A Plague on All Our Houses

ARE YOU AFRAID YET? I HAVE NOT YET EXPERIENCED THE FEAR OF FLYING OR OF similar terrorist attacks after September 11. But with bioterrorism, I find that I am terrified of this new threat—anthrax. What sick mind(s) would devise this epidemic with the potential to wipe out an entire metropolitan population? What frightens me most is the lack of Cipro needed for this situation. In the October 24, 2001, edition of The New York Times, Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, "...the tablets now being manufactured by Bayer would be enough to protect 10 million Americans, and would add to a government stockpile already adequate to treat 2 million Americans." The story continues with Representative Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, who favors a much larger government role in the nation’s health system and led criticisms of Thompson, said, "This might not be adequate if anthrax were sprayed in large quantities on major metropolitan areas. If an aerosol was dropped on our three largest cities, you would [reach] more than 12 million people."

The nation has already witnessed the death of two Washington, DC, postal employees even after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed the mail facility safe. The lack of knowledge during this crisis may result in an outbreak as yet unseen since the Black Plague that ravaged Europe. Another article appearing in the October 24 The New York Times makes known the uncertainty about anthrax: "Yesterday’s decision by public health officials to treat thousands of postal workers with Cipro just days after warning against over-prescribing the antibiotic was essentially an acknowledgment that they are struggling to contain an outbreak of anthrax for which there is no precedence. ‘We have limited experience with anthrax disease...and even less with anthrax prepared in this way and delivered in this fashion,’ said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, a former senior official at HHS. ‘We are really operating in a zone of uncertainty about strategies, about who’s exposed, about who needs treatment.’"

There is heartening news as reported in the October 24 Los Angeles Times: "[Recent discoveries] were released early in light of the recent spate of anthrax infections, [which] could lead to therapies that, with antibiotics, would help patients survive...The new findings are from two separate research teams and are to be published in a Nov 8 issue of the journal Nature...Such research efforts could well be the key to future anthrax treatment."

This led me to ponder what role chiropractic could assume to help in the fight against anthrax. Hamburg cautioned in the article, "Over-use of antibiotics is very dangerous because it has consequences for the individual and the future utility of that drug." Chiropractic philosophy has long believed in drugless, alternative methods in treating disease and illness. In light of the possible lack of antibiotics and questions of absolute efficacy, is there a possibility for chiropractic research to investigate new therapies? I believe that chiropractic should step forward to demonstrate to the world their overlooked importance to public health. Participation in discovering new treatment methods to halt a potential anthrax plague would definitely remove the tarnish of "quackery," a derisive misnomer perpetuated by the allopathic community.

Miwon Seo
mseo@medpubs.com