consequences of terrorism and the critical role that health care

providers must play in addressing such attacks.

It is essential that health care providers can recognize the basic

clinical manifestations and treatment of diseases caused by these

weapons of mass destruction.
3

Our civilian health care system must develop effective and practical responses to these deadly weapons. They must do this through

planning, training, and preparation for further terrorist attacks.

This is why I introduced H.R. 3254, the Medical Education for

National Defense in the 21st Century.

I would like to thank the Chairman of our Full Committee, Chris

Smith, and Lane Evans, Ranking Democratic Member, Michael

Bilirakis, the Committee’s Vice Chairman, Cliff Stearns, Vice

Chairman of the Health Subcommittee and John McHugh, the

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, and this

subcommittee’s ranking member, Vic Snyder.

This legislation proposes to create a partnership between the VA

and DOD and tasks these two agencies to develop and disseminate

a program to both our current medical professionals and current

medical students in the Nation’s medical schools.

We already have a nexus in place between the medical universities, where there is a VA hospital in close proximity, and this is

what we plan to tap into.

The combination of the DOD’s expertise in the field of treating

casualties resulting from unconventional attack and the VA’s infrastructure of 171 medical centers, 800 clinics, satellite broadcasting

capabilities, and a preexisting affiliation with 80 medical schools,

will enable the current and future medical professionals in this entire country to become knowledgeable and medically competent in

the treatment of casualties of weapons of mass destruction.

We cannot afford to assume that our country will never have to

experience a massive biological, chemical, or radiological attack.

We must act to ensure that if the worst of our fears are realized,

our medical professionals will be ready and able to effectively respond to such fallout.

An American Association of American Colleges Reporter article

in December 1998 quotes an issue of military medicine that says

‘‘Even military physicians, who should be more prepared than civilian doctors, aren’t sure about their capability of handling such a

situation.’’

The June 1998 issue of Military Medicine reported that only 19

percent of military physicians were confident about providing care

in a ‘‘NBC’’ situation.

The majority of those confident few, or 53 percent, were USUHS

graduates.

And, Dean, if you have any comments on that article, I would appreciate that.

It is not the intent of this legislation to create a new community

standard of practice. We must recognize that diseases, such as

smallpox, botulism, and the plague are not normally seen or treated by clinicians around the country.

I noticed this morning in the press that one of the families, a

postal worker, has already obtained a lawyer and filed suit over

that death.

The physicians all across the country, family physicians, aren’t

looking for anthrax, they are not looking for botulism, smallpox,

and that type of thing.

So I just want to make sure that, and be on the record as far

as legislative intent, I am not interested in setting new community
4

standards here with regard to health care, nor am I trying to lay

a groundwork for trial lawyers out there.

I think it is extremely important that we disseminate the expertise that we have so that the doctors, in their diagnostic analysis,

begin to think about other things than what they normally consider

in their family practices.

At this time, I will turn to Ms. Carson, the ranking member, for

any comments that she may have.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JULIA CARSON

Ms. CARSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to

our distinguished guests and witnesses.

The stated purpose of this hearing is to address the need to educate this Nation’s medical students and current health professionals to diagnose and treat casualties when weapons of mass destruction have been used.

There may be a missing element hidden somewhere in that approach, because grasping the scope of this particular problem is an

untidy task.

A weapon of mass destruction can take many forms. The aircraft

that struck the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon were

weapons of mass destruction in every sense.

Yet, they were not nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical,

in the sense that I think we want to capture at this hearing.

If we are concerned about NBC agents, nuclear, biological, and

chemical agents, one would hope to find that the DOD, in its preparation of medical personnel for conflict in dirty environments, is

ready to recognize and treat the effects of NBC warfare.

Of course, the employment of NBC agents may not be a terrorist

act in armed conflict. It may be part of the conflict.

Hearing testimony limiting the debate to only medical emergencies that spring from terrorist attacks may be unnecessarily restrictive.

Blistering of the skin, for example, can occur from contact with

harsh chemicals. That may be the result of accident or terrorist.

Similarly, contact with some harmful biological substances can

spring from nature, accident, warfare, or terrorism.

The treatment, when the numbers of casualties are low, would

be essentially the same for all.

But I agree that the first step is recognition and diagnosis.

For this reason, Mr. Chairman, I like your recently introduced

bill, H.R. 3254. Clearly, your heart is in the right place with this

piece of legislation.

However, I would broaden the scope of the training in some regards and not restrict it to events caused by terrorism.

I would think it important to be open in that regard. If, for instance, salmonella is a natural agent, for example, it needs to be

recognized, reported and treated. Patterns need to be determined.

In this way, you can determine if the outbreak of the disease is

from a truckload of unwashed vegetables, a tainted container of

salad dressing, or a covert terrorism attack, as occurred a few

years ago in Oregon.
5

We wholeheartedly agree on the need to sharpen diagnostic skills

to recognize and treat not only the old scourges, but emerging

scourges, as well.

Our subcommittee’s jurisdiction in this regard is married to the

VA and those Executive Branch agencies impacted by the VA’s socalled fourth mission.

The most direct interface in this regard, because of Public Law

97–174, is the DOD. I think it is shortsighted to limit any accelerated cooperative training program to only the VA and the DOD.

I would speculate that the DOD is currently better prepared at

the present for the full spectrum of NBC problems than are their

non-DOD counterparts.

Medical personnel nationwide in both public health and in the

private sector must also hone those NBC diagnostic skills. This includes the VA.

Mr. Chairman, if it is your position that the DOD could be an

excellent mentor, having already established medical training curricula in this area, I would tend to agree.

Mr. Chairman, I am concerned whenever any single agency or

pair of agencies attempt to react to a problem of national impact

and national importance alone when there could be a greater collective pool of information.

The wider you cast your net of trained observers, the more data

points you are likely to collect. It would be more likely that the VA

and DOD together could recognize patterns and disease outbreaks

than could the VA alone.

Similarly, enhancing the scope of data collectors and reporting

physicians to the private sector would enhance the ability of epidemiologists to spot patterns.

And to use my previous example, once the cases of salmonella

begin cropping up at different locations, someone has to recognize

that those patterns are arising.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, let me expand our nets not only to enhance the coordination between the DOD and the VA, but also encourage the DOD and the VA to coordinate and cooperate with

other agencies in all levels of government to assure that we are collecting and reporting useful information.

Too often, we try to manage one agency and fix a broad scale

problem. We need to coordinate to speak and plan across the full

spectrum.

Terrorism speaks to a public at risk. By enhancing coordination,

we reduce those risks. If someone had told the postal equipment repair people in Indianapolis that they would soon receive postal

equipment from the east that had been contaminated by anthrax,

there would have been far less disruption in my district.

Coordinate, cooperate, and think.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you for your constructive comments.

Before I yield to other members for comments, I will put this in

perspective for everyone.

The legislation that I introduced and the purpose of this hearing

is a piece of a larger picture. Kennedy-Frist introduced a bill on the

Senate side with regard to bioterrorism.

The Commerce Committee, which I also sit on, and the Health

Subcommittee, we are putting together a legislative package that
6

will address not only bioterrorism, but, also, chemical and radiological agents.

It is a comprehensive bill and what we are discussing here today

is a piece of that legislation.

So this is not just isolated.

The chairman of the full committee, Mr. Smith.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH,

CHAIRMAN, FULL COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

thank you for convening this very important hearing and I want

to commend you for your leadership not only on this panel, but on

national security matters, as well, throughout the entirety of your

career, and we thank you for that.

It is now just about 2 months since the September 11 attacks

that have forever changed the world that we live in.

The pain and the suffering and the individual and collective grief

of that horrific day was still tender when we were attacked once

again, this time through our postal system by way of anthrax.

My congressional district includes the city of Trenton and Hamilton Township, New Jersey, where the three known anthrax letters

originated.

So I am especially interested in hearing from today’s witnesses

what their recommendations in shaping national policy are to more

quickly and effectively detect and, if necessary, respond to any future attacks.

This was the first time our Nation has ever experienced bioterrorism, but I fear it will not be the last. It is a matter of when

and not if, because there are so many cruel people out there who

are willing to use these despicable means to kill.

That is why I want to especially, again, commend Chairman

Buyer for holding today’s hearing and for introducing H.R. 3254,

the Medical Education for National Defense in the 21st Century

Act.

This legislation, which I am proud to co-sponsor, establishes a

joint VA-DOD program for educating our Nation’s health care professionals to detect, diagnose, and treat victims of biological, chemical, and radiological terrorism.

As Chairman Buyer pointed out, and I can attest from my direct

experience relating to those attacks in New Jersey, there is a dangerous and enormous gap in our medical knowledge that has to be

filled.

We need to maximize the national resources that already exist,

such as the Department of Defense’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the VA’s extensive health care

infrastructure.

As many of you already know, the VA has already been tasked

with the job of training public and private medical center personnel

in responding to biological, chemical, or radiological events under

the National Medical Disaster System.

H.R. 3254 is another logical step in that direction.

Let me also point out that I have introduced legislation, H.R.

3253, the National Medical Emergency Preparedness Act of 2000,

which addresses another important aspect of this problem, that of
7

increasing the knowledge base of biological, chemical, and radiological hazards.

I was amazed, when we were hit with this terrible anthrax, that

there was no real clear protocol, there was no predictability as to

how this had to be answered.

When do you close a building? What kind of testing do you do?

Who is in charge?

We had our head of the health department, working with CDC

and others, and it was not clear who actually was the quarterback,

if you will.

Those kinds of protocols need to be established and form a base,

not a ceiling. Obviously, they could be added to, but to form a base,

so that we know with some predictability and with some uniformity

what happens if smallpox or some other terrible hazard is

unleashed.

H.R. 3253 will create four new medical preparedness centers to

research and develop methods of detection, diagnosis, vaccination,

protection, and treatment for these threats.

These centers would serve both as direct research centers, as

well as coordinating centers for ongoing and new research at other

government agencies and research facilities.

Let me also point out to my colleagues that there is ample precedent and experience within the VA for providing them with this

new or expanded mission.

Through their extensive medical research programs, the VA already has expertise in diagnosing and treating viral diseases with

devastating health consequences, such as HIV and Hepatitis C.

Furthermore, the VA currently operates two war related illness

centers tasked with developing specialized treatments for those illnesses and injuries particular to war time.

In essence, these new centers would similarly study those illnesses and injuries most likely to come from a terrorist attack

using a weapon of mass destruction.

I would also like to recognize at this point Ken Mizrach, the Director of New Jersey’s VA Health Care, who will be testifying later

on in the hearing.

Ken was an invaluable aid and help in helping to secure antibiotics for the postal workers who were potentially exposed to anthrax in New Jersey.

Just to recap, briefly. Around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, October 23, in

the heat of the anthrax crisis, my office received a panic phone call,

informing us that the hospital that had been tasked with treating

postal employees would run out of Cipro within 24 hours, leaving

hundreds of postal workers without access to this prescribed

medication.

Immediately, I called Ken, who offered his full assistance and cooperation, without any hesitation.

For the next 3-plus hours, Ken worked the phones, and I, I

worked the phones, as well, but he was able to make contacts with

VA and others.

Finally, we had it set, or he had it set to bring Cipro, some

50,000 tablets, from a VA cache out in Illinois. It would have been

there the next day, as those postal employees showed up for their

medication.
8

But, thankfully, other phone calls he made finally yielded the

CDC to bring forward the 50,000, and I was amazed that we had

to do this. Why wasn’t this just a given?

In conversations that I have had with the Postmaster General,

in his office 2 weeks ago, he told me they had a similar incident

here, where 250 or so postal workers went to the place where the

medication was to be disseminated, only to find there were no bags

of Cipro available.

They went back on the bus, very discouraged and worried for an

additional 24 hours, until they got it.

Again, I want to thank Ken for his work and I do think the VA

is a much under-utilized asset in this entire endeavor, and, hopefully, all of the policy-makers, not just on this committee, but our

new head of the Home Land Security, Tom Ridge, who used to

serve on this committee and others, will realize they need to use

this great asset. It is our fourth mission.

Again, I want to thank the Chairman for having this important

hearing, and yield back.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Evans.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LANE EVANS, RANKING DEMOCRATIC MEMBER, FULL COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’

AFFAIRS

Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Terror has reached the home front, and we must be prepared.

Building a more robust medical capacity to deal with domestic terrorism is one item we can afford.

Our medical people must recognize biological, chemical, and radiological agents and their effects. They must be able to treat these

medical problems that result from that exposure, and they must report their findings so that patterns, if present, can be detected.

It is fine if they ask, ‘‘Was this terrorism,’’ but in the initial

stages, that question may be overshadowed by the immediate need

to recognize, report, and treat the problems caused by these agents.

Because the problem may not be readily apparent, it may take

days or weeks to determine that the cause was terrorism, in fact.

Enhancing medical training in clinics, clinician understanding is

an essential step to treat the consequences of terrorist attacks that

employ NBC agents.

With more robust training in the medical schools, physicians will

be better prepared. As a result of enhanced training and ability to

recognize, treat, and report, surveillance will be enhanced, surveillance not only for the problems springing from those specified

agents, but surveillance for infectious diseases, as well.

This will strengthen our medical capacity nationwide.

Just two other points I would like to raise. We worked together

on the Persian Gulf War issue, of whether agents had been used

against our troops, and that was a long, tough battle to follow

through on, but I respect you for leading that charge and I think

it gives us a better base of information now that we consider the

most recent crisis.

I think the Admiral deserves a round of applause for the work

that he has done, and all his staff, during this very difficult period.
9

Admiral, we salute you and thank you very much for helping us

out through this tough time.

I yield back.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Mr. Hill?

Dr. Snyder, I would like to thank you and your colleagues, as the

original co-sponsor of the legislation, as the ranking member, along

with John McHugh. And to all the witnesses, this is how we make

law. We bring in the experts. We lay out a marker. You tell us

what you think about it, give us your expertise. We go back and

we rework legislation. That doesn’t mean we have all the answers,

and your expertise will be very helpful to us as we try to improve

public health.

I now call our first panel, and we will ask for Dr. Cooksey.

STATEMENTS OF HON. JOHN COOKSEY, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA; HON. DAVE

WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE

STATE OF FLORIDA; AND JOHN F. EISOLD, ATTENDING PHYSICIAN TO CONGRESS, REAR ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES

NAVY MEDICAL CORPS

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN COOKSEY

Dr. COOKSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is good to be back.

I was a former member of this committee in my first term, and it

is a very important committee. You do great work.

I want to open up by saying that health care, medical education,

medical treatment is really an emphasis of the times that the education is being rendered.

When I was in medical school in the 1960s, the emphasis was on

cancer, heart disease, infectious disease. I was in a city in New Orleans where both medical schools had schools of tropical medicine,

because of our proximity to the Central and South American area,

where they have a lot of infectious diseases.

When I was in the Air Force, we dealt with nuclear accidents,

not the bombing itself, but just the accident that could occur if

someone let a nuclear weapon roll out of the back of a truck or an

airplane, and it was called a broken arrow.

I happened to be on the IG team the last 6 months I was in the

Air Force, and I was at a base in southern California, and a former

medical student, a classmate of mine was there, and I failed him

and his whole organization because they did not meet the criteria

for helping a broken arrow, and he is still mad at me about it.

But those were the times that we dealt with. The times are different. The age of innocence for the United States and the rest of

the world in regard to terrorism is over.

In 1980, I was in Europe doing some surgery lectures in the U.K.

and in Germany and I was struck by the fact that I went through

the airport there and I saw armed guards with machine guns.

It took us 20 years before our terrorism reached the point and

today we have armed guards with machine guns.

Well, what about medical education? What is the emphasis of the

time for the 21st Century?
10

I feel that your legislation is on the leading edge of the times,

and I think it is very germane legislation. I think it could be very

important legislation.

The emphasis now will have to be on weapons of mass destruction, of course, bioterrorism.

We have entities and agencies within government that are in a

position to do this and have already made plans to do these. I visited the CDC last Tuesday. I understand that another political figure was there 2 days later, the President of the United States, the

Commander in Chief.

But they do great things at the CDC in Atlanta and they actually

have plans, contingency plans, and yet I feel that they could and

should and will be an important factor in our future plans in dealing with weapons of mass destruction.

But what about VA hospitals? What about VA education? The

two medical schools that are in New Orleans and the medical

schools all over the country, in most cases, have a VA hospital, a

Veterans’ hospital in proximity of those medical schools.

The VA hospitals provide a major part of the educational process

that medical students learn when they are in these medical

schools, and yet the military, Department of Defense VA hospitals,

provide something extra that we often do not get in medical school.

This goes back to the history of military medicine. As bad as

wars are, there is usually something good that comes out of wars

and there is some learning that is done out of each war.

If you go back to Napoleon’s time, it was Napoleon’s medical personnel, his physicians and surgeons who learned the importance of

debreed, we call it debreedment, and if someone gets a wound, we

now clean up that wound.

I never did this while I was in the Air Force. When I was working in East Africa, I helped take care of a person that stepped on

a land mine, and that is a cruel weapon, and you spend a lot of

your time debreeding what is left of the limbs and the extremities

and the face after a land mine injury.

The great scourge of the Civil War was similar injuries and

there, in that war, there were a lot of amputations done, some that

were necessary, some that maybe were not necessary, but that was

something that came out of the Civil War.

World War I, there were more people that died in that time period from influenza, the great influenza epidemic of that period

than died from World War I.

World War II, the great medicine that came out of that was penicillin. It was the first really good medicine.

The Vietnam War, when I was in the Air Force, when I was in

the military, when Dr. Snyder was in the military, he was a Marine then and the Marines are the guys that eat bullets, not us Air

Force guys.

But the thing that came out of there, from a health care standpoint, was triage and treatment of trauma.

Well, I think it is very appropriate that your legislation be directed at this current problem of our times, which is weapons of

mass destruction.

I think, however, that I would urge you, as you consider this legislation, to do everything you can to bring all of the existing agen-
11

cies and organizations that are in place to coordinate their efforts,

and I think that it is perfectly appropriate that, as your legislation

directs, that the Department of Defense, the Uniformed Services

University of the Health Sciences, which is basically military for

soldiers, be actively involved in this.

And this is not just because of the historical tradition, but it is

because people in uniform have to have this.

But bring in the CDC, bring in the medical specialities, bring in

the AMA, and bring in all the wonderful resources we have in this

country, and we can face the scourge of our time, which is terrorism, bioterrorism, weapons of mass destruction that are inflicted

upon civilians and military people, as well.

So I compliment you on your legislation. I think it is germane,

it is important, and, most importantly, it will save lives.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Dr. Cooksey. Adm. Eisold.

STATEMENT OF JOHN F. EISOLD

Adm. Eisold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Dr. John F. Eisold,

Rear Admiral, Medical Corps, United States Navy, Attending Physician to Congress.

On October 15, 2001, my office, along with the Capitol Police, responded to an anthrax incident in Senator Daschle’s office.

Thank you for inviting me to share with you some of my

thoughts about our response and the importance of education and

training in consequence management.

Issues regarding weapons of mass destruction do not merely involve security issues with investigative and prosecutorial components.

They are true medical events that require specific clinical response that must be taught, learned, and practiced.

It is no different than learning how to approach other medical

conditions, such as heart disease.

The management of WMD events occurs at several levels, which

include preparation, first response, public health response, and individual provider response.

While each individual level requires a different knowledge base,

a basic level of understanding is required by everybody.

Let me briefly review each level.

My office provides the first responses for all medical emergencies

and WMD events on Capitol Hill. To be ready for such an event

as the October 15 anthrax incident, my personnel have had regular

training in responding to chemical and biological terrorist events.

This training has been done in coordination with the Capital

Police.

In addition, we had an initial cache of medicine readily available

to use in such an event. My office also had adequate testing supplies and had already identified a reference lab capable of processing samples.

Furthermore, relationships were in place to be able to tap into

a full Federal or local health department response should backup

have been required.
12

This was our state of readiness on October 15. In a situation

where an incident can rapidly overwhelm the resources of an individual clinic, such as mine, rapid reinforcements are necessary.

Within a day, we began to coordinate our efforts with Federal resources. Soon, the Office of Emergency preparedness, under the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease

control, the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense

personnel from all uniformed services, and multiple additional government labs were available for consequence management.

The Commissioner of Health for the District of Columbia offered

assistance on the first day of the incident. I indicated that I would

rely on the Federal response, not knowing what was about to befall

the District.

Overall, the support I got was immediate, adequate, and reflected a superb level of preparedness on behalf of the Federal Government and the Department of Defense.

This is the standard for which state and local governments

should strive.

Health care providers must acquire the knowledge to be able to

handle the medical consequences of WMD incidents. Victims will

present in offices and emergency rooms for treatment.

Signs and symptoms need to be recognized, diagnoses need to be

made, and proper protocols and algorithms need to be employed to

ensure quality and expeditious care.

Although the body of knowledge exists and many guidelines already are available, the importance of including this knowledge in

continuing medical education has been lacking until now.

My experience with the October 15 anthrax incident has been

gratifying with respect to the professional way in which local and

distant providers responded.

They wanted timely information and up-to-date, up-to-minute

guidance. They wanted to share with each other and learn from our

experience.

Numerous phone calls and a daily District-wide conference call

addressed many probing issues, as providers struggled to provide

their patients with the best medical care.

In fact, on October 27, I spoke at an infectious disease symposium on bioterrorism, with over 400 people in attendance.

The events surrounding the October 15 incident demonstrated

pressing need for heightened awareness within the medical community.

Health care providers throughout the country have proven to be

eager self-starters, who will learn if given the tools and opportunity.

I have been involved with medical education throughout my career, now serving in my 25th year as a member of the teaching faculty at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

(USUHS).

WMD issues have been a part of the medical curriculum at

USUHS and the curriculum provides a template for our Nation’s

medical schools and graduate medical institutions.

The entire medical community must take the lead in the development of such training, however. Medical curricula, rigid as they
13

can be, follow tried and true academic principles that respond to

the needs in the community.

For instance, when I was in training, alternative medicine, nutrition, genetic engineering, et cetera, were not in my medical school

curriculum, but they are now.

When a valid medical training need is identified, the professional

organizations that guide medical training, like the AMA, the American Association of Medical Colleges, numerous specialty societies,

the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education, the Liaison Committee for Medical Education, resident review committees,

et cetera, will find ways to incorporate such training into standard

curricula.

Medical educators and health care providers are dedicated professionals who will do the right thing and accomplish this vital

task, I am sure.

In summary, the October 15 anthrax incident on Capitol Hill

highlighted the need for training in WMD threats for the average

practitioner.

I am sure there is a need for many local health departments and

first responders to look at their preparation, as well.

These WMD issues are daunting, but manageable, with proper

training.

Clearly, there is a need for a partnership between the medical

community and Federal, state, and local agencies. It is an important task ahead and I hope that the proper balance can be found.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Adm. Eisold appears on p. 72.]

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Dr. Weldon.

STATEMENT OF HON. DAVE WELDON

Dr. WELDON. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me

here to speak. and I want to commend you on the work you did in

drafting this bill, and I also want to commend the gentleman from

Arkansas, Mr. Snyder.

I have instructed my staff to sign me onto the bill. I think it is

a very good legislative product.

I additionally want to associate myself with the remarks of Mr.

Evans of Illinois, commending the House Attending Physician on

the work he did, and I want to just add to that the tremendous

help of Dr. Greg Martin and his work. He is the Chief of Infectious

Disease at Bethesda.

I know when I was getting a lot of questions from colleagues in

the House about these issues, he was very helpful to me as a resource that I could go to and then disseminate information to members of the House.

I attended medical school at the State University of New York

at Buffalo, School of Medicine. The VA Medical Center is right

across the street.

I did a fair amount of my training there at the VA Medical Center. This is not unique throughout the United States. You highlighted this issue in your opening comments.

There is an intimate relationship between the VA system and

medical education throughout the United States, and that is why

I think the VA can be used as a resource by the Federal Govern-
14

ment to get information out to the medical profession on the critical issues of nuclear and biological and chemical terrorist attacks.

I attended medical school on a health profession scholarship with

the United States Army and did my internship and residency at

Letterman Army Medical Center.

I received some nuclear, biological, chemical, we called it NBC

training while I was on active duty, and I must say that the students—and this was back in the early 1980s, as the first graduating class from the Uniformed Services University of the Health

Sciences (USUHS) was just entering their residency, and I did my

residency with some of them.

And the training that they received at USUHS, I thought, was

very, very helpful to the mission of the military when I was on active duty. They clearly had a better knowledge base of these kinds

of issues.

So their ability to export the information that they have, I think,

could prove to be very, very useful.

When I left the Army, I went into private practice and I did primary care, but I was in large medical group and we had one infectious disease specialist in the group, and I was paired up with him

on the call schedule and I covered him on weekends.

So by virtue of that, I ended up having to cover him when he was

on vacation and every other weekend. So I ended up having to become somewhat conversant in that specialty arena, reading the infectious disease literature.

Now, at that time, most of the things we were dealing with was

AIDS and certainly it wasn’t this kind of issue.

But nonetheless, I think I can bring a little bit of perspective to

this whole discussion that you are going down.

As a health care professional, as a physician, as somebody who

has some experience practicing infectious disease and primary care,

and I would say, basically, this.

I think your bill, as drafted, is a fairly good product. The only

constructive thing that I would add is the possibility of you bringing in the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Veterans

Affairs, I would consider bringing HHS in.

They have a lot of expertise in this arena. Training medical students and residents I don’t believe is going to be adequate. We are

going to need to train practicing physicians out there and that is

where I think the agencies under HHS can be helpful, bringing

some of the resources they have to bear to get practicing physicians

trained.

I would just add a couple of additional points. Primary care providers, the focus should be on early recognition and management

should be focused, I think, particularly, in the case of biologicals,

to specialists in infectious disease.

A good example, as I understand, one of the early cases that

came in the hospital down in south Florida, it was, I believe, a primary care physician who actually admitted the patient, recognized

that he had a pneumonia, and then an infectious disease consultant was actually called in, and that is the kind of scenario you

could see playing out in some of these cases, where a primary care

provider is the one sort of on the front line and the specialist is

the one who is actually following up on it.
15

With that, I will close my opening comments, and I would be

very happy to field any questions, if any of you have any for me.

Thank you very much.

Mr. BUYER. Adm. Eisold, you mentioned that a basic level of understanding is required by everyone in the medical field.

Let me say this to the three witnesses. What we are trying to

envision here is something that sometimes causes a paralysis.

As Americans, we can focus on something at the moment and we

can be very good, but then when there is a calm, we relax ourselves.

We can focus and fight a war and then when the war is over, we

think we can disarm and things are going to be just fine and we

go do something else.

The vision I have of this is that the military health delivery system always must have the focus on military medical preparedness.

So as we coordinate this afternoon, we will coordinate with the

Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee,

which is developing this comprehensive legislation, we will coordinate, and I take your recommendations to heart.

We are coordinating with Secretary Thompson of HHS, with Dr.

Don Henderson, who is the director of the newly created Office of

Public Health Preparedness, but there is something about having

DOD and the VA work with those 80 teaching hospitals that are

out there.

Dr. Weldon or Dr. Cooksey, have you been through any of these

teaching hospitals? Do you have some expertise that you can share

with us?

Dr. WELDON. I have, yes. I think you are absolutely right, and

I was alluding to that in the beginning of my opening comments.

I can just hearken back to my medical training in Buffalo. The

VA hospital was right across the street. It was huge, and a substantial portion of the faculty at the medical school had staff positions at the VA.

The way I see it is the DOD has a lot of the expertise and you

can take the knowledge and expertise in the DOD and help move

it into the VA system, and through the VA system to you have the

ability to get it out throughout the medical profession.

I could very easily see, at most of the VA Medical Centers, a

symposium being put on in the next 6 to 12 months, where physicians in the community will be able to come in and attend a course,

get continuing medical education credits for it, and get basic training on the whole gamut of issues.

In the case of primary care providers, they need to be able to recognize things like tularemia, anthrax, smallpox, diseases they have

never seen, and they need to be able to recognize it in a very early

stage.

I think there has to be more sophisticated training for infectious

disease specialists and public health officials in how you manage

these diseases as people progress through the normal cycle of the

disease and the public health response, but the VA, I think, is extremely well positioned to play a very, very critical role.

If you want to quickly get people educated, the VA, coordinating

with America’s existing medical colleges, they can educate a lot of

people very, very quickly on these issues.
16

Dr. COOKSEY. Let me respond to your question, too.

As a practical matter, the hospitals, the civilian hospitals in this

country, the civilian health care, is going to be focused on the diseases that patients come in with, and that emphasis is going to be

on something other than patients that are victims of weapons of

mass destruction, bioterrorism, chemical, infectious disease, and so

forth.

So that is the reason we have always had to depend on the

military.

I spent a lot of time on infectious disease when I was in school

in New Orleans and then I worked in East Africa. I was in Sierra

Leone last year on a ward where they had something similar to the

Ebola virus.

When you are exposed to these, you learn to take precautions

and you usually come out without getting an infection, but even

though I have been exposed to a lot of this and been involved in

management of some of these patients, when this problem occurred, we all turned to the military man, to Adm. Eisold, who is

really a physician who had the expertise, and he responded, and

I think the people in the military responded, the CDC.

The public looks to the government for solutions to problems like

this.

So I think that is the reason that this is very appropriate and

it should be done. It is just that as a practical matter, civilian hospitals are not going to put a lot of resources into this when they

have got patients coming in with cancer, high blood pressure, heart

disease.

But we have got to be prepared and I think it is appropriate that

the VA or the DOD do it.

Mr. BUYER. Adm. Eisold, you mentioned a couple of professional

organizations that guide medical training and said that they will

find ways to incorporate such training into a standard curricula.

They have had the knowledge for some time, but they have chosen not to include it into a standard curricula.

We don’t want to mandate curriculum upon the medical schools,

but I do realize that when there is a nexus in place as VAs, as

teaching hospitals, we can be very persuasive to make sure that

that is done.

That is why we are proposing that this become a pillar, the foundation for which other schools could follow.

Your opinion is welcome.

Adm. EISOLD. I would agree with you. The VA does provide a

very good focal point, where you can incorporate into the curriculum probably a lot easier than other places, and work, for example,

with USUHS, which has a curriculum already, and to be able to

get the ball rolling.

In terms of the motivation to study this in medical schools, it is

not as high as it has been on the radar screen, so to speak. It has

not been there until now.

The urgency with which to do it comes from the individual

practitioner.

Again, I was very proud of all the doctors in the local area. They

just want to take care of their patients and if they don’t have the

tools available to them, they can’t.
17

So once they recognize the need, they tend to drive the system

through the professional organizations and on down.

I would like to think that without mandates, that medical schools

will rise to the occasion.

In point of fact, the word WMD just gets in the way of things.

In point of fact, we can legitimize the medical principles that are

involved here. If it is a chemical burn, it is a burn, it is a burn that

is taken care of any other way.

These are infections and infections cause fever and pneumonia,

skin rashes, and so on.

The medicine and the medical principles are not different. It is

just a matter of highlighting a couple of basic principles so that

people are more aware of what the particular diseases are.

But the management principles are unchanged. So I think once

people get over that hump that WMD is something really just associated with the military and think of it as medical issues, we are

away ahead of the game.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Doctor.

Ms. Carson, recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First and foremost, I want to replicate the sentiments in terms

of Adm. Eisold, my high regard and my heartfelt appreciation for

all that you do for the United States Congress.

It is unsurpassed, and I want to personally thank you for being

there.

Number two, when I was going to church on Sunday, this blurb

came over the radio about another office in the Longworth House

Office Building, where my offices are, that had been found to be

positive for anthrax.

My staff keeps asking, ‘‘how secure can we feel?’’ We were out

of Longworth and then we were all cleared to go back in Longworth, and then there were more spores found.

Can you respond to that, please?

Adm. EISOLD. I certainly can respond to that. As you recall, the

Longworth had three offices that had what was felt to be cross-contaminated mail contamination, three offices out of the entire

building.

While those offices were being isolated, accidental contamination

happened to a fourth office. So that I just want to put that in perspective, that that was not something that just all of a sudden happened from some other letter or whatever.

It really was an accidental response from the workers.

But to answer the more fundamental question, once you have

that cross-contamination evidence in the building, is the rest of the

building safe to go into?

I say yes, and I felt that way. That is why I toured the building,

when we reopened the building, and made sure that the places that

were isolated were secure and welcomed everybody else back in the

building.

There is a law of difference between the spill in Tom Daschle’s

office and the things that we are seeing in the post offices in the

local area, and whether it is New Jersey or here, as you tumble

downhill.
18

So that I think that that is where all of us need to be reassured

and follow the science, that here we are 4 weeks out of the incident

here on the Hill and although we tested only 6,000 people here who

turned up negative all over the Hill, there were at least another

10,000 workers on the Hill at that time.

Now, we continue to worry about whether anybody is going to become ill, but at the same time, as time goes by, you do become increasingly comfortable that even though there may be spores

around, the public health risk has significantly decreased.

Ms. CARSON. One other quick question, Adm. Eisold.

I see changes around the Capitol complex, the barriers, security

checks, missing shrubbery, et cetera.

What kind of training is provided to your staff in the event of

a conventional terrorist attack? If you are able to share that with

us.

And in your opinion, should mass casualty care and other conventional medical responses be included in any terrorism response

curriculum?

Adm. EISOLD. Right. I think that when I say WMD, I would include the regular terrorism with explosions and that sort of trauma, as well.

Again, I would indicate that medical school curricula actually is

very good at this in terms of that is your basic triage, your basic

surgical techniques, and that sort of thing, which is already in the

curricula.

So that I am comfortable that that part of it is well spoken to.

It is the local health department response, to a large degree.

But otherwise, I am comfortable about that sort of thing, because

that is good basic surgery, and I would defer to a surgeon.

Ms. CARSON. I wanted to ask Dr. Weldon a question, in the time

that I have left.

Dr. Weldon, the first cases of anthrax exposure and illness were

your home state.

In your opinion, were the lines of communication between the

various Federal, state and local agencies up to the task of recognizing and reporting and treating these cases?

Is your district better prepared for the next WMD terrorist attack?

Dr. WELDON. That is an excellent question. I think, initially, they

were not.

A lot of what has been going on throughout the Nation is learning as we go.

However, once they began to recognize what they were dealing

with, I think they responded extremely well. I think legislation is

needed and any legislative product that we pass out of here, out

of the Congress, should include a significant amount of funding for

some sort of a state block grant, because it ultimately falls to the

local health departments.

As you are probably familiar, in the counties in my Congressional district, we have emergency response centers and they are

geared up to deal with hurricanes, in my case, in Florida, or floods

maybe in other areas.

I think we need to have nuclear, biological, chemical capabilities

in these state offices, in these county offices that we develop.
19

Can I just add a few comments about the Longworth situation?

Anthrax spores are about a half a micron in size. A micron is a

millionth of a meter. A meter is about a yard in size.

An envelope is a weave of cellulose fibers that has sort of like

a basket weave that has gaps that are 50 microns in size.

So those anthrax spores in that letter, in all the letters, the one

that went to New York, the one that went to Florida, and the one

to Daschle’s office, they were able to freely move out of that envelope every time the envelope was touched or manipulated in any

way.

An anthrax spore is almost like a gas. If I had some in this cup

and I took the top off, they can actually start floating out. You just

agitate it a little bit and billions of them can start going in the air.

When they discovered anthrax in the Longworth building, as I

understand it, and the doctor can elaborate on this actually more

than I can, they swabbed these desks and then they had basically

like little four-by-four gauzes and then they put them in a test tube

with some solution, spun it down in the centrifuge, and extracted

fluid out, and then they put it on culture plates, and, in all of these

cases, they got very few colonies.

So it all suggests that there were very, very low levels of anthrax

in those offices and based on my medical knowledge, I am not sure

they actually constitute a health threat.

Very, very small levels of anthrax spores, unless it is actually introduced into an open wound on your skin, does not consist of a significant health threat.

Anthrax exists in the soil. There are certain areas of the country

where it is there. Now, not in the spore form. It is in the bacillus

form in the soil.

I just say all this to reassure you that I believe Adm. Eisold’s office is handling all of this appropriately and the evidence, possibly

even including the anthrax that they are discovering in some of the

other Federal buildings in the area, like the State Department,

could all be cross-contamination from that one heavily laced letter

that went to Senator Daschle’s office.

Now, they need to go through all the other mail and see if there

are other letters and we need to take all the necessary precautions,

but based on the data that I have looked at, the evidence suggests,

at least in the Longworth Building, it was cross-contamination.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Mr. Smith, recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank our very distinguished panel for their excellent

testimony, and the two docs who sit in the House of Representatives are always providing their expertise. I think, a wealth of information, particularly on matters relating to health and medical

science, and today is no exception. So we are very grateful for your

testimony.

Adm. Eisold, I want to thank you especially for your professional,

effective responsive, and, above all, your leadership.

It probably saved, and this really has not been, I think, said

enough, you probably saved, by your preparedness and by your

prompt action, the lives of several Senate staffers.
20

We know certainly from the Brentwood and the Washington experience, where there have been two deaths attributable to inhalation anthrax, thankfully, the inhalation anthrax cases in New Jersey, which were a little bit after down here, they have responded.

But your prompt action, especially since the letter, the Daschle

letter was opened and it became obvious that, there were airborne

particulates and airborne anthrax, probably saved the lives of several staffers.

So for that, you deserve the highest praise and gratitude of everyone who works here and their families.

So, again, I want to thank you especially.

Let me also just ask a couple of very brief questions.

We had a hearing of the full committee about a month ago and

I asked a number of questions then about the whole issue of detection, and the answers were not fully addressed, because I think we

are all in a learning curve here, but recently Congressman Weldon

from Pennsylvania brought in a number of the providers or the

manufacturers of these different detection devices for both chemical

and biological.

One of those, the ruggedized advanced pathogen identification

device, a 50-pound suitcase-sized device that can tell in a matter

of minutes whether or not you’ve got some smallpox or some other

problem in proximity to where the testing is occurring.

We know that anthrax isn’t contagious, but smallpox and a whole

host of other things are, and this could be the precursor and the

harbinger of a lot of other terrible things that could be unleashed.

It seems to me, and I would appreciate your insight on this, that

we need to get into some heavy duty procurement of these kinds

of devices, obviously pick the best of the best, get the best price,

but get them out there in post offices, in buildings, in any site

where there is a high level of risk.

The second question would be in the area of first responders.

Obviously, you and your staff were adequately prepared, but it

seems to me that other agencies, including our Capitol Police, may

not have, or maybe they do, the kind of training, especially when

you have a contagious situation, like smallpox or some other device

or that might be chemical.

The issue of cross-contamination. The CDC in our area said no

problem, there is no cross-contamination, and it seemed to me to

be a no-brainer that if you have an envelope that is filled with this

one micron sized anthrax, that some might be on the outside, some

might bleed through the envelope.

I tried for 2 weeks to get the feeder stations that feed into Hamilton Township checked and I was told repeatedly no problem,

there is no cross-contamination.

Finally, when we got it, after making a big fuss about it, they

found anthrax in four of those downtown stations, and these are

large post offices, obviously, but they feed into the larger Hamilton

facility.

So cross-contamination is something you might want to speak

about.

Finally, two things. Centers of excellence, the bill that I have introduced, if you have any thoughts. Would the VA be a good place
21

to put them, HHS, where? Because it seems to me we need to have

a Manhattan Project type focus.

Vaccinations? Are they something we should be promoting? And

then lessons learned, which basically your testimony is, but if you

could speak to some of that.

Adm. EISOLD. The learning curve is steep right now, and maybe

I will go from the reverse forward.

I think the idea of centers for excellence and a Manhattan

Project is obviously a good idea, and just bring all the parties to

the table and figure out what the right balance is and how to put

that together, because there are a lot of good people who are trying

to think of the same thing and the last thing we need is duplicative

efforts. We just want to get the right job.

The issue of cross-contamination, again, that learning curve went

up real fast, and so that there is no question about that.

The question that we are dealing with now is, and Dr. Weldon

alluded to it, is just how significant is it. How far, once you tumble

down the mail system, is that letter medically significant anymore?

The spores, you are never going to get. They are going to be out

there, to some degree. But at some point in time, they are insignificant.

The question of detection, there is a flurry of activity, as you can

imagine, in terms of research for rapid detection. So that I would

agree with you. Whatever device just needs to be refereed very

well, before we wholesale buy lots of them, but definitely.

And in terms of local training, it goes right down to the county

level. You have to have some sort of a response at the county level

to an event happening in your post office or someplace.

Mr. SMITH. The first responders.

Adm. EISOLD. The first responders. First responders, and right

down your local volunteer.

I would leave the vaccination issue to CDC, because that is a

king-size issue that takes a great deal of thought.

Dr. WELDON. I just want to add a couple of things to what Adm.

Eisold said.

Whenever you start vaccinating large numbers of people, even

low incidence adverse events become much more common because

you are vaccinating large numbers of people.

So if you’ve got a vaccine and only, say, one in 10,000 people has

an adverse event, well, if you go out and vaccinate a million people,

suddenly you are going to have a lot of folks with an adverse event,

and that is the issue you get into when you start talking about

vaccination.

On these rapid detection devices, the main thing that limits

them, they were originally developed for combat applications, the

main thing that limits them, most of them just detect a protein on

the coat of the viral or bacterial particle.

They have to get a lot on them to get a positive. So if you just

have very small quantities in the environment, some of these devices—now, the particular product that was mentioned, it may perform better, but anything we look at in terms of a big Federal effort to go out and buy lots of these detectors, that has to be done

very, very carefully, so that they are used properly and that they

are going to work the way we intend them to work.
22

To just put one of these things in a post office is not going to

work. You are going to have to put it in a place where it is going

to come in contact with mail or it is going to be in very close proximity to mail as it moves through a machine.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Mr. Hill.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BARON P. HILL

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the panel

for coming and, in particular, Adm. Eisold. I want to thank you for

being a common voice in all of this.

I know my staff and myself, quite frankly, on October the 15th

didn’t know what we were dealing with and you provided a very

steady voice and gave us the reassurances we needed, and I want

to thank you for that.

In reading through my notes here and the materials that we

have, I notice that staff has made the comment it has become very

apparent that our health care professionals across the country are

not armed with the proper tools to diagnose and treat suspected exposure to weapons of mass destruction.

Do you agree with that statement?

Adm. EISOLD. I would to that statement, to the effect that they

don’t associate the different types of weapons of mass destruction

with actual clinical principles they already know.

So that it is not that hard for people to adopt their basic medical

principles. They just need to know the vocabulary of weapons of

mass destruction and learn a few extra bacteria in their armamentarium.

So I think it is their unfamiliarity with what they are dealing

with. They actually have the tools at their hand medically to take

care of the issues.

Mr. HILL. Well, what do we need to do then to develop that vocabulary from a Congressional point of view?

Adm. EISOLD. I think it is a multi-leveled approach that begins

with the medical schools. I think the training programs that are in

graduate medical programs and the VA, in particular, play a role

and then continuing medical education.

Physicians are educated throughout their lives, as I say, selfstarters, and they pick up on what is going on in the community.

The chairman indicated before, and he is right, that things kind

of go way up to the top and then they trickle down later on.

So it is a matter of keeping the momentum. It is hot right now,

and I would just as soon not see a further boost, but it still needs

to be in the curriculums.

Mr. HILL. Are you saying it is going to take care of itself, you

think, because of the motivation within the medical community or

do we really need to be doing anything?

Adm. EISOLD. I think you definitely do need to be doing something, yes. There is a lot of motivation to follow, but they need

some leadership, as well.

Mr. HILL. Let me switch gears here, if I might. I have learned

more about chemical weapons and biological weapons than I really

care to know about in the last month.

But a lot of the meetings that I have been in, there are conflicting testimonies.
23

I was in a meeting the other day where so-called experts said

that we should not be taking Cipro, that it is a huge mistake, a

big mistake for us to be taking this.

Do you disagree with that?

Adm. EISOLD. Again, it is strictly a very straightforward medical

issue. When the outbreak began, we did not know what the sensitivity of the bacillus was going to be.

So you take your strongest drug initially until you find out, and

it takes about a week or so until you get what are called MICs,

which give you the minimum concentration of an antibiotic that

will kill the anthrax spore.

Once we found that out, after a week, we switched to

doxycycline. And you are right. There are many misleading conversations about that, but it is very straightforward.

At this time, we have pretty much switched over to doxycycline,

because we know the bug is sensitive to it.

Mr. HILL. In another meeting that had, as a matter of fact, I had

this meeting yesterday, the comment was made that the threat of

chemical attack is greater than the biological attack.

From a medical perspective, without going into the specifics,

what is more practical than another, medically, do you think the

chemical attack is more threatening than a biological attack?

Adm. EISOLD. We know that biological agents, by and large, are

more difficult to engineer and disperse.

The group in Japan that released the gas, the sarin gas in the

subway, they tried eight times to release anthrax. So it is not that

easy.

But there are people smart enough out there to be able to do either biological or chemical.

I personally would not make a distinction between the two in

terms of feeling reassured about one over the other.

Mr. HILL. On the House floor, when you were reassuring us that

things were going to be okay, you made the comment that an anthrax cloud hovering over the City of Washington, DC was not, I

forget your exact words, but was not going to happen, I think was

the intent of your comments.

In one of the meetings that we had, from a so-called expert, he

said that that was entirely possible.

Could you comment on that?

Adm. EISOLD. I think there are some practical aspects to that.

Once you take a cloud of anthrax, it disperses. It becomes less

dense.

The second thing that happens, it is out in the sunlight, which

degrades it. We know that ultraviolet light degrades a bare spore.

The other thing that happens is once you start to get these

things up in the air for long enough, they begin to change their

electrostatic charge. They attract dust. They become something different than they were originally.

So just whipping it out in the air over a city is a lot less practical

than what happened here.

Mr. HILL. I want to get the staff’s question in here, too. So let

me read it.

If the Capitol complex were the target of a biological, chemical,

or radiological dispersal event and became a dirty environment, are
24

you prepared to treat contaminated victims? How? Where? How

would you protect your staff? Do you train in chemically protective

gear, and should you?

Adm. EISOLD. I guess the answer is yes on all those accounts. We

all have protective gear and we work closely with the Capitol

Police.

In a situation like that, they would be essentially the people that

go in the hot zone, keeping medical personnel outside the hot zone

so they can take care of casualties, and we have a very orderly way

of then proceeding to, depending on the size of the events, local decontamination or we tap into the resources around here, whether

it’s the VA, the local hospitals, the civilian hospitals, Hospital Center, G.W., Walter Reed, Bethesda.

And we have a wonderful strike force in Northern Virginia and

a sea berth team with the Marines in Indian Head, Maryland.

So there is a whole coordinated response should something

happen.

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. COOKSEY. Mr. Chairman, could I comment on that?

With all due respect to the concern about Members of Congress

and the staff, I really have full confidence in the people that are

here, led by Adm. Eisold, and there are great medical schools here,

and that will be taken care of.

Our primary responsibility as Members of Congress is to be

concerned about our constituents, and therein lies the greatest

weakness.

When I was at the CDC, they said the biggest problem out there

is that there is a great disparity in the local health units, county

health units.

They said in some cases, for example, in New York, they said

they had found there were people in Manhattan that were top

notch people, they were ready for anything, and yet there are some

other parts of the country that have totally inadequate county

health units.

So if we go back and do anything in Congress, and they suggest that the need was about a half billion dollars, about $500 million

dollars, in funding, Federal funding, that would go back to these

local health units and then the local health units respond to the

state health units and on up.

And we can provide the leadership here in Washington, but we

really need to be concerned about our constituents, because I have

full confidence that those politicians, these politicians, or us politicians are going to take care of ourselves.

But we really need to be concerned about our constituents and

there is a need there to do something, and I think that can dovetail

with your legislation, too.

Mr. BUYER. Mr. Hill, if I may.

Dr. Cooksey, then in this comprehensive bill that we are putting

together in the Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce,

would you concur with Dr. Weldon that we need a block grant

piece?

Dr. COOKSEY. Absolutely. That was the message I got from the

CDC. I think we need to give the CDC about another billion dollars

and about half of that needs to go to rural health units.
25

I would encourage everyone to go down to the CDC. They are

doing great work down there. It is a unit that was set up, it was

originally a malaria treatment unit during World War II, but they

have got great scientists down there and they are doing great

things.

We have got a lot of the entities in this country that can help

solve this problem, and they actually have part of their organization that addresses chemical warfare and some of these other

things, but perhaps your legislation can do a lot toward bringing

this together, to get the right type of coordination and leadership.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Dr. Cooksey. Dr. Snyder, recognized for

5 minutes.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Adm. Eisold, you made

a comment with regard to medical education, which is the focus of

the chairman’s bill, is that medical education, medical schools, VAs

are responsive to changing medical situations.

I know a few days ago, in Little Rock, our medical school infectious disease man put on an interactive televideo conference with

staff, I think, both doctors and lay folks at 30 rural hospitals, and

just to talk about the different infectious agents in this new environment.

One of the specific issues that has come about on this bill is some

have said that the bill ought to not just concentrate on terrorist

potentialities, but just talk about or concentration on all infectious

diseases.

My own inclination is I like the language of the bill that focuses

on potential bioterrorism and other terrorist events.

Do the three of you have any comment about that?

Adm. EISOLD. I think that I would agree with you, that I think

that those words are important. But at the same time, again, as

I mentioned before, the issues we are talking about are just good

basic medicine.

There are just unusual bacteria that we don’t normally think of,

but I think we do need to heighten our awareness and connect it

to terrorism.

It is bioterrorism and I think we ought to be up front about that.

Dr. SNYDER. Another question I want to ask is with regard to

what you just repeated then, again, medical principles.

But it seems to me the value of Mr. Buyer’s bill is to recognize

that, yes, the principles may be the same, but the applications can

be different.

For example, if I have a patient who comes in to see me who is

sick, I am going to assume most patients want to get well.

I used to work the emergency room. If somebody passes out in

public, the ambulance brings them in. If they are alert enough, I

can do a history.

I am going to assume they want to get well. If, in fact, we get

into the situation of a smallpox, suicidal person, whose goal was

sent here to infect as many people as possible, the history is not

going to be reliable.
26

In fact, the person may want to check themselves out of the hospital as soon as possible or lie about why they are starting to break

out, or you take an anthrax and you do an occupational history.

In the past, we have really thought about people involved in livestock and those kind of things. I think now the application of medical principles may be, no, you have to think about political staff.

Not us. Nobody in this room opens the mail, I don’t think. It is

our young staffers that open the mail or people connected with the

media, high profile figures, trying to learn from what has occurred

in the last month.

So while the principles are the same, they have different applications and the textbooks may be out of date in discussing those diseases.

That, to me, seems to be the value of having this, whether it is

the chairman’s bill over here or this subcommittee chairman’s bill

that focuses on bioterrorism and some of these other dimensions of

these bacteria.

Do you have any comments?

Adm. EISOLD. Again, I would agree with you, and that comes

down to having a wider vision when you take your history.

I will just give you one example. Anybody, at this point in time,

who has looked at the Daschle letter would know that that is a letter that you never open.

But that is a process of education. That letter should have been

weeded out down the pike. It has got all the earmarks of something

that you shouldn’t open on your desk.

As I say, the learning curve is steep, but it has to do with personal awareness. And in the providers, personal awareness that the

case presenting to you may have many levels that are not just clinical, but also political, to guide you.

Mr. HILL. Dr. Cooksey, Dr. Weldon, do you all have any thoughts

about the language of the bill that specifically focuses on terrorism

as opposed to all infectious disease agents?

Dr. WELDON. Yes. I believe that if you extend the scope out too

far, it could dilute the ability to get people educated quickly.

I agree with the sentiments that have been expressed that some

of the educational process is going to occur spontaneously.

I think an excellent example is cutaneous anthrax. Vic, you have

gone to enough conferences where you know dermatologists love to

show their slides, and I would imagine that every dermatologist in

America who gives a lecture is going to throw in a spoof or a fooler

and throw up an anthrax cutaneous eruption and ask people what

they think it is.

But in terms of the whole gamut of issues here, recognizing the

early stages of smallpox and all of these other things, I think it is

going to require some very, very focused education and that the

language in the bill is crafted properly.

If I could, I want to just comment on Baron Hill’s question about

the cloud of anthrax issue.

Biologicals, at least as I was briefed, were developed with an intent to disable your opponent in a field of battle. They were not intended to be used against population centers.

The reason for that is it is difficult to do, and I think Adm.

Eisold explained some of that.
27

These terrorists, their intent is to sow terror in our heart and

they have done it fairly effectively by putting a few envelopes in

the mail.

But they are both, in some ways, sophisticated, in some ways,

very crude. They took down the Twin Towers, but they used very

crude methods, knives to hijack airplanes, slamming airplanes into

buildings, and ditto with the anthrax.

They just put it in an envelope and sent it through our postal

system. To disperse anthrax in a cloud over a population center requires a much higher level of sophistication that, to me, while it

is possible for terrorists to grow anthrax with a relatively low level

of knowledge and limited amount of inexpensive equipment, to develop the technology to disperse it effectively over a population center requires a whole higher level of knowledge and expertise.

I don’t think it is something we should discount as impossible,

but the greater likelihood is more very, very limited events that

really have not a tremendous amount of public health threat associated with them, but are intended to really scare people and undermine our will to fight.

That is where an educational process like this, where you get all

the providers out there educated, can be very, very helpful in early

recognition and, in particular, you get the public health officials engaged and better management at the community level can be very

useful.

Dr. COOKSEY. Dr. Snyder, I want to throw out a vignette that I

would trust your judgment on.

In the Air Force, we had veterinarians who were involved in public health, infectious disease, and the Army does the same thing.

Veterinarians deal with anthrax. In fact, I was at a veterinary

school event 2 weeks ago and I probably learned more there from

the veterinarians than all the reading I have done, because animals, particularly, you have areas in Texas, for example, that they

have to deal with anthrax.

I talked to one veterinarian who has treated a couple of cases.

He says that when he sees an animal, a cow that has died, there

is blood that has come up from his mouth and from the lower end

of the alimentary tract or the GI tract, that is anthrax until proven

otherwise.

But anyway, one of the considerations you might do, and I would

point out that I asked Adm. Eisold if, in the Navy, there are any

veterinarians, and he quickly told me no.

I guess he says that we have more animals in the Marines and

the Army and the Air Force than they do in the Navy, whatever

he meant by that.

But anyway, you might consider bringing the vet schools into

this sphere, because they are very actively involved and they really

know a lot about anthrax and a lot of other infectious diseases and

could be an important part of this epidemiology team, because that

is what the whole issue is, is working out the epidemiology.

Once you work out the epidemiology, as you well know, then you

can make the diagnosis and the treatment.

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you.
28

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. I had originally asked Dr. Snyder to testify before the committee and he had declined and deferred, yesterday on the dais.

I would like to extend a special appreciation. Dr. Cooksey of Louisiana, Dr. Weldon of Florida, and Dr. Snyder of Arkansas, your expertise and your leadership, you have done your constituents

proud, and your state, and I appreciate working with you on this

legislation.

Adm. Eisold, I join my colleagues in their praise and admiration

for your leadership and your work. I believe that the recommendations that you have given to the Congress for us, you thought of

public safety and health first when you gave the recommendations

to the leadership for us to let’s stop and get everybody out of the

buildings and find out what we are dealing with.

I think that your prudence was wise and I commend you for it.

With that, I dismiss the first panel. Thank you.

On the second panel, we recognize Dr. Susan Matcha, Infectious

Disease Specialist from the Mid-Atlantic Kaiser Permanente Medical Group.

We also recognize the Honorable Clay Shaw, Congressman from

the 22nd District of Florida, to introduce his constituent, Dr. Carlos

Omenaca, Infectious Disease Specialist from the Miami Heart Center, in Miami, FL.

Mr. Shaw, I will begin with you.

OPENING STATEMENT OF E. CLAY SHAW, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to congratulate you and the members of this committee for holding this particular hearing.

It was a pleasure for me to sit here and listen to the good professionals that are colleagues of ours, together with Adm. Eisold, who

certainly has given us all much comfort and confidence during this

process.

We are indeed the people’s House and that means that we not

only have the common man, but we also have highly qualified professionals among us, which, I think, speaks very highly for the

House of Representatives.

Florida had the distinction of being one of the first places where

anthrax was found, and I have with me today one of my constituents, who we are very proud of, who treated one of the first victims.

I would like to, at this time, just take a minute to properly introduce him and his qualifications.

This is Dr. Carlos Omenaca. Remember that pronunciation,

Omenaca, because you are going to have to say it before it’s over

with.

He will serve as an expert medical witness on this second panel.

I commend the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee for

calling upon Dr. Omenaca, an infectious disease specialist, to share

his expertise in treating the second victim of anthrax attack

against the American Media, Inc. in Boca Raton, FL.

We must be sure that our Nation is adequately prepared to provide speedy and appropriate medical tests and treatment for future

bioterrorism victims, so we must be willing to do a straightforward
29

and honest assessment of what was done right in the Florida

health care providers’ handling of these anthrax cases.

Even more importantly, we must determine that more needs to

be done to ensure the authorities at the Federal, state, and local

levels have sufficient resources and coordinating plans in place to

respond to this kind of attack in the future.

Along those lines, I compliment you, Mr. Chairman, for the bill

that has been under discussion here today.

I am pleased to introduce Dr. Carlos Omenaca, who has treated

patients at Cedar Sinai Hospital, Miami Heart Institute, since February of 1998.

Dr. Omenaca is board certified in critical care medicine, infectious disease, and internal medicine. He has taken time away from

his quite busy medical practice to share his experience, both the

positive aspects which resulted in the successful recovery of a 73-

year-old patient in his care, and the negative aspects, which the

VA and Department of Defense must learn to overcome if faced

with future biological attacks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. With that, Dr. Omenaca, please present

your testimony.

STATEMENTS OF CARLOS OMENACA, M.D., MIAMI HEART CENTER, MIAMI FLORIDA; AND SUSAN J. BERSOFF-MATCHA,

M.D., MID-ATLANTIC PERMANENTE MEDICAL GROUP

STATEMENT OF CARLOS OMENACA

Dr. OMENACA. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing.

I am Carlos Omenaca, M.D., an FCCP specialist in infectious diseases and critical care medicine, practicing in Miami, FL, and I

was directly involved in the diagnosis and treatment of inhalation

anthrax in one of the cases recently diagnosed in Florida.

I was asked to share my personal experience in the management

of such an unusual case in order to place in perspective and review

the roles of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Defense in

educating the Nation’s medical students and current health professionals to diagnose and treat casualties when weapons of mass destruction have been used.

What if you were confronted with a large number of people suffering from an unknown severe illness? How would you decide

what they were suffering from? How would you determine if a biological weapon was involved? How would you treat them? How

would you keep the disease from spreading to others?

These are all questions that belong to the introduction section of

a course in Bioterrorism and Biological Warfare.

None of them crossed my mind 6 weeks ago when I was asked

to evaluate a 73-year-old man admitted to the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia. What initially looked like a flu-like illness

and evolved to a rapidly progressing mycological pneumonia was

confirmed days later as the second case of inhalational anthrax, the

third case in 25 years in the United States.
30

As a result of that initial suspicion of a possible second case of

anthrax in the same place of work, the level of awareness in the

Nation for a potential bioterrorist attack increased dramatically.

Hundreds of people were tested for possible exposure to the anthrax bacillus. Only a few tested positive.

Of those, few acquired infection and only four died from a lethal

and rapidly progressing infection.

People receiving prophylactic antibiotics are counted in the thousands. Our patient, managed by a multi-disciplinary team, was discharged home in good condition after 23 days of hospitalization, including several days of stressful care in the ICU.

Several other patients diagnosed of inhalational anthrax were recently released home safe.

These facts seem, on one hand, concerning and even frightening,

given the large number of people potentially exposed to a lethal

infection.

On the other hand, they may resemble something close to a success story, given the low number of casualties in people infected

with the real infection.

However, the truth is that behind those statistics and success

stories, there is a tremendous amount of frustration, confusion,

lack of information, and, in some cases, chaos.

We were just lucky enough to have not lost more lives during

these weeks. In my opinion, we are not sufficiently prepared for a

large or even small-scale bioterrorist attack.

Our medical personnel, including myself, do not have the training to recognize illnesses that have not occurred in this country in

decades.

Smallpox, anthrax, plague, Q fever, tularemia, brucellosis, viral

hemorrhagic fever, botulism are among the pathogens utilized as

biological weapons.

We rarely see these infections in this country in the 21st Century. They are not emphasized in the core curriculum in our specialty programs.

Remember, you do not diagnose what you don’t think of and you

don’t think of what you don’t know about.

Some of the clinical presentations are almost forgotten in our

most recent medical publications.

Some of them, as we are currently seeing in the cases of inhalational anthrax, are being updated in terms of the clinical presentations, newer diagnostic tools, such as DNA testing and therapeutic means with the latest groups of antibiotics.

Research is needed to test these antibiotics against biological

warfare agents.

The degree of awareness of a potential bioterrorist attack is key

in the prompt diagnose and successful management of potential affected people.

Early treatment makes a difference in devastating infections,

such as bubonic plague or inhalational anthrax.

Without this level of continuous awareness, infections caused by

biological warfare agents will not be timely diagnosed and lives

may be lost.
31

Continuous medical education aimed at all practitioners would

serve as a tool organized toward the diagnose of future exposure

to biological agents.

A greater degree of coordination between doctors directly involved in the management of patients suffering from a bioterrorist

attack in official institutions is needed.

I detected potential deficiencies in communications between clinicians, health departments, and perhaps the CDC. They all should

work together in a very standardized and coordinated effort.

Our doctors need training when it comes to a team effort with

these institutions with which they do not work in their daily

practice.

Teaching specifics about medical ethics to keep classified information confidential, while keeping patients and families punctually

updated about their clinical condition are needed.

Our health care workers do not seem prepared to deal with unknown infections. I have seen tremendous confusion and stress

among nursing staff caring for our patient diagnosed with inhalational anthrax in Miami.

I sense the same degree of concern, lack of information among

most of the nurses in our emergency departments and ICUs. They

have not been trained to care for these type of patients.

Our laboratory technicians and ancillary personnel have been

overwhelmed by large numbers of samples reaching the premises

for testing.

I was sensing lack of standard procedures and perhaps some degree of disorganization when samples were collected, labeled, and

sent to outside laboratories for special testing during the management of our patient with anthrax in Miami.

I would not be surprised if similar situations have occurred in

New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC. A greater degree of

coordination is needed when two or more institutions are involved

in the care of screening people potentially suffering from a bioterrorist attack.

Written policies to these respects should be implemented.

In summary, a number of potential deficiencies in our system

have been recognized within the management of a patient diagnosed with anthrax in Florida. All of them are the product of inexperience in treating such cases.

Most of them are easily amendable by implementing written policies and enhancing our educational system.

Strategies that assert further this caution and possible incorporation to our educational programs would include, among the others, the following.

Incorporate a comprehensive introduction to bioterrorism and

biological warfare as a new subject which should be part of the curriculum in medical school, residency, and fellowship training

programs.

Dedicate special attention on the diagnosis and management of

individual pathogens used in biological warfare when studied as

part of the current curriculum.

Prompt review of the medical literature and updates on diagnostic and management strategies for each individual agent identified as a potential biological weapon.
32

Incorporation of mandatory CME credits for all practitioners in

the United States as part of their licensing requirements.

Establish written policies aimed at coordination of communications between clinicians and government officials.

Create an educational program on biological warfare aimed at

nursing staff and health care workers, including laboratory technicians and ancillary personnel.

It is vital that prompt action take place in order to better deal

with potential future exposures to biological agents.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am honored to

be asked to testify today in this hearing. I would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Omenaca appears on p. 75.]

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Doctor.

Dr. Matcha, you are recognized for testimony. Good morning.

STATEMENT OF SUSAN J. BERSOFF-MATCHA

Dr. MATCHA. Good morning. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I am grateful for the opportunity to share my experience as an infectious disease specialist in treating two of the patients who contracted inhalational anthrax.

My name is Dr. Susan Matcha. I am a physician with the MidAtlantic Permanente Medical Group and one of more than 11,000

Permanente physicians nationwide who provide care to over 8 million Kaiser Permanente members in eight states, including Maryland and Virginia, plus the District of Columbia.

I practice as part of a team, with other specialists and sub-specialists. The integrated care we provide to Kaiser Permanente

members provides us with broad support and resources, which has

meant rapid consultation among specialists, the ability to develop

and disseminate practice guidelines, and to have coordinated collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and other public

health authorities.

Immediately after the tragedies of September 11, the threat of

bioterrorism suddenly became real. The seven infectious disease

physicians in my department reviewed the state of our knowledge

about different biological agents. We consulted textbooks, the medical literature, and the CDC web site to increase our understanding

of all bioterror agents, including anthrax, botulism, smallpox, tularemia, and others.

Kaiser Permanente already had developed clinical practice guidelines for bioterrorism as part of our emergency preparations for

Y2K.

Our infection control committee updated them soon after September 11. While we hope our work has contributed to the public

health, my principal responsibility is caring for patients, and I

would like to share with you a brief chronology of the care provided

to the two patients I personally treated.

Patient number one came to the Kaiser Permanente Woodbridge

Medical Center on Friday, October 19. He had been ill for 3 days

with fever, malaise, muscle aches, and sweats.
33

The internist who saw the patient was concerned about the severity of his symptoms, since the patient suspected he had been exposed to anthrax.

Even though a call to the health department confirmed that

Brentwood was not a known exposure site, he sent the patient to

the hospital.

The emergency room physician at Fairfax Hospital drew blood for

routine tests, as well as for cultures, and, also, ordered a chest x

ray, which showed some extra shadows in the middle of the chest.

Because of these shadows, a CAT scan of the chest was also performed. The findings were thought to be consistent with anthrax

and the patient was started on IV Cipro.

Shortly after midnight, Saturday morning, I was called about the

patient. The CDC and health department had already been

notified.

Within 11 hours, the blood cultures were growing an organism

consistent with anthrax. The blood was sent to the CDC and the

Virginia Department of Health for confirmatory testing.

I maintained constant contact with the CDC. We discussed adding additional antibiotics to the Cipro, which is the only FDA-approved antibiotic for treating anthrax.

The CDC made some treatment suggestions based on theoretical

evidence and what is known about the behavior of similar organisms.

However, no one really had any experience treating human anthrax patients. Ultimately, as the treating physician, I was responsible for writing the orders and caring for the patients.

I added Rifampin because it worked well fighting many grampositive organisms. It has the ability to penetrate white blood cells

to kill organisms that have already engulfed.

I also added Clindamycin because it has been shown to interfere

with toxin production in other types of bacteria.

Patient two called our Kaiser Permanente medical advice line on

Saturday, October 20. The advice nurse was concerned about his

symptoms of headache and fever and referred him to a physician

at our Falls Church Medical Center Urgent Care that afternoon.

The physician there was concerned that the patient may have

meningitis and sent him to Fairfax Hospital for a spinal tap.

The emergency room physician called me with the results and

mentioned, in passing, that the patient was a postal worker. I

asked him to find out exactly where the patient worked and when

I heard Brentwood, I asked him if the patient had a chest x ray,

and he had not.

I advised the physician, first, to obtain blood cultures and then

to immediately give the patient a dose of IV Cipro and once this

had been done, the patient was to have his chest x rayed.

The chest x ray was difficult to interpret. So a CAT scan was

done. The results of the CAT scan were similar to the first patient’s. Both showed enlarged lymph nodes in the chest, as well as

pleural effusions, or collections of fluid in the space surrounding

the lungs.

Fifteen hours later, patient number two’s blood cultures also returned with gram-positive bacteria consistent with anthrax.
34

At that point, I added Rifampin and Clindamycin to his regimen,

as well.

In addition to the numerous calls I made to the CDC and health

department that weekend, I also called the chief of our infectious

disease department to let her know about the two patients.

She helped organize Kaiser Permanente leaders for a conference

call to update our clinical practice guidelines. These guidelines

were key to educating all Permanente physicians nationwide.

In the early hours and days after the first anthrax cases were

diagnosed, our guidelines were updated to reflect any knew knowledge, as well as the frequently changing recommendations, and

they have since been updated 15 times.

We were also able to recognize the pattern of the Brentwood

postal employees. As a result, we called all 237 Kaiser Permanente

members employed at the Brentwood facility by phone to assess

their conditions and ensure they received the care they required.

The events of the weekend of October 20 were stressful and humbling. We were confronted with a disease that few other clinicians

had ever seen. We felt a responsibility not only to our patients, but

also to the broader medical community, and we have taken numerous steps to share our experience.

We have posted our guidelines on the Kaiser Permanente web

site, where it is available to physicians across the Nation, as well

as to the general public.

We have responded to numerous inquiries from clinicians across

the country, and, finally, we have written an article for the Journal

of the American Medical Association on what we learned about diagnosing anthrax, and we are currently working on a second article

to discuss what we learned during the hospital course.

When and if other physicians are faced with anthrax, they can

benefit from what we have learned.

I have submitted a written statement that describes in more detail how we addressed the challenges we faced over the last month

in caring for patients suffering from inhalational anthrax.

Again, thank you for inviting me to speak to the subcommittee,

and I would be pleased to respond to any questions you might

have.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Matcha appears on p. 78.]

Mr. BUYER. Mr. Shaw, I want to thank you for bringing your witness here today and introducing him to this subcommittee.

Both of you, I noted, in your bios, are internal medicine, with

sub-specialities in infectious disease.

For that, your patients are alive today. The great concern that

we have is that you are a sub-specialty. You are a specialty in a

sub-specialty, and there are many treating physicians out there all

across the country.

Dr. Omenaca, you testified that you got the third case in 25

years. Is that what you said?

Dr. OMENACA. That is correct. There was one case about 25 years

ago and the second case in American Media, and the patient I was

taking care of was the third diagnosed case. Yes.

Mr. BUYER. Well, both of you are a compliment to your specialty

for saving your patients’ lives.
35

Dr. Omenaca, according to newspaper reports, in one patient’s

case, Mr. Blanco, you utilized a textbook that was written in 1901

to help confirm your diagnosis of anthrax.

I would like for you to tell us whether or not that was true.

Also, when did you first suspect that your patient was not suffering from flu or other upper respiratory conditions?

Dr. OMENACA. The 1901 book is not entirely true. I did review

several books during my first contact with the patient, and it was

not exactly that book.

That book I saw a few days later after the patient was discharged, that particular book. In that particular book, there is a

good description of the clinical presentation of my patient.

I did see some symptoms and some relevant information in other

books. There was a particular book, edited in 1985, from Barcelona,

that described differently the presentation.

There was another book, edited in 1951. Actually, it was the Internal Medicine Book, the Cecil Book, that also mentions a clinical

picture similar to my case.

Mr. BUYER. What caused you to think inhalation anthrax? Did

some other doctors look at something and think meningitis or other

things?

What caused you to think inhalation anthrax?

Dr. OMENACA. The link was a phone call from my patient’s boss,

who had been in contact with Mr. Stevens, the first case of inhalational anthrax.

Both of them had similar presentation, with confusion and disorientation, and both of them were taken home by this person, and

he called me saying maybe your patient has the same thing.

So then I started to think of inhalational anthrax, although the

presentation was nothing to do with what I had found in the medical literature.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Omenaca, in your testimony, you made several

recommendations, including the need to create a bio warfare program also aimed at nursing staffs and other health care providers.

Could you give a recommendation to us about the education level

of training, differentiating it, what we say to our physicians versus

to the nursing staff, or should it be the same?

Dr. OMENACA. First of all, all physicians should have, all of them

should have some kind of training in identifying these potential biological agents, making more emphasis in family practitioners and

primary care and ER physicians, because they are the first line

care givers in our community.

Then they will refer to infectious disease for further evaluation,

but they need to have a good knowledge of how these infections

present, and it should be in-depth.

Secondly, health care workers, they need a lower level of training, but they need to know the basics of clinical presentations, as

well.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Matcha, what are some things that you would

have liked to have learned in your medical training that could have

better prepared you for the situation?

Dr. MATCHA. I am not sure there is really anything that could

have prepared me for this situation. I think that the learning curve

has been very steep, and we are truly learning as we go along.
36

I think that as physicians, we tend to seek out information. I had

been thinking about this long before I saw my first patient, as my

family and friends and patients would come and ask me questions

about anthrax.

So I think that this is something we had all been thinking about

and in preparing, we all started reading.

Mr. BUYER. This question is really to both of you. Whether it is

your internal medicine or as a sub-specialty on infectious disease,

how much time did you really spend on anthrax?

Dr. OMENACA. It is very little time. It is an infection that is described in the books that you never see.

Therefore, it is part of a chapter that you review along with four

or five different other pathogens.

Mr. BUYER. If you look back into your education.

Dr. OMENACA. Yes.

Mr. BUYER. How many minutes do you think you spent on that

subject?

Dr. OMENACA. A few minutes.

Mr. BUYER. Just a few minutes?

Dr. OMENACA. A few minutes. Everything that is in the book,

they are not stressed. They are not emphasized. They should be

emphasized.

Mr. BUYER. That is our point in particular here. If both of you

were on the front line, and they treated the anthrax, and you not

only went to medical school, and then you learned internal medicine, and then you did a sub-specialty in infectious disease, and you

got 2 minutes on anthrax, what do you think about the medical

students that then go into the family practice out there?

Did they get 30 seconds? Maybe not even that.

Dr. OMENACA. Something like that.

Mr. BUYER. All right. A question to both of you. What resources

would you like to have had at your disposal that either of you, as

you look back, wasn’t available or easily accessible?

Dr. MATCHA. I think there was a lot that was easily accessible.

By the time I saw the first patient, the CDC was right there already. The health department was right there.

Then, actually, I received a phone call from a specialist from the

military who offered to help.

So people sought me out.

Mr. BUYER. Who was that individual, from where?

Dr. MATCHA. Arthur Friedlander, from Walter Reed.

Mr. BUYER. From Walter Reed. Is he also a specialty in infectious

disease?

Dr. MATCHA. I am not sure if he is a specialist in infectious disease, but I know he has a specific interest in anthrax.

Dr. OMENACA. I know him. He contacted me, as well, and he is

someone who has devoted a lot of research, especially in monkeys,

in anthrax.

Mr. BUYER. So your expertise was coming from DOD.

Dr. OMENACA. He did a lot of research on monkeys. He had never

seen one case in humans.

Mr. BUYER. So he was also anxious to see and talk to you. I can

understand.
37

Let me yield to Ms. Carson for questions she may have, because

I have a second round of questions.

Ms. CARSON. I will be quick. Let me say I am not really being

combative here, because I realize this is an emerging kind of crisis

that we face, and I internalize most things, because I begged doctors everywhere to check my heart and was on the verge of a massive heart attack, and just in time, got saved. They dismissed it.

So I am wondering what you have learned since Florida, where

there were obviously signs of this problem with your patient.

Doctor, you might want to follow that up, too. I have to admit,

my own internal bias is that I try not to impose upon you at this

particular time, because you are both human beings first and doctors second, and I respect that.

But what have you learned and what has been disseminated by

your experience in Florida once that issue surfaced for you?

Dr. OMENACA. First of all, it is about medical knowledge. It is

there. It is hiding in the corner.

It has to come out. We have to review the literature on every and

each one of the biological agents, put it in our curriculum, review

it with our professors, with our residents, with everyone.

Number two, some of the agents are very old. They have been

treated with old antibiotics. There are no studies done on newer

antibiotics.

Remember, we have anthrax being treated with Cipro, when it

could be treated with other fluoroquinolones, same group of antibiotics.

They need to be tested.

Number three, it is difficult for a physician who is in a daily

practice to deal with such an unusual case, with all the circumstances, have to deal with the CDC, with health department,

have to talk to every one of them every hour for the first couple

of days, when you feel like you are shying away from your management of the patient.

At some point, you are asking yourself, who is treating the patient, is it me or is it them. You have to create some kind of coordinated effort between those institutions and yourself.

There are many more things that could be explained, but these

are the main lessons.

Ms. CARSON. Did either one of your patients suggest to you I

they have been exposed to anthrax?

Dr. MATCHA. The first patient that we saw did. He didn’t tell

that to me, but apparently he told that to the emergency room physician.

Then the second patient that I saw worked at the same postal

facility, and once we see one person, the index of suspicion goes up

immensely.

Ms. CARSON. I can’t hear you. I’m sorry.

Dr. MATCHA. The first patient that we saw was suspicious that

he had been exposed.

Ms. CARSON. And what happened?

Dr. MATCHA. I don’t know. He didn’t tell that to me. He told that

to the emergency room physician.
38

The second patient worked at the same postal facility and because of that, we had a much higher index of suspicion to begin

with.

Ms. CARSON. So when the first one said he or she thought there

was some exposure there, what happened, the first one?

Dr. MATCHA. We took him seriously and he had blood cultures

and a chest x ray and had all of the appropriate tests.

Ms. CARSON. And what happened? Did you verify it at that

point?

Dr. MATCHA. Yes. Yes. We had CAT scan findings and chest x

ray that was consistent with anthrax.

Ms. CARSON. So what happened to him?

Dr. MATCHA. He was hospitalized and received IV antibiotics and

he was discharged from the hospital yesterday.

Ms. CARSON. What happened to the second one?

Dr. MATCHA. He also received IV antibiotics and was discharged——

Ms. CARSON. Immediately.

Dr. MATCHA. Immediately. Yes. And he was discharged from the

hospital a few days ago.

Ms. CARSON. So both of them. Those are the only two you had.

Dr. MATCHA. That is right.

Ms. CARSON. And they are both doing okay.

Dr. MATCHA. That is right.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I am going

to yield back.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Matcha, Kaiser Permanente has an impressive

set of guidelines for the treatment when there is suspected exposure to anthrax.

When were these guidelines first issued?

Dr. MATCHA. My understanding is that they were first put together as part of the preparedness for Y2K.

Then soon after September 11, they were updated, and then I

participated in a conference call the weekend both of these patients

were admitted to update the guidelines again.

Then ever since then, the guidelines have been updated almost

daily, sometimes twice a day, to reflect new knowledge as it came

through.

Mr. BUYER. Is there collaboration with the CDC?

Dr. MATCHA. Mostly we followed what the CDC recommendations

were in terms of nasal swabs and changing to doxycycline from

Cipro.

So there was some coordination with them as far as that went.

Then we also looked at the different sites that were being called

exposure sites and those were put into the guidelines, as well.

Mr. BUYER. This goes to the next question, to both of you. It

seems like the theoretical information flow is supposed to be the

two-way street between those doctors in the field and CDC.

In your opinion, is there a two-way information flow? Is there actual sharing that occurs or do you think that it is more single directional from the CDC to you?

Dr. OMENACA. I think it is bidirectional. They were there and we

were there. I was discussing the case on a daily basis several times

a day.
39

There is one thing that concerns me and it is in terms of efficiency in releasing information from the lab. Sometimes it takes

several steps for the particular doctor who is, for instance, in Atlanta or in Washington, DC and is not physically in the laboratory

and has to take several steps for us to gather all the information.

This could be a potential problem.

But definitely it was directional. It was discussing the clinical

case both ways, yes.

Dr. MATCHA. I would agree with that. I think that most physicians, when they are faced with a difficult case, like to discuss it

with other physicians.

I was grateful to have the CDC there to guide me and to give

me suggestions, but ultimately there is one person in charge, and,

in the case of these two patients, that person happened to be me.

But I was happy to have all of the input that I could get from

the CDC and the health department.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Omenaca, you mentioned in your testimony,

‘‘continuous medical education.’’

Do you feel that physicians should be required to attend a re-certification or re-licensing course, much like teachers, and, if so, how

often should practicing doctors be re-certified, and who besides

practicing doctors should be required to attend the type of course?

I’m just throwing that out as a question.

Dr. OMENACA. Well, it is an idea. I will give you an idea. I think

that this should be part of licensing requirements which are done

every 2 years and all the practitioners should be required to have

some kind of training in bioterrorism that reviews the most common agents in order to recognize those symptoms, because they are

the first care givers, first line.

They are going to refer to infectious disease specialists for further treatment.

Mr. BUYER. I don’t know how many will necessarily agree with

your idea, but I appreciate your testimony.

You also, Dr. Omenaca, mentioned deficiencies in the flow of information. You mentioned one with regard to CDC and difficulties

with regard to the labs.

But this information both before the initial diagnosis and after,

do other doctors in the field notice the same things and what are

some of your recommendations and/or theirs?

Dr. OMENACA. Number one, have the doctors who are first caretakers, who are taking care of the patient, have some kind of written policy and have the position, the role to be more active?

Number two, those clinicians should have direct access to the results from the lab, from the CDC, instead of having to discuss the

case and to pull the resource from other intermediate physicians.

Mr. BUYER. What would be your recommendations to the first responders?

In this legislation, I know your testimony is just about anthrax,

but we are concerned about all other forms of contamination.

As we are putting together our legislation, what do you think the

first responders should know, how best to protect themselves, as

they also provide care for a patient, and how do we get that information out?
40

Dr. OMENACA. First responders should get, first of all, well informed about the diseases, as I just mentioned before.

Number two, immediately after a suspicion of some kind of possible exposure, they should contact, first of all, an infectious disease specialist and then possibly the health department, and that

should be standard.

This is an idea.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Matcha?

Dr. MATCHA. I think the first responders are probably the most

important people who need to be educated. Certainly, it was the

first responders in our patients’ cases. That’s the whole reason that

they made it into the hospital to begin with, is that the first responders were concerned, and I think that is where a lot of the

training needs to focus.

Mr. BUYER. With regard to others, if you have a radiological

agent, obviously, if there is an incident, everybody is going to know

perhaps what that is.

If you have anthrax, it might not be a few days.

But anything that requires some form of an incubation perhaps

is a little difficult. The first responders aren’t going to know. They

may not be part of that process, which makes it difficult for you.

You become the first responders.

I am just trying to figure out, as we put together our education

piece, sure, we focus on the medical situation and often we think

of the doctors, but there are also the EMTs, and I am trying to figure out how we best provide, how that education function is going

to work.

I would like to thank both of you for coming. I know that you

have given a sacrifice from your practices to be here, but your testimony is extremely helpful as we try to put this together.

Congratulations for saving your patients’ lives. Thank you. You

are dismissed.

The third panel, I would like to recognize Dr. Frances Murphy,

the Deputy Under Secretary for Health, Department of Veterans

Affairs. I am going to ask her to introduce her staff.

STATEMENTS OF FRANCES M. MURPHY, M.D., DEPUTY UNDER

SECRETARY FOR HEALTH, VETERANS’ HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, ACCOMPANIED BY SUSAN MATHER, M.D., CHIEF OFFICER, PUBLIC

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS, VETERANS

HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND KENNETH H. MIZRACH, DIRECTOR, VA NEW JERSEY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; AND VAL G.

HEMMING, M.D., DEAN, F. EDWARD HE ́ BERT SCHOOL OF

MEDICINE, UNIFORMED SERVICES UNIVERSITY OF THE

HEALTH SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

STATEMENT OF FRANCES M. MURPHY

Dr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to

testify to the subcommittee this morning.
41

I am accompanied today by Dr. Susan Mather, VA’s Chief Public

Health and Environmental Hazards Officer, and Mr. Kenneth

Mizrach, the Director of VA’s New Jersey Health Care System.

I will keep my remarks this morning very brief, but I have submitted a formal statement and ask that that be made part of the

record.

Recent incidents involving anthrax exposure and infection have

made clear the possibility of an attack on the United States with

unconventional weapons, capable of inflicting harm that could be

both widespread and sustained.

The medical consequences of such attacks could include both immediate trauma inflicted and the potential long-term health consequences resulting from that trauma.

In addition to the more obvious physical harm, there would be

instances of often less apparent, psychological harm.

Psychological injury, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, may

manifest itself long after the event.

It is of paramount importance that health care professionals

throughout the Nation receive education that will enable them to

better understand and respond to the potential health threats from

such unconventional agents.

We strongly believe that all health care professionals, not limited

to physicians, should receive this training.

Mr. Chairman, VA is a valuable national health resource, capable of providing significant assistance in developing and distributing the type of educational programs required.

We recently enhanced our own training programs to better prepare VA employees to recognize and respond to terrorist attacks.

We have the capability, through our education infrastructure and

our education and research collaboratives, to share the programs

that we produce with others around the Nation.

We are also well situated to reach a wide audience of practitioners and students through our academic affiliates.

Through these longstanding and close partnerships, we have

played a leadership role in defining the education of future health

care professionals to help meet the rapidly changing needs of the

Nation’s health care delivery system.

More than half of the physicians practicing in the United States

received part of their professional education in the VA health care

system.

In conclusion, let me compliment you, Mr. Chairman, and this

committee for its proactive stance on these critical issues.

The provisions of these bills that we have talked about today will

ensure that our Nation can mount an effective response to potential terrorist attacks.

Bioterrorism is a perversion of science. Through your legislative

proposal, you provide a counter-balance by ensuring that scientists

and health care providers will have the scientific knowledge to

mitigate and fight terrorist threats.

You can be assured that VA stands ready to use our considerable

expertise in clinical care, education and research to benefit Veterans and other Americans in this time of need.

I would be happy to respond to any questions that the members

of the subcommittee have.
42

[The prepared statement of Dr. Murphy appears on p. 82.]

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Dr. Murphy.

Now, I would like to recognize Dr. Val G. Hemming, the Dean

of the School of Medicine, the F. Edward He ́bert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Department of Defense, USUHS.

STATEMENT OF VAL G. HEMMING

Dr. HEMMING. Thank you.

I am Val Hemming. I am a retired Air Force colonel, and I am

the Dean of the F. Edward He ́bert School of Medicine, named for

Congressman F. Edward He ́bert from the State of Louisiana, who

really was responsible for the Public Law which established the

University in 1972.

Thank you for inviting me to share my views regarding the

present responsibility of medical educators to ensure that the

Nation’s primary care practitioners are educated, trained, and prepared for the challenges of people using science, as it were, as a

terrorist weapon; that is, biologicals, chemicals, and nuclear

materials.

Many have already mentioned our medical school and some of

the things we do that I believe are unique. I would like to just give

you a little bit of background; tell you a little bit about what we

do at our medical school; and, share a little of that experience with

you.

When the school was founded, military educational planners

were aware of the fact that science could be used as a weapon and

that, in the past, for example, in the first World War, that the opposing forces used phosgene and chlorine gas, that a number of

microorganisms had been weaponized and were potential threats

for soldiers or combatants.

We were aware, also, that in places throughout the world, chemical weapons had been used very recently to damage both combatants, as well as civilian populations.

Being aware of that, it became imperative, we believe, that military physicians or physicians, who were going to be practicing during much of their careers in the military, needed to be knowledgeable about these weapons to understand what the risks were for

the use of these weapons, to be trained with the requisite tools to

make a diagnosis, and to start treatment, if necessary.

I don’t have time here to talk about the entire content of our educational programs regarding these matters at our medical school,

but I can affirm for you that for more than 25 years, we have incorporated a body of WMD-related information into our core curriculum for first, second, third, and fourth year medical students.

Indeed, what we have done is woven into the basic science

courses, that all medical students take, the principles and concepts

of weapons of mass destruction.

So in their basic courses in anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology and so forth, we relate these disciplines and this knowledge to issues of weapons of mass destruction.

We are preparing students to participate in two active field exercises where they must employ the knowledge and skills they have

acquired at USUHS in the field setting.
43

Our first year students, at the end of a course in military medicine, spend a week at Quantico, Operation Kerkesner, where they

actually practice the principles of early diagnosis, treatment, and

decontamination of mock-up patients who have been exposed to

WMD agents.

In the second year and again in the third year, specific things

are done to train students for a fourth year exercise, where we go

to the field at Camp Bullis, outside of Fort Sam Houston, where

we conduct another large military exercise, Operation Bashmaster.

This exercise includes the students employing the tools that we

provided them in both diagnosis and treatment, and the treatment

and management of patients exposed to such agents.

So I believe that we are probably the only medical school that

does this, for good reason. For good reason, because that really is

the mission entrusted to us.

Now, how should we proceed in the future? I think, first of all,

that we have learned some things at our medical school which we

might be able to share with others and are delighted and willing

to do that.

We were delighted to be invited by the Veterans Administration

to participate in a partnership to provide model programs that

could be broadcast and shared with other medical professionals.

I believe something more should be done and my recommendation would be that a dialogue needs to be established with the accrediting agencies which oversee medical training in the United

States.

All allopathic medical schools in the U.S. are accredited by the

Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME), which actually

establishes requirements for granting the Degree of Doctor of

Medicine.

It probably would be worthwhile at this point in time to review

those requirements with the LCME and to find an opportunity to

include WMD training and to focus on training that is already

given. Most physicians already learn a lot about WMD agents in

medical school, but their focus is different. They are thinking about

different things.

The training should focus on, and talk about, issues of probabilities, so that civilian medical students can learn to think the

way we train our military physicians to think.

Secondly, a dialogue should be held with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which accredits

graduate education programs in the United States, to talk about

the possibility of including some requirements in the general requirements for the accrediting of residency programs. Then we will

know that all physicians in the U.S. have had some exposure to

these concepts. They actually will be able to take the training that

they already have and just focus it in a way to use that training

better to respond to WMD challenges.

Finally, we would go beyond that to those who credential physicians to practice medicine. I would think that if those who accredit

primary care practitioners to see patients in the hospital or clinics,

through the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), for example, that requirements could be put

in the credentialing requirements to require all primary care prac-
44

titioners, who are the first responders, to have an annual or every

other year update, to focus on these WMD issues, so that when patients appear with certain kinds of symptoms and syndromes, that

the physician would think about the possibility of a terrorist attack

or that someone is creating mischief in the community.

Finally, I think that because we have substantial experience in

the Department of Defense, in the medical school, we have a number of subject matter experts.

We talked about Art Friedlander here, but there are many other

Art Friedlanders in the DOD system who could be tapped and used

in partnership with the university and the VA to create model educational programs to reach medical students, people in GME training, and those who need to be credentialed for primary care.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hemming appears on p. 87.]

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Murphy, according to your testimony, Presidential Decision Directive 62 tasks the VA with training medical

personnel at hospitals in the National Disaster Medical System to

appropriately treat victims of chemical, biological, and radiological

incidents.

You also mention that the VA recently received over $800,000

from HHS to begin the development of this training program.

My question is why did it take over 3 years to get this money

from HHS and why did it take over 3 years for the VA to even

begin the development of this type of a training program?

Dr. MURPHY. I don’t have an answer to the first part of your

question. We did get the funding from HHS on September 5, just

prior to the September 11 incidents. We began development of that

program by initiating an assessment of what the education needs

are for the NDMS hospitals, and we will move quickly to implementing a program to actually train practitioners in those facilities.

Mr. BUYER. You also spoke about a conference on weapons of

mass destruction for VHA staff, clinicians, and emergency managers outside the VA.

What new information do you expect to come out of this conference and how do you plan to disseminate the information in

medical schools for inclusion in their curricula?

Dr. MURPHY. In order for an education program to be effective,

we need to reach out to all health care professionals.

But in training physicians, I think there are important partners

that we need to bring into the process.

We rely heavily on the expertise not only our university affiliates, but in of DOD. They are great partners for us.

We have reached out to our university affiliates. You will hear

later this morning from Dr. Blaser, who is jointly appointed at

NYU and the New York Harbor Health Care System in VA.

We need to bring everyone into the mix to develop the best training programs possible and in that way, we will address the needs

not only of the university-based physicians, but the primary care

practitioners in our urban and suburban areas, and physicians in

rural areas, like some of the counties that you deal with.

Mr. BUYER. You mentioned a 12-hour series to be broadcast to

VA facilities in November. It seems to me that it would be in the
45

public’s interest to give this information to medical schools and

hospitals over the country.

Was there a decision to limit the audience?

Dr. MURPHY. Not at all. The VA broadcast on chemical and biological terrorism agents is a one-hour program which Susan

Mather moderated.

We would be happy to share copies of the videotapes broadly

with universities, with private hospitals.

We broadcast that program on our satellite network, which is a

digital satellite network and can be picked up by anybody who has

a digital satellite receiver.

So it is widely available and we would look forward to sharing

that program.

On November 28, the AAMC is going to be holding a conference

and we would make all of our materials available to them, including the pocket cards (which your staff also have copies of) on biological and chemical warfare agents.

Those cards, as you can see, carry the emblem of both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, and

were jointly developed by our two departments.

Susan, I don’t know if you want to add to that.

Dr. MATHER. DOD is sponsoring a 12-hour video conference on

bacterial and chemical warfare agents, and that is widely available

in this city and across the country in medical schools, and any physician can access that.

It can also be sent directly to a computer, so people can access

that at their own computer.

We are taking advantage of that in VA and, of course, I am sure

many physicians across the Nation will take advantage of what has

been an excellent series in the past and I am sure will be this time.

Mr. BUYER. Have you been asked to address the AAMC

conference?

Dr. MURPHY. We have received a letter of invitation and I and

a member of Dr. Mather’s staff will be attending.

Mr. BUYER. That is great. That is great. How many of these did

you go to print?

Dr. MATHER. It seems to me it is 50,000 on the first print.

Dr. MURPHY. VA has several thousand hard copies. However, as

you can see, at the bottom of the front page of that card, it can also

be printed off a web site. VA will be happy to provide that widely.

So people can get copies of the pocket cards from us or print

them themselves.

Mr. BUYER. How do you get these in the hands of docs all across

the country?

Dr. MURPHY. I think the best way to do that is to work with each

of the professional societies, to work with organizations like the

AAMC, the AMA, JCAHO, the university, with other government

agencies.

This is one example of a quick reference that I think is important

to increase the confidence of our health care providers. We need to

ensure that all providers have the information that will allow them

to recognize these agents, to diagnose the related symptoms and illnesses, and to know what the effective treatments are.
46

Mr. BUYER. Can I ask, also, Dr. Mather, since you participated

in putting this together.

The panel that came before you had the question about nurses,

about other health providers who are the first responders, what

about them in the inclusion of such dissemination?

Dr. MATHER. Of course, within VA, these will be widely distributed and will go to nurses and doctors and all health care professions.

I think in VA, we feel very strongly that this requires and we

have a team effort. So it will have to go out to all of these.

These have even been fairly popular with lay people, who find

some degree of comfort, I think, in seeing that these diseases are

manageable, and that takes a part of the terrorist point out.

If people aren’t terrorized by them, then they haven’t been effective, and I think that this helps in people understanding the context of these agents.

I think, also, the NDMS system, we have area emergency managers in many of our hospitals who have partnered with the NDMS

hospitals in their community and they have copies of this and are

distributing them to the NDMS hospitals in their area.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Dr. Mather.

Dr. Hemming, in June 1998, an issue of Military Medicine, it

was reported that—I would ask you to think about this, and then

I want to ask the question—that 19 percent of the military

physicians were confident about providing care, health care in NBC

situations.

The majority of those confident few, 53 percent, were graduates

of your medical university.

Would you like to comment on those statistics and numbers?

Dr. HEMMING. As physicians, we spend a lot of our time working

with games of probability. As we think about the things that are

most likely to happen, the things that we know, we also are likely

to be good at the things we do every day.

So when we are confronted with the unusual, the unexpected,

that creates a level of uncertainty and as other physicians here

have said, we then have to turn to someone else.

We do a lot of consulting in medicine, because one person isn’t

a repository of all knowledge.

I think that our graduates are particularly unique. At the

present time, we graduate about 160 physicians each year.

Over the last 20 years, our physicians, graduates, have come to

represent about 20 percent of the active duty physicians in the

military.

That means that 80 percent of the physicians in the military

come from other accession sources, primarily from the health profession scholarship program, which means that they received their

medical school training in other civilian medical schools.

About half of those accessions also received their training in civilian hospitals. Only one half are trained in Army and Navy and

Air Force hospitals, because there are not enough trained physicians in the Military Health System (MHS) to train all of the physicians that are needed.

I would wager, that if one looked at who those people were who

were uncertain, you would come to find that there were many of
47

them who were trained in civilian medical schools and did their

residency training in civilian hospitals, and have only had to think

about WMD issues when they put their uniforms on.

That perhaps, then, explains why the MHS educational system

does not have a larger area of confidence among its physicians.

Again, it comes back to the issue of what those physicians are

doing day to day, what their jobs are and what things they are

obliged to think about.

An orthopedic surgeon who is doing trauma every day doesn’t

spend much time thinking about anthrax or about botulism.

But, if you are an infectious disease specialist or, more particularly, if you are doing primary care as an internist or as a pediatrician or as a family physician, you are more likely to think about

those issues.

So if one were to target WMD education, you would target that

education to the primary people who meet patients at the front

door and not the neurosurgeon and not the orthopedic surgeon.

Those physicians also need to have a basic fund of information,

I believe, and that is why I would argue that it should be included

as part of their training.

But the neurosurgeon and the orthopedic surgeon are not going

to meet the patient at the front door; whereas, the family physician, the internist, the emergency medicine physician will do so.

That is where we ought to focus our training, to keep people current and focused so that they ask the right questions when the patient comes through the front door.

Mr. BUYER. The American Association of Medical Colleges, in

1998, stated that your medical university was the only one that

could best prepare doctors and train them to respond to victims of

weapons of mass destruction.

Is that still true today?

Dr. HEMMING. I think we have a unique role in that. I think that

all medical schools can provide some level of that same kind of

training.

Mr. BUYER. Well, they can. That means they are able. The question is are you the only one in the country who is providing this

type of training and expertise.

Dr. HEMMING. I think we presently are, yes.

Mr. BUYER. Now, I need some help. I need the help of this panel

and of the next panel, because this afternoon, we are going to sit

down with the professional staff of the Health Subcommittee of the

Energy and Commerce Committee and I want to make sure we do

it right.

I don’t have the answers here. So when it ends up in print, don’t

be yelling at me. I am going to try to get it right.

But I want to make sure. I don’t know who is going to be the

one here to—I’m going to talk aloud. I am just going to think aloud

here.

Dr. Murphy, I had sort of a sidebar discussion with you. If we

say to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Henderson’s new position, are we going to make him the point person,

make him the rod of the umbrella, and somehow bring you under

that?
48

I want to get away from these turf battles and turf wars and you

are DOD, you are VA, they are HHS. We need to have somebody

in control and in charge here and I need to find someone and pick

someone to do that and then we will fund it, and then under that,

they are able to tap into your resources, and yours, and we disseminate, and we move, and we educate.

See what I am saying? I am trying to figure out how we best do

that, and, right now, I am thinking that Dr. Henderson might be

the best person out there to lead.

So there is my question to you. Should I be doing that?

Dr. MURPHY. I think you point out an issue that is extremely important. This program needs effective leadership. I think that it

could be tasked to any number of individuals, offices, or agencies.

But what is most important is that it not be a stovepipe. This

program needs to cut across all of the relevant departments and

agencies.

We need to bring our expertise to bear on this issue and it is important to make sure that all health care professionals are educated, because when you talk about front line health care providers, it is not only the doctors. It is the nurses, the PAs, the nurse

practitioners, the folks in the laboratory, and, also, the EMTs, as

was pointed out earlier.

We need to make sure that everyone in the health care profession feels comfortable that they could recognize and perform their

appropriate role in caring for victims of terrorist attacks.

I think that it should not become an issue of who is in charge,

but rather that we all need to be effective participants in this battle against terrorism.

Mr. BUYER. I ask that question because I get opinions from all

types of experts. You’ve got someone who says, well, it is the fourth

mission of the VA. Therefore, you are to be the lead. You are to

take this on and you coordinate these activities.

Well, wait a minute. If Secretary Thompson creates this new position, Dr. Henderson, as Director of the Office of Public Health

Preparedness, is it then his responsibility to coordinate national responses to public health emergencies.

We always have to task somebody to be responsible and then to

make sure that agencies, departments then coordinate, integrate

and make things happen.

If I do that, if we say, okay, we will make them the focal point

to make sure that this education system works, it gets out, information is there, DOD, VA, we give you the authorizing language,

you communicate, you coordinate.

Is that going to be sufficient? You two can work through that office.

Dr. MURPHY. I speak for VA. Dr. Henderson is a very, very well

recognized individual in this field.

He has the kind of expertise and leadership that will move the

federal program for medical preparedness against bioterrorism forward.

We could work very effectively with. We expect to work closely

with Dr. Henderson in HHS as we do with our partners in DOD.

So I have no problem with that.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Hemming.
49

Dr. HEMMING. I think leadership is the first issue and I think

there are many people who could serve in that capacity, and certainly D.A. Henderson could do that.

But I think the next step, which is very important, is for there

to be established a dialogue with the people who actually establish

the curricula which are taught in these training programs.

We are confronted in medicine with an enormous dilemma. That

dilemma is that our cup has not gotten any bigger; that is, we have

4 years or 3 years or 2 years to train health care providers. The

amount of information to stuff into those years has grown exponentially.

There are so many voices. There is so much noise out there and

the practitioner has only got so much time in his or her life to read

and to learn and then there are a lot of other tasks to do.

So we get back to the issue of focus, and I think that is why dialogue by the proper leadership with the people who establish curricula is essential. Together, they could then find a way to articulate these ideas into the things that are taught, the skills that physicians should have, that nurses should have, that EMTs should

have, that PAs should have, and I think there is a way to do this,

but there is not going to be a quick fix.

It is going to have to be done over time and I think all of the

agencies that accredit these training programs and people and permit them to provide health care must be partners in the dialogue,

to establish the right kind of curriculum for each of the health care

providers, so that it is taught in a timely and adequate fashion,

and it ensures that the caregivers are ready.

It is a challenging task simply because of all the other requirements, that we also have to worry about. But, there will be another

crisis tomorrow. There is going to be another agent. There is going

to be another bacteria, another virus. There is going to be another

threat.

So we have to do this right, so that we don’t do it for one month

and then forget about it.

Mr. BUYER. That’s why, at our meeting last night, we went into

the night. And I don’t want it to be just bioterrorism.

I think what the Senate is doing is very narrow.

Dr. HEMMING. It should be much broader.

Mr. BUYER. Because it is chemical, it is radiological, and if we

are going to do something, let’s be comprehensive and let’s do it

right.

I have been one of the biggest defenders of your medical university in this Congress and I will continue to make sure that you

focus on your core mission, and that is your military medical preparedness, but you have got the expertise and that is what we

want to be able to tap into and authorize you to coordinate with

the VA and others, and that is our intent.

Dr. HEMMING. And we would be proud to do that.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Let me now yield to the chairman of the

full committee, Mr. Smith.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

thank our distinguished panel for their insights. I have read all of

your testimonies now, and it does provide us with, again, an additional road map as to what we should be doing.
50

I do have a question, Dr. Murphy. Are there any additional authorities that you need, anything legislatively that this committee

needs to pass to obviously help you do your work, and your colleagues?

You did mention in your testimony a bioterrorism initiative. You

might want to elaborate a little bit on that. Perhaps you did that

orally and I missed it, because I missed some of the testimony.

I note that in crafting our legislation, that obviously goes to a different committee, the National Preparedness Centers, Medical Preparedness Centers, H.R. 3253, would be considered by our own

committee, but another bill that I mentioned earlier about the protocols, I was amazed at the conflicting advice.

I am not being critical, because I think the docs in my area they

are doing the best that they could given the information that they

had.

Having sat in a few board conferences like that when my own

parents were sick and there were disagreements with the infectious

disease doctor and the others, the renal man and the others.

So I know that the best minds don’t always come to an easy

consensus.

But it seems to me that when we have dozens of potential toxins,

viruses, Ebola and a whole host of others that could be delivered

with incredibly devastating effectiveness against unsuspecting populations, every one of these, it seems to me, we need to sweat the

details and come up with—and you have already begun to do that,

I know, with this and other work that you are doing.

My point is time is not our friend. We need a crash course in getting this as quickly accomplished.

Would the four medical centers, the Centers of Excellence, would

it be good if they were part of the VA or is there some other area

where they need to be housed?

As has been pointed out repeatedly, about half of all the students

who are medical practitioners do go, in whole or in part, through

the VA.

So it seems to me that, from a teaching point of view, we certainly have much to offer.

Doctor?

Dr. MURPHY. We haven’t had a chance to review your bill yet in

detail. So the administration hadn’t developed a position on the

bill.

However your proposal for Centers of Excellence is similar to our

Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Centers (GRECCs), and

our mental health centers (MIRRECs), and others in VA.

We think that those centers were seminal activities to bring the

research and clinical expertise and translate that immediately into

education programs for our students, residents, and practitioners in

areas like geriatrics.

In summary I think your concept is sound and should receive

consideration.

Mr. SMITH. Ken Mizrach. Ken, I, in my opening comments, mentioned how grateful I was personally and our letter carriers were

collectively for your early intervention, and I know how hard you

worked the phones.
51

I don’t know if I told you this, or anyone, and I won’t name the

name, because it would be embarrassing, but when I first apprised

some of our health care leaders in New Jersey that the VA had the

capability and could have access to Cipro and are part of a bioterrorism management plan, they never even thought of that.

The way it was put to me, that is a blind spot, I didn’t even know

that they had that capability, which suggested the left hand didn’t

know what the right hand was doing.

Again, a crisis sharpens the mind and hopefully there will be

many lessons learned from this.

Did you want to maybe comment on some of the work that you

did?

Mr. MIZRACH. I just appreciate your involvement with us. I am

very proud of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the ability

of our staff to rally under any circumstances to provide the support

to our communities.

I think that you are absolutely right, the VA is an unknown entity many times and you would be very proud to see how our clinical and administrative staff reacted when we had the World Trade

Center attack and we rallied and did whatever it took to support

our communities, whether they were Veterans or non-Veterans.

We stand ready to support our communities.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. You all probably heard today that Kaiser

Permanente is being sued by a relative of the inhalation anthrax

victim who died, and yet we have been told, in this committee at

least, with a staffing note, that Kaiser did have some guidelines

that were not—they were probably state-of-the-art with regard to

how to treat it and recognize it.

Now that we are moving into the liability issue, as well, obviously, public health comes first, but there will be, I think, another

shoe to drop, especially if there is another episode of this, when

someone misses it.

Could you perhaps—Dr. Murphy, you might want to, again, take

a shot at this.

The protocols, are they there? The CDC seems to be the overarching entity that suggests that we do this or we do that, but it

doesn’t seem to be off the shelf, or is the guideline that flexible that

they constantly have to update it?

Again, the chaos of the first week of what happened in my own

district was very illustrative. It was like everyone was making

statements.

Matter of fact, I kept my mouth shut, other than to say that we

trust and have great confidence in our medical people, because this

is basically a medical issue.

Dr. MURPHY. As has been pointed out by some of the other witnesses today, many of our health care providers in this country,

prior to the recent anthrax attacks, did not think about biological,

chemical, or radiologic injuries or attacks on a routine basis.

It wasn’t a subject that they were familiar with. In fact, most of

my experience in that area came from my training, a Master’s in

Public Health at the Uniformed Services University, and through

my military experience, and then in investigating some of the veterans’ illnesses after the Gulf War.
52

However, the training programs are available. For years, VA has

been broadcasting the 12-hour program on bioterrorism that

USAMRID produces, and all of those people are faculty at USUHS.

The problem, as I see it, is that physicians and other health care

providers in this country don’t know how to access that information. We all have busy lives. They haven’t worked it into their

CME, the continuing medical education, schedule or into their medical reading time.

We need to make the tools readily available through multiple different mechanisms and we need to put them in formats that people

are comfortable with, whether it is reading material, because they

are visual learners, or whether it is a satellite broadcast or an

internet interactive web site or a CD-ROM.

We need to make them readily accessible, easy for people to understand, and provide them either at a reasonable charge or free

of charge, if they are government products.

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Murphy, how would you respond to Dr. Hill, the

Chair-elect at the AMA Board of Trustees, on page 13 of his testimony, bottom lines in terms of his recommendation?

One is to re-create the medical education for the National Defense Program, expanding it to graduate medical education programs, and then he gives a number of specific recommendations

there, like specific curricula objectives, Federal funding, local identified faculty.

And the second proposal is to include education and training as

part of the regional response preparation of the National Disaster

Medical System.

Dr. MURPHY. I think those could all be very effective mechanisms

in getting education into the hands of health care providers.

Mr. SMITH. Is any of this being done now and to what extent, or

are these relatively new recommendations?

Dr. HEMMING. I consider infectious disease as my other business

when I get to practice.

Let me tell you that by today, American physicians, probably

most of them, have gone back to their textbooks, and they have

now read about anthrax.

I am certain that there is currently more knowledge about anthrax in the medical community in the United States than ever before in the history of this country, because physicians really are

professionals and most of what they do is self-taught.

We spend a lot of time studying and reading. As a consequence,

now that people are focused on this issue, I would wager you that

even in Yukon, ID, (I bet you don’t even know where that is. It is

close to where I was raised) physicians there probably could diagnose inhalational anthrax today, only because they have also have

so many ranchers out there.

But the issue is physicians, if you get their attention, then they

self-read, they learn, and they get ready because they are really interested in providing the best care they can for their patients.

The issue, again, is focus and all of the requirements and being

able to reach up and pick out the important ones.

I think what this WMD education can do is to allow American

physicians and primary care practitioners, to begin thinking, to realize that we are not living on a safe little island any longer. All
53

of us are now at risk of having something very unexpected happen.

Then, it is easy to play a game of probabilities and talk about the

infectious disease threats that we have and to teach people about

them.

We can talk about chemical threats and what to do if something

happens.

I believe that our American physicians will be enormously responsive, so long as we allow them to take the time out of their

busy lives and focus on these issues and to get prepared.

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask one question about detection. Obviously, we are all trying to get up to speed as to what is currently

available off the shelf and what is at least being considered to be

even more effective.

But I have read a number of the brochures and obviously some

of them are the glossy type, but others went into greater depth as

to what these air breathing, both chemical and biological detection

devices can accomplish.

I guess, Dr. Murphy, you might be the one to answer this.

Does the VA have any plans to procure—maybe you already have

some in the field—so that you know what you are dealing with?

Particularly if it is chemical.

One of the devices that are used by the military, obviously,

breathes in, finds out what is in the air and does it in such an effective way, that, obviously, precautions can be taken.

And it seems to me that if you have got first responders and

emergency room personnel dealing with something, they need to

know, A, what it is for the sake of the victim, and, also, A, to protect themselves.

Dr. MURPHY. This isn’t an area where I have a lot of technical

expertise, but as I understand the current state of art with the detectors, it is not only that you have to purchase the equipment, but

you have to have a team that is able to interpret and confirm the

results of that detection.

It is not a completely transparent process. At this point, we are

looking at whether there is a need for detectors in any VA facilities, but we have not moved ahead or a decision to begin purchasing any at this point.

I don’t know if, Dr. Hemming, you have anything.

Dr. HEMMING. This is a far more complex issue than the marketers would have you believe, the people who are making devices, but

there are ways of detecting most of these materials.

Again, I think what one needs to do is look at cost versus benefit

and not spend a lot of money on things that are really not going

to help.

There are many people who are expert in this area who can give

us good advice and good counsel. The military is worried about this

a lot. My guess is that John Parker at USAMRID could answer a

lot of these questions very well for you in terms of what really does

work and what doesn’t work and where we should invest our dollars in terms of protecting our population.

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. I just would note for the record, at

our last hearing about a month ago, I had asked a question about

detectors and one of our witnesses said he was very concerned

about a false alarm, and I have been asking everybody that I can
54

possibly ask what kind of potential is it that we would get a false

alarm, and I get looks like the technology has progressed to the

point where that is highly unlikely.

I recounted the story, and it is just one anecdote among hundreds of thousands probably about the World Trade Center, but my

chief of staff’s brother works at Merrill Lynch, saw the building

come down, handled it quite well, until someone said there had

been a chemical exposure.

He said the fear and the terror just gripped him and it was like,

oh, my God!, what does that mean. And then it was found to be

a false alarm about the rumor.

But as far as anyone knows, and I am waiting to find out, there

was no machine, detector of any kind that was in proximity to this,

the emergency responders and the first responders didn’t have it,

to find out what indeed might have been in the air had there been

some kind of chemical or biological release.

It seems to me that whole groups of people could unwittingly

walk into a situation that would be disastrous for their health.

That is why I am wondering about deployments, strategically,

you don’t need one maybe in every outpatient clinic, but there

maybe needs to be some thought given to where we do go from

there.

I learned another time, when we were—there was talk in New

Jersey 10 years ago of putting in, in the Greenfield area, a toxic

waste burner, to be obviously differentiated from a waste to steam

deal, which are state-of-the-art and relatively clean.

This would be burning and nobody knows what would be coming

out of that smoke stack and you would have to transport all kinds

of toxic materials from all over New Jersey to this place.

The question arose, and at first it was laughed at by some, what

about the first responders. Then we just called them firemen and

firefighters.

And it was like, well, are their rubber boots going to melt when

they walk into something. No one knew.

And at the public hearing that I testified at, it was amazing, the

commissioners, the technical staff, were scratching their heads,

what happens.

Detection, again, being a key issue. What is it that you are dealing with?

So just food for thought, and I think we need to work that one.

I’m sure you are.

Dr. MURPHY. My understanding is that the technology has not

developed to the point that we would not expect large numbers of

false alarms.

In fact, I would predict that most of the alarms that you would

get off of the devices would be ultimately determined to be false

positives.

As we know from our experience in Desert Shield/Desert Storm,

those alarms themselves can create anxiety.

Therefore, I think you need to weight the risk and the benefit of

the technology that would be put in place against the level of risk

in various locations. Detectors could then be placed in high risk

areas.
55

I read in The Washington Post that the Metro, for instance, is

looking at detectors for the subway system.

We need to carefully evaluate what the technology can do for us

and decide whether there is a significant benefit for our patients

and our facilities.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Yes, Doctor.

Dr. HEMMING. Fear is really a powerful emotion. Let me talk as

a pediatrician, who again and again has been in a community

where there is a case of meningococcal meningitis. Suddenly you

have a child in an elementary school who develops

meningococcemia or meningitis; and, now all of the people, the parents of the children in that school and the teachers are all concerned that they, too, will develop meningitis.

It is really an amazing experience when suddenly you, as a

health care practitioner, have several thousand people fearful for

their family and their children descend on you, asking you to assure them that they won’t or can’t develop a secondary case of that

illness.

This is the same psychology that terrorists are using in this

whole business, and I think as processionals, the only tool that we

have better than all of the science is information and communication.

One of the things we haven’t talked about here is how important

it is that systems be in place to inform communities, to teach people so that they respond, not out of shear terror, but thoughtfully,

when their families or lives are threatened.

I think there are ways to do that and I think our mental health

professionals can help us with this. I think this is another educational area where the VA and others can make a huge difference

in terms of community response to fear, the very fear that terrorists want to evoke.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Carson.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to ask Dr. Murphy. The chairman’s bill, H.R. 3254,

lists understanding of the potential long-term effects of terrorist attacks as part of the program content for anti-terrorism training,

and education.

One of the long-term effects of any horrific incident, of course, is

post-traumatic stress.

Should mental health services, such as PTSD counseling, be included in anti-terrorism curriculum, in your opinion?

Dr. MURPHY. Yes, absolutely. We believe that good mental health

training should be part of medical school curriculums and it is important for health care practitioners, whether they intend to go into

a mental health profession or not, to have a good basis in mental

health training, including in PTSD and other long-term psychological effects of terrorist attacks.

Ms. CARSON. How many decontamination stations are currently

in the VA health care system and how many are planned?

Dr. MURPHY. We currently have 30 decontamination units.

Ms. CARSON. Three-zero, 30?

Dr. MURPHY. Thirty, three-zero, in our medical facilities around

the country and we have asked each facility to look at having at

least a portable decontamination unit available.
56

Ms. CARSON. Let me close by saying I applaud the VA and its

existing collaboration with DOD and other agencies on developing

and delivering quality education and training programs, such as

the Emergency Management Academy and the Emergency Management Strategic Health Care Group Technical Advisory Committee.

Now, in your opinion, Dr. Murphy, what coordination efforts are

further needed between the VA and other Federal agencies in presenting a common front to the threat of biological, chemical, and/

or radiological terrorism?

Dr. MURPHY. I think that there are a number of areas where we

have gaps in our coordination between departments.

We need to have joint scenario planning, so that we can make

sure that we have developed action plans for all the likely scenarios that may occur for potential terrorist attacks in the future.

We need to have policies that are consistent between the agencies. We need to have our personnel working together on a routine

basis so that we are comfortable with each other’s procedures and

policies, so that we can ensure an effective working relationship

during an emergency.

I think that we need to have joint training programs, not only

the kind of education programs that we are talking about here

today, but also disaster drills and other training exercises that

allow us to actually test our policies and procedures on an ongoing

basis.

In addition, we probably need to have more joint preparedness

planning.

So I think there are multiple levels of coordination that need to

go on between government agencies and departments over the very

near future.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you very much. I yield back my time.

Mr. BUYER. I am not interested in defining nationwide medical

preparedness as having USUHS piggyback a few training courses.

That is not what this is about. I just want to be very clear.

So what communications or coordination have either of you had,

Dr. Hemming, Dr. Murphy, representing VA and DOD, with anyone from the AMA or the American Association of Medical Colleges

as a dialogue or a beginning?

Have you had any?

Dr. HEMMING. We received an invitation from Senator Frist and

from Dr. Cohen to participate in a conference on the 28th, that the

AAMC is sponsoring, and we will have some of our folks present

at that meeting.

We have, as you may know, responded to a number of queries

from other organizations that have asked us about what we do,

how we do it, and we stand ready, as a consultant, as it were, to

provide whatever information people request from us.

I think that we have also been in dialogue with the American

Medical Association.

As you know, from the materials we submitted to you, there were

two conferences held by the AMA Board of Delegates on these

threats and conjointly with the VA, the DOD, and the CDC. We

made presentations to the AMA, talking to primary care physicians

about beginning planning to respond to WMD concerns.
57

We have a member on my staff who is a member of the ACGME

and this will be an agenda item.

The ACGME, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical

Education, will be discussing these issues at its meeting in December in San Francisco.

So, yes, indeed, we are already reaching out to a number of the

organizations that we belong to to establish a dialogue, because in

the end, if this is going to work, it has still got to come from the

grass roots up. What has to come from the top down, I believe, is

to enable and to encourage and maybe, when necessary, provide

some funding, so that organizations can afford to do this.

I believe that dialogue has already begun at all levels of medical

education in the United States and I think what your committee

can do is to encourage that dialogue and help it succeed.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Dr. Murphy.

Dr. MURPHY. I would like to agree with that Dr. Hemming said

and add that I would advise that you should not simply ask VA to

develop stovepipe programs or a ‘‘stand-alone’’ education program,

nor should you ask the university to do that, because both of us

would be unsuccessful in the effort if we did not have, as active

partners, all of the other accrediting organizations and organizations that are involved in medical student education, graduate

medical education, and the AMA and other county and state medical societies.

This needs to be a broad-based effort not only among physicians,

but among other health professional groups in order for the Nation

to be prepared to respond in the future to chemical, biological, or

nuclear attacks.

As a Nation we need to be able to, understand the threat, be able

to diagnose and treat it, and to effectively deal with the long-term

health consequences, and that is where any effort by this Congress

should be focused.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you very much for your testimony. You are

now excused.

Ms. CARSON. I wonder, Mr. Chairman, as your next panel prepares, if you would allow me to submit questions for the record to

the panel.

Mr. BUYER. No objection.

Panel four, I now recognize Dr. Edward Hill, who is the Chairman-Elect of the American Medical Association’s Board of Trustees.

Also testifying will be Dr. Jordan Cohen, President of the American

Association of Medical Colleges, and we will also receive testimony

from Dr. Martin Blaser, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine, at New York University School of Medicine.

Dr. Hill, you are now recognized to present your testimony.
58

STATEMENTS OF J. EDWARD HILL, M.D., CHAIRMAN-ELECT OF

THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION; JORDAN J. COHEN, M.D., PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL COLLEGES; AND MARTIN J. BLASER,

M.D., PROFESSOR AND CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE, NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

STATEMENT OF J. EDWARD HILL

Dr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon. I am

Edward Hill and I am Chair-Elect of the Board of Trustees of the

American Medical Association.

Perhaps more importantly, I am a practicing family physician in

Tupelo, Mississippi, and until very recently, was the director of a

residency training program for family doctors in Tupelo.

Before I begin, allow me to make an historical observation. This

country, like many other countries, has already faced events involving mass destruction. We have had earthquakes and hurricanes

and tornadoes and hazardous material spills.

So medical professionals have had to deal with and treat mass

casualties. So as we discuss how to prepare for treating the casualties of weapons of mass destruction, we should recognize the broader implications of what we do.

Our message today is twofold. First, we would like to acknowledge the accomplishments of the Department of Veterans Affairs

and Department of Defense in educating medical students and

physicians.

Second, we would like to identify some ways we believe that both

departments could further help in the education of the students

and physicians.

The AMA has fully recognized the fact that both the departments

have made important contributions in education. In fact, we estimate that at least 65 percent of the Nation’s physicians have received part of their training in a VA medical facility.

Similarly, the Department of Defense, through its health professional scholarship program, has enabled thousands of medical students to obtain their medical degrees at civilian medical schools.

In those programs, the students have received somewhere between 50 and a 132 hours of training in public health and disaster

medicine, such as diagnosing and treating patients injured by

chemical, biological, or radiological weapons.

The departments have also played a crucial role in residency programs across the country. Military residency programs have provided specialty specific training that focuses on treating injuries, as

you have already heard this morning, from weapons of mass

destruction.

And the Veterans Administration, through its residency programs, has functioned as an integral part of the Nation’s response

medical system.

Presently, the departments are training close to 2,300 resident

physicians, along with thousands of other full and part-time

physicians.

Along with the medical education and training, both departments’ health centers perform a critical role in collaborating with

civilian medical facilities.
59

For instance, the School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services

University of the Health Sciences has developed a curriculum for

addressing the medical aspects of chemical, biological, and radiological terrorism, and this Uniformed Services Medical School has

also successfully modified its curriculum for effective distance

learning, that you have already heard about this morning.

Both departments also have strong research components that are

closely integrated with their clinical and educational activities. It

is clear that the knowledge and experience within the clinical and

medical divisions of these departments are a tremendous national

asset.

The second part of a twofold message, we would like to identify

a couple of ways that we believe the departments could improve

this country’s readiness to treat those injured by weapons of mass

destruction.

First, the departments could develop a voluntary educational

program for medical schools, osteopathic medical colleges and residency programs, with specific curricula objectives.

To help implement this educational program, we would suggest

that a national coordinating office be established, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences could very quickly fill this role.

In developing this educational program, the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs would need to rely upon

subject matter experts. Current department staff and faculty could

function as an outstanding resource.

To ensure that expertise on these issues is available locally,

these departments should also identify local faculty trained in diagnosing and treating people injured by weapons of mass destruction.

As a last element for establishing an educational program, the

funding would need to be adequate, guaranteed and Federal.

In the past, there is a similar Federal program that existed.

From 1952 through 1958, the Department of Defense sponsored a

voluntary program in U.S. medical schools entitled Medical Education for National Defense, or MEND. The AMA and the AAMC

both strongly supported this program, which incorporated all of the

elements we are talking about.

In 1968, the program lost its funding. I mention this program to

highlight that there has been an effective voluntary educational

program and, by the way, at that time, a 100 percent of the medical schools participated. There were 92 medical schools and they all

participated.

So we believe this program should be re-instituted.

In addition to establishing an educational program, our National

Defense Medical System could be strengthened.

Many practicing physicians are currently part of this National

Defense Medical System. They are affiliated, for instance, with a

hospital that is connected to a VA or a Department of Defense

medical facility.

The department’s facility functions as the organizing entity in

their region. These are natural alliances for collective education

and should be fostered.

One way to foster them may be in hospital accreditation systems,

as has also been suggested already today.
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These are just a few of the ideas that we have for improving the

education of medical students and physicians and, of course, we

would be happy to discuss them further at your convenience.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hill appears on p. 89.]

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Dr. Hill. Dr. Cohen.

STATEMENT OF JORDAN J. COHEN

Dr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Jordan Cohen,

President of the Association of American Medical Colleges, the

AAMC.

AAMC represents the country’s 125 medical schools and over 400

major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 74 VA medical centers, 98 academic and scientific societies, representing over

87,000 faculty members and, also, our Nation’s medical students

and residents.

Education of our Nation’s medical students and health professionals is one of our core missions, and I am pleased to tell you

about what we are doing at the association to address the critical

topic of treating victims of weapons of mass destruction.

It does need to be said that everything changed on September 11,

the tragic events of those days and the uncertainty that has followed has resulted in new priorities and new responsibilities for everyone, very much including the AAMC.

In representing our Nation’s medical educators, our key priority

is to prepare tomorrow’s doctors with the knowledge and skills they

will need to carry out our current fight and to tackle any future

conflicts as they may occur.

Now, to address this urgent national need, the AAMC has developed what we are calling the first contact/first response plan, which

is to ensure that the Nation’s physicians are ready to respond to

incidents of biological, chemical, and radiation terrorism.

As part of this plan, as you have already heard, we are convening a coalition of health education organizations, very much including the VA and USUHS, as you heard, on November 28, here in

Washington, to help us identify and develop educational information resources to aid physicians and residents who are likely to be

the first contact, the first to encounter victims of terrorist attacks.

We believe that tomorrow’s physicians must begin in medical

school to equip themselves with the knowledge and skills required

to deal with future terrorist attacks.

Medical schools, I can assure you, across the country, are already

working very hard towards this goal through their continuing medical education departments, as well as their undergraduate and

graduate medical education efforts.

These efforts comprise a host of activities ranging from hands-on

training sessions, one-day seminars to full-fledged new courses

within their academic programs.

I have given you many examples in my written testimony, and

I won’t take the time now to repeat them.

AAMC has a primary responsibility for improving the education

of physicians when they are in medical school and to ensure that

a more systematic and to ensure that a more systematic and comprehensive set of activities is available to all medical students, we
61

are convening a panel of experts in the defense against bioterrorism to develop explicit learning objectives for medical students and

to recommend educational strategies that medical schools might

adopt to ensure that students have opportunities to achieve the

stated objectives.

This approach, by the way, we have found to be extraordinarily

powerful in other areas of curricular needs, such as population,

health, information, technology and the like. So this is a model that

is already well established and has been well accepted by the medical education community.

We are working in partnership with the American Medical Association and medical specialty societies to arm physicians who are

in training right now as residents and fellows in our country’s

teaching hospitals with the information and tools they need to

practice their chosen specialties.

That training will now include how to respond immediately and

effectively to possible terrorist attacks.

It is essential that medical residents and other health professionals receive appropriate education and training, because they

are very likely to be among the individuals to be in first contact

positions for afflicted patients.

AAMC also has a responsibility, in collaboration with other

health education medicine, public health and science organizations

to act as a catalyst and a contributor to the ongoing national dialogue on how to provide all provide all practicing health care professionals with everything they need for the American public in a

time of crisis.

The continuing medical education departments in our hospitals

and medical schools serve a vital function in this regard.

The health care workforce is well prepared, as Dr. Hill has already mentioned, to respond to situations of mass casualties in

which primary injuries are traumatic in nature, given our longstanding experience with natural disasters, such as earthquakes,

hurricanes, and floods.

There is a good deal more that we need to do, however, to be

equally well prepared to deal with the potential of chemical, biological, and radiological terrorist attacks.

Finally, let me mention the AAMC recognizes the unique opportunities for partnerships that exist between academic medicine and

public health system.

Fortunately, we already have in existence a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and

plan to work closely with the CDC’s expert staff to identify ways

to better prepare the physician workforce to deal with terrorism.

Our members also work very closely with the Agency for Health

Care Research and Quality. Again, examples are the Johns Hopkins researchers and those are the University of Maryland and

Emory that I detail in my written statement.

These efforts to be successful, however, are going to need to have

continued cooperation and support from the VA, which has been a

mainstay for our multiple missions over many decades.

Academic medicine and the VA share three missions of health

care delivery, education, and research, and the affiliation agree-
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ments between the VA and medical schools are critical to achieving

all three missions for both partners.

Currently, 139 VA medical centers have formal affiliation agreements with a 107 of our medical schools.

Each year, as you have heard, more than 30,000 residents and

22,000 medical students rotate through the VA hospitals and clinics to receive a portion of their medical training.

VA supports yet an additional mission, that of providing backup

to the military medical system in times of war and national emergency, as you know.

For this reason, the AAMC views the VA as an absolutely essential partner in our first contact/first response efforts.

We have had over a 50 year history of affiliations with VA medical centers and abundant evidence, I think, has accumulated, to

the advantages of that partnership on all three of our missions.

The VA’s ability to recruit and retain high quality physicians and

the access of Veterans to the most advanced medical technology

and cutting-edge research are just two of the multiple benefits that

derive from this relationship.

Because a significant amount of medical education is provided

through VA settings and by jointly appointed VA faculty, VA is an

essential partner in the AAMC’s efforts.

I would like to mention, I didn’t mention this in my written

statement, Mr. Chairman, but I would like to draw your attention

to an asset that the AAMC has that may be of interest to you.

We have what is called a curriculum management information

tool, CRMIT, as we call it, which is a web-based tool that all medical schools utilize to categorize and detail their curriculum.

So we have access to what goes on in all our medical schools with

respect to curricular content, where in the curriculum, who is doing

the teaching.

So I think we are going to be in a position, we are in a position

to track over time the degree to which these topics of now vital interest are going to be included and increasingly evident in our curriculum.

So I think we’re going to be, as I say, in a position to help our

schools track their own progress and to benchmark their activities

against those schools that are becoming the leaders in this field,

and I think that is going to be a useful issue.

I would also like to make a comment to follow up on one of the

comments of the earlier witnesses, Adm. Eisold. He mentioned that

what we are really dealing with here is really quite standard in the

way of medical treatment.

What we are talking about is early recognition of some uncommon diseases, diseases that we haven’t really had a reason to be

concerned about before.

But although the task is—I certainly don’t want to minimize the

magnitude of the task that is before us, but I also don’t want you

to get the impression that we are faced with a huge, unmanageable

sort of challenge here.

I think we need to categorize those likely pathogens and chemical and radiation exposures and include them in our curriculum in

ways that fit with our already current well recognized modes of diagnosis and treatment.
63

So we are dealing with something that is incremental, not totally

new and not totally novel with respect to what is going on already.

Finally, I just would like to endorse your concept about D.A.

Henderson and his new agency in HHS. I think that would be a

very, very good focal point and, as you put it very well, I think the

staff of the umbrella that I think all of our activities could very

conveniently be orchestrated under.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Cohen appears on p. 104.]

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. Dr. Blaser.

STATEMENT OF MARTIN J. BLASER

Dr. BLASER. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon.

I ask that the committee include my complete written statement

as part of the hearing record.

I am Martin Blaser, Professor and Chairman of the Department

of Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine, and I am also one of

the nine members of the sub-specialty board in infectious diseases

of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

I might note that for a number of years, we have had questions

on our board examination dealing with topics of bioterrorism,

which may help explain why infectious disease physicians are so

good at recognizing these recent cases.

Before coming to NYU, I also served as an EIS officer at the

CDC and I have served as the Chief of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt, where I worked closely with Dr. Bill Frist, who was director of our transplantation system.

I am also a staff physician at the New York Harbor VA Medical

Center and I have been a VA physician for more than 20 years.

My research laboratory is at the VA and I have always been

proud of my VA affiliation, especially now.

Incidentally, I have conducted research on anthrax since 1996. I

was involved in the care of the infant with anthrax in New York

City, and serve on Mayor Giuliani’s Task Force on Bioterrorism.

As you know, the VA medical system is a tremendous national

resource. As our government examines ways to improve responses

to public health emergencies in a post-September 11 world, collaboration between the VA health system and our Nation’s medical

schools offers a way to address many of the gaps in our current

ability to prepare for bioterrorism.

As an example, I would like to discuss the collaboration already

underway between the NYU School of Medicine and the New York

Harbor VA Medical Center to create the VA-NYU joint Center for

Bioterrorism Research.

It is my hope that this can be a model for future collaborations

between VA facilities and medical schools across the country.

The NYU School of Medicine and its three major affiliates, Tisch

University Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, and the New York Harbor

VA are located on a single campus. We are the closest academic

medical center to both Wall Street and the mid-town business district. Bellevue is the major disaster hospital in New York.

Our combined campus is the medical front line in New York.

Both before and since September 11, the School of Medicine and its
64

affiliates have been closely involved with the city, state, and Federal Governments in preparing for and responding to acts of war

and bioterrorism.

On September 11, we fully mobilized all of our hospitals and we

could have cared for thousands of victims, had they come.

Another example of our efforts is the NIH supported General

Clinical Research Center, located at Bellevue.

In the event of a chemical or biological attack in New York, the

GCRC facilitate performing physiologic measurements on patients,

banking of specimens, and enrolling seriously ill persons, for example, with inhalational anthrax, smallpox, or plague, in clinical

trials to determine optimal therapies.

It would also enable our scientists to translate new knowledge

developed at the research center to the bedside.

Another example is at our medical grand rounds last week, the

topic was anthrax. We had a panel of experts and had 400 doctors

and students at our three major hospitals.

Incidentally, I would like to hand out the VA’s pocket cards in

bioterrorism to all our faculty and house staff at next week’s medical grand rounds throughout the NYU system.

The School of Medicine has already committed itself to the preparedness effort by creating the Center for Health Information and

Preparedness, or CHIP.

Initial efforts of CHIP are in two areas, creation of a web site to

provide accurate, up-to-date and independent information and assessments in terms understandable to both professionals and lay

audiences, and, also, a wide spectrum of bio defense related research in all component schools of New York University.

Our VA-NYU proposal contains a program of basic and

translational research on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment

of diseases related to bio warfare.

Essential to that infrastructure of modern research facilities, in

which bench research, animal studies, and human clinical investigation can perform safely.

Core research programs will focus on infectious and pulmonary

diseases, such as anthrax, clinical pharmacology and toxicology.

We intend to focus on both biological and chemical agents, such

as nerve gas and organophosphates.

I would be happy to discuss these areas in further detail during

the questioning, if member are interested.

These areas hold the promise of quickly translating the results

of research to novel diagnostics, treatments, and preventives for

victims of biological and chemical attacks.

In addition to research, the training of our health professionals

is key to improving the preparedness of our national health system.

VA facilities around the country have much to contribute to this

area, as well, and as part of the NYU CHIP program, we would develop web-based modules for the education of physicians, first responders, emergency room personnel, and other health professionals about diagnosis and treatment of bioterrorism victims.

Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman for your invitation to appear

before the subcommittee today. Our world was changed on September 11, but I am confident that with adequate support, our Nation’s
65

academic medical centers, working closely with the VA system, will

be successful in preparing for the challenges ahead.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Blaser, with attachment, appears

on p. 109.]

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Hill, you testified that from 1954 through 1968,

the Department of Defense sponsored a voluntary program for U.S.

medical schools entitled the Medical Education for National

Defense.

Following a negative report by the General Accounting Office and

citing lack of performance criteria and potentially budgetary problems, the program was no longer funded in 1969.

Now that I’ve resurrected what we had done then it would be

helpful here to us, what performance criteria does the AMA feel is

necessary to establish so that this will not happen again?

I don’t want to fail.

Dr. HILL. I anticipated that question, and I don’t know the answer, because I don’t know what the criteria that they weren’t—

we tried to find that and actually couldn’t find it.

It was 1968, actually. But I do know the AAMC and AMA both,

the next year, in 1969, strongly recommended that it be re-instituted and it was not, and I do not know the reasons that it was

not re-instituted.

Mr. BUYER. Dr. Cohen, your testimony stated the health care

workforce is well prepared to respond to situations of mass casualties. Yet, Dr. Omenaca testified that this is not the case at all.

He said that the system was in chaos and he encountered tremendous communication problems.

Would you like to respond to a practitioner’s testimony?

Dr. COHEN. I think what I was trying to indicate was that in the

case of traumatic casualties, we have had a lot of experience dealing with people who have been injured either in hurricanes, floods,

disasters of one kind or another, large vehicular accidents, train

wrecks and the like.

That is the kind of thing that I do think the system is reasonably

well prepared to deal with, because we have had a lot of experience. We have trauma teams, we have trauma centers, we have

emergency medical teams that are able to do on the site emergency

care and the like.

That is the kind of thing that I think we are reasonably well prepared to do.

The kind of thing that Dr. Omenaca was referring to, I would

agree we are not well prepared to deal with bioterrorism, with biologic agents, with chemical agents, with radiation exposure. Those

are the kinds of things we have not had experience and that is precisely why we need this major educational effort now to bring everybody up to speed with the sort of issues we are going to be dealing with.

In that context, something that hasn’t been mentioned, and

maybe it is not relevant to your concerns here, but I think we all

now recognize that our public health infrastructure is really in

need of substantial investments to improve the ability of the public

health workforce and their critical role in managing these large
66

scale and sometimes not so large scale problems, is one of the real

weak links presently in the system.

But as I say, that may be not the topic of this particular hearing,

but I do think it is important that we all recognize that that is an

urgent need for our country.

Mr. BUYER. One last question before I yield to Ms. Carson. The

Dean of USUHS recommended credentialing.

What is your opinion on us getting involved in that? My gut is

telling me stay away from that, leave that to the professionals.

Dr. COHEN. That would be my gut, as well, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. HILL. Requiring or mandating from a legislative standpoint

would probably not be a good idea.

I think it has already been shown that our medical universities

will respond very quickly when there is a crisis. They are already

responding, as you have heard this morning, without a great deal

of organization yet.

We think the organizational structure should possibly come from

your bill, but certainly not the credentialing.

Mr. BUYER. We have no intentions of mandating curriculum or

getting involved in credentialing.

You would endorse the MEND Act, too, to resurrect it, would you

not? Would both of you?

Dr. COHEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. BUYER. All three?

Dr. BLASER. Yes.

Mr. BUYER. In the affirmative. Thank you. Ms. Carson.

Ms. CARSON. I will be very quick. We have got a vote on.

In your opinion, should a specialty of biological terrorism be created and taught at medical schools? Should chemical and radiological terrorism be included?

Sometimes it takes days or weeks for the effects of a bioterrorist

event to be noticed.

Is it wise to differentiate bioterrorism from other infectious disease studies, to include reporting and surveillance actions?

I am having post-traumatic stress. Every time I sneeze, I say, oh,

my God, I have got the symptoms.

Dr. BLASER. I would like to speak as a member of the Infectious

Disease Board of the United States. We have always resisted separating into sub-segments because one cannot predict where the

next infectious disease problem will be.

We recommend broad training in the principles and the specifics

of infectious disease. That is why we have had bioterrorism and

other aspects on our board examinations, and this is the way that

we can ensure, as a country, that we will develop a cadre of broadly trained individuals who are ready to recognize the next challenge, the next medical and diagnostic challenge.

Dr. COHEN. Absolutely agree.

Dr. HILL. I would like to briefly comment. We don’t have any

trouble once it gets to the sub-specialty point.

Our problem is the primary responder. So our educational efforts,

I hope, will really concentrate on the primary care community, the

family doctors, internists, pediatricians, emergency room people,

because once we do the consults, we usually are well on our way

to success.
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Ms. CARSON. Thank you.

Mr. BUYER. Thank you, Ms. Carson. Gentlemen, I know you have

waited a long time to present your testimony, but hopefully as you

listened, it was informative and helpful to us, because this is going

to be a continuous dialogue as we work together on this.

I would like to thank Dr. Fran Murphy and Dr. Mather for waiting around and listening to your testimony, and I know she eagerly

awaits your coordination, communication, integration.

I thank you for your testimony. Very appreciative.

I will ask that my closing statement be placed in the record.

This hearing is now concluded.

[Whereupon, at 1:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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A P P E N D I X

OPENING STATEMENT OF MR. BUYER, VETERANS AFFAIRS

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

‘‘TERROR ON THE HOMEFRONT: ARE WE MEDICALLY PREPARED?’’

Nov. 14, 2001

Today’s hearing will examine a very important question, which affects not only

those of us in this room, but all Americans. We must answer the fundamental question, ‘‘Is the U.S. medical community prepared for biological, chemical, and radiological acts of terrorism?’’ Since September 11th, our country has been in a constant state of fear and anxiety of not only flying the so-called friendly skies, but also opening our mail. We are

fighting a two-front war, not only here in America, but also abroad.

It is clear our health care providers are not resourced or trained with the proper

tools to detect, diagnose, and treat casualties in the face of biological, chemical and

radiological weapons.

The purpose of this hearing is to review the critical roles that the VA and DoD

should play in providing our Nation’s medical students and current health care professionals with the education and training programs necessary to respond to terrorist activities.

Before I continue with my statement, I would like to extend a warm welcome to

our distinguished panelists. Today we are fortunate to have with us Rep. Dave

Weldon of Florida and Rep. John Cooksey of Louisiana.

I would also like to extend a special welcome to Admiral John Eisold, our Attending Physician to Congress. Since the Office of the Attending Physician was established in 1928, someone in that position has never testified before a House or Senate

Committee. However, given the importance of the subject matter of this hearing,

and Admiral Eisold’s personal and professional interest, he has agreed to share with

us his perspective on this critical subject.

I also would like to recognize two physicians who are on the front lines in this

medical war on terrorism. The first, Dr. Susan Matcha, diagnosed and treated two

employees of a Washington, DC area postal facility who contracted the anthrax

virus. Second is Dr. Carlos Omenaca, who diagnosed and successfully treated one

of the first victims of inhalation anthrax in the Miami, Florida area.

A welcome should also be extended to VA Deputy Under Secretary for Health Dr.

Fran Murphy and her staff; Dr. Val Hemming, Dean of the F. Edward Hebert

School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; Dr.

Edward Hill of the American Medical Association; Dr. Jordan Cohen of the American Association of Medical Colleges; and Dr. Martin Blaser of New York University.

They are all here today because this hearing will provide us, as well as the American public, with information crucial to the new war or terrorism. Your testimony

will help this subcommittee better understand the alleged shortcomings of the medical community’s educational institutions and how the VA and DoD can assist and

coordinate expertise to help the new generation of doctors to detect, diagnose, and

treat these new threats to public health.

Experts have been warning us for years that our healthcare system is NOT prepared for a chemical, biological, or radiological event—terrorist or otherwise.

I would like to share with you a foretelling statement made by Dr. Tara O’Toole

in 1999. Dr. O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Center for Biodefense Studies at Johns

Hopkins University, said, I quote, ‘‘Media coverage of modern epidemics will have

a profound influence on the outcome of response efforts should a biological attack

occur. The number of people who were ill and in need of hospital care would likely

be exceeded by individuals seeking care because they were fearful of being sick.’’ I

believe that this was the public response to the recent anthrax attacks.
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I firmly believe that physicians and the entire health care community must be

educated about the potentially devastating consequences of terrorism and the critical role that health care providers must play in addressing such attacks. It is essential that health care providers can recognize the basic clinical manifestations and

treat diseases caused by weapons of mass destruction.

Our civilian healthcare system must develop effective, practical responses to these

deadly weapons. It must do this through planning, training, and preparation for further terrorist attacks.

This is why I introduced H.R. 3254, the ‘‘Medical Education for National Defense

in the 21st Century.’’ I want to thank Full Committee Chairman Chris Smith, ViceChairman Michael Bilirakis, Cliff Stearns, who is the Vice-Chairman of the Veteran’s Health Subcommittee, John McHugh, Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, and that Subcommittee’s Ranking Member Vic

Snyder.

This legislation will create a partnership between the VA and the DoD and task

these two agencies to develop and disseminate a program to both our current medical professionals and current medical students in the Nation’s medical schools. We

already have a nexus in place between our medical universities where there is a

VA hospital in close proximity, and this is what we plan to tap into.

The combination of the DoD’s expertise in the field of treating casualties resulting

from an unconventional attack, and the VA’s infrastructure of 171 medical centers,

800 clinics, satellite broadcasting capabilities, and a preexisting affiliation with 107

medical schools, will enable the current and future medical professionals in this entire country to become knowledgeable and medically competent in the treatment of

casualties of weapons of mass destruction.

We cannot afford to assume that our country will never have to experience a massive biological, chemical, or radiological attack. We must act to ensure that if the

worst of our fears are realized, our medical professionals will be ready and able to

effectively respond to such fallout.

An American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Reporter article in December 1998 quotes an issue of Military Medicine that says, ‘‘Even military physicians,

who should be more prepared than civilian doctors, aren’t sure about their capability of handling such a situation: the June 1998 issue of Military Medicine reported

that only 19 percent of military physicians were confident about providing care in

’NBC’ situations. The majority of those confident few - - 53 percent - - were USUHS

graduates.’’ And Dean, if you have any comments on that Reporter article, I would

appreciate that.

It is not the intent of this legislation to create new community standards of practice. We must recognize that diseases such as smallpox, botulism, and the plague

are not normally seen around the country.

I noticed this morning in the press that the family of one of the postal workers

who died has already obtained and filed suit over that death.

Family physicians all across the country are not looking for anthrax, botulism,

smallpox, and other such diseases. So I just want to make sure, and be on the

record for legislative intent, that I am not interested in setting new community

standards with regard to health care, nor am I trying to lay ground work for the

many trial lawyers out there.

I think it is extremely important that we disseminate the expertise that we have,

so that doctors, in their diagnostic analysis, begin to think about other things from

what they normally see in their family practices.

At this time, I will turn to Ms. Carson, the Ranking Member, for any comments

that she may have.
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CLOSING STATEMENT FOR CHAIRMAN BUYER

I would like to once again thank all the witnesses for being here today and for

providing us such insightful and compelling testimony.

We particularly appreciate and to want to thank Dr. Omenaca and Dr. Hill who

traveled from Florida and Mississippi to participate in today’s hearing.

It is evident from our witnesses’ testimony today that there is a serious deficiency

in our medical education institutions core curriculum in not teaching our Nation’s

future doctors and current practitioners to recognize, diagnose, and treat diseases

and medical conditions resulting from a terrorist arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

I strongly encourage all of my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 3254, the ‘‘Medical

Education for National Defense in the 21st Century Act.’’ This important bipartisan

legislation defines the new education requirements for our current and future health

care professionals in this new world since September 11th.
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PREPARED TESTIMONY OF VAL G. HEMMING, M.D., DEAN AND

PROFESSOR F. EDWARD HE ́ BERT SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
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WRITTEN COMMITTEE QUESTIONS AND THEIR RESPONSES

CHAIRMAN BUYER TO JOHN F. EISOLD, ATTENDING PHYSICIAN TO

CONGRESS, REAR ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES NAVY MEDICAL CORPS

RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS FROM THE HONORABLE STEVE BUYER,

CHAIRMAN OF THE SUBCOMMITEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, FROM THE NOVEMBER 14, 2001 HEARING ON ‘‘TERROR ON THE

HOME FRONT; ARE WE MEDICALLY PREPARED’’

1. In your testimony, you mentioned that the ‘‘management of WMD

events occurs at several levels, which include preparation, first response,

public health response and individual provider response.’’ You went on to

assert, ‘‘while each level requires a different knowledge base, everyone requires a basic level of understanding.’’ What should that basic level of understanding include and how should that information be disseminated

throughout the health care community?

The basic level of understanding required by the public health system and individual healthcare providers includes: basic knowledge of how to initially manage the

effects of common biological agents used for mass destruction, i.e., anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, plague, etc.; knowledge of resources available and whom to contact

in case of such an emergency. This information can be disseminated through Continuing Medical Education courses offered by many organizations and hospitals as

well as through the Internet. In addition, medical schools and other health sciences

could incorporate such training into their curricula.

2. You spoke about your office’s state of readiness on October 15th. Would

it be beneficial for all medical facilities to inform the Director of Homeland

Defense of their readiness capability?

All medical facilities should be aware of their own organization’s capabilities in

responding to a mass casualty event involving weapons of mass destruction. Rather

than informing Director Ridge’s Office of each organization’s readiness state, the Director of Homeland Defense should be consulted to determine appropriate guidelines

for defining medical readiness. Moreover, these guidelines would probably be tailored based on demographics and areas deemed critical for national security.

3. In your opinion what will motivate the health care education community to incorporate weapons of mass destruction training into their curricula?

I believe that the events of 2001 have provided significant motivation for the medical community to incorporate weapons of mass destruction training into their

standard curricula. This motivation, however, must be crystallized and fully implemented if we are to maintain an appropriate level of training within our nation’s

medical community. Sufficient resources from state and local levels will certainly be

required to successfully develop and implement such programs.
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CHAIRMAN BUYER TO DR. CARLOS OMENACA

MIAMI HEART CENTER,

Miami Shores, FL, February 9, 2002

Arthur K. Wu,

Staff Director, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,

Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. WU: With reference to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations’ hearing on ‘‘Terror on the Home Front: Are We Medically Prepared’’, that was

held on November 14, 2001, I would like to answer the questions posed by Mr. Steve

Buyer’s letter date January c10, 2002.

In my testimony I made several recommendations, including the need to institute

a requirement for some type of training in bioterrorism for health care providers

other than physicians. In my opinion, this educational training should be different

from the one offered to physicians in terms of its complexity.

Specifically, I would like to recommend three levels of training.

1. Nurses and Physician Assistants.

2. Medical support personnel: paramedics, ambulance, preventive medicine

and laboratory technicians.

3. Non-medical: Military and Police force, logistics coordinators, and ordinance technicians interested or involved in medical aspects of biowarfare

agents.

Group 1 would receive a training similar to the one offered to doctors. In fact,

most of the available courses in bioterrorism are aimed to both physicians and nursing staff without a distinction. Both, doctors and nurses would attend together and

receive the same information. However, physicians would focus more in depth in

learning medical, physiopathology, and treatment aspects to a more sophisticated

level of knowledge to be expanded by medical bibliography provided during the

training. Nurses and physician assistances would remain in a more practical level

in the management issues of biowarfare casualties. Upon completion of their training, each individual should have knowledge, at its level of expertise, of:

• Types of biological agents and their characteristics

• Biological warfare agents posing the greatest near-term threat

• Delivery mechanisms for biological warfare agents

• Signs, symptoms, and time course of biological warfare agent exposure

• Pathogenesis of key agents (more addressed to physicians)

• Selection and administration of pre-and post-exposure prophylaxis and

treatment (more addressed to physicians)

• Recommended decontamination procedures for exposed persons and medical environment

• Risks to medical, medical support and non-medical personnel

• Procedures for protecting one’s self from agent exposure

• Secondary contamination control techniques

Group 2, medical support personnel: paramedics in hospital and outpatient setting, ambulance drivers, preventive medicine technicians, other medical personnel

including laboratory technicians. they would acquire basic knowledge in:

• Recognizing when a biological warfare agent attack has occurred

• Initiating appropriate patient treatment at their level of expertise

• Assisting in caring for biological warfare casualties in a clinic or hospital

• Assisting in hospital administration related to biological warfare casualties

• Performing sampling to determine if an area is contaminated by a biological warfare agent

• Decontaminating the medical environment

• Providing information to other personnel to reduce panic

• Agent types and how they work as weapons

• Treat description

Group 3, non-medical personnel: Commanders and Police force, logistics coordinators, ordinance technicians. They need general information on biological warfare

agents and their potential use as weapons, methods for self-protection, and appropriate medical treatment. After their training the will be able to understand:

• Appropriate protective measures before and after a biological warfare attack

• Available detection systems and protective measures

• Risky behaviors

• Basic health measures to halt the spread of infectious diseases

• Methods of decontamination
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• Aggressive medical treatment to use in the event of biological warfare attacks

• Types of biological warfare agents and their use as weapons

• Basic signs and symptoms of biological warfare agents in comparison to

those associated with naturally occurring infection.

I hope that these recommendations can assist on the Nation’s preparedness for

biological threats. I will be available for further questions if deemed necessary.

Sincerely,

CARLOS OMENACA, M.D., FCCP

cc: Steve Buyer, Chairman,

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,

U.S House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
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