Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 11, 1993 TAG: 9308110023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
Scientists say it's only a matter of time before another exotic germ or new strain of bacterium attacks, but budget cutbacks have sapped their ability to protect Americans from such emerging diseases.
"This is something you can't ignore," said Dr. Gail Cassell, a microbiologist who advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We are in for danger."
The CDC functions as America's medical sleuths, determining the reasons for sudden outbreaks and finding ways to prevent disease. With known diseases such as flu, lead poisoning and, recently, even AIDS, its system works well.
But there's no system to warn about emerging diseases, like the new cholera strain that has killed 5,000 people in India this year or the hantavirus that has taken at least 18 lives in the American Southwest since late May.
And Americans' vulnerability is heightened because the scientists who fight new, rare diseases are vanishing in the face of budget constraints and natural attrition, and there's no money for replacements.
"It's like letting your insurance policy lapse," said Dr. Robert Shope of Yale University School of Medicine. "The danger's always there, but our ability to react to it is not so great."
"We're going to be at increased risk for these things getting out of hand," said the CDC's Dr. C.J. Peters, one of the world's handful of experts on hantavirus. "Imagine what it would have meant to the U.S. if AIDS had been kept in Africa, for example."
Doctors believe AIDS originated in African monkeys and somehow made the jump to humans.
New diseases can evolve from animals, or mutate or migrate from other countries. The challenge is preventing or containing them.
But research into most infectious diseases is underfunded until the germ causes an outbreak, said Cassell, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
"That was the lesson of AIDS - to not be caught unprepared," she said. "We haven't learned it."
The CDC does expect from Congress a record $2.2 billion for 1994.
But for all infectious diseases except AIDS, which has an independent line of funding, the House has appropriated $40.3 million - less than half the $92 million requested and no increase from this year. The Senate has yet to set a figure.
Over the past decade, the CDC has lost about 20 percent of its personnel and its budget for infectious diseases other than AIDS. And last year, the Pentagon ended most of its research into rare diseases that threaten to migrate to the United States.
Only AIDS, tuberculosis and vaccine research - President Clinton's priorities - are getting increases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases next year, said financial manager Steven Berkowitz.
The reasons: More and more diseases must vie for a share of the same pool, and research costs far outstrip inflation, even when funds are increased, he said.
The CDC says three U.S. outbreaks, in rapid succession, depleted its funds this year:
E. coli, a little-understood, food-borne bacteria that got into hamburgers in a Pacific Northwest restaurant chain in January, killing two children and striking 500 other people ill.
Cryptosporidium, an intestinal parasite that sneaked into Milwaukee's water, striking thousands in April.
A new strain of rodent-borne hantavirus that has caused severe respiratory illness in the Southwest.
by CNB