03.18.10
Bioterror defense industry mouthpieces left forlorn
The most in-the-news duo of fuglemen for the US bioterror defense industry, the small operation known as the Graham-Talent WMD commission, will no longer be the Graham-Talent commission when its federal lease on life is not renewed this year. In short order.
It couldn’t come soon enough.
During 2008-09 the Graham-Talent Commission acted as an instrument of Tara O’Toole’s biodefense shop, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.
Writing here in December, we summarize:
More accurately, [the commission’s public faces] — Bob Graham and Jim Talent — are little more than fuglemen for the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a small consortium of biodefense firms called the Alliance for Biosecurity. And the ‘commission’s’ top two staffers are indistinguishable from the Center for Biosecurity.
The special interest group known as the Graham-Talent commission, though, does have a script it efficiently delivers.
It’s an apocalyptic one, a dire and extreme claim delivered free of correspondingly extreme or convincing evidence in support of it. It lives on the idea that if enough people can be rounded up to repeat it in press, it will be taken as fact by others who should perhaps know better.
And that script, delivered through the end of 2009 for the purposes of bonking the Obama administration over the head on the nation’s unpreparedness for bioterrorism was this, as taken from an example in USA Today:
“[Anthrax spores] released by a crop-duster could ‘kill more Americans than died in World War II’ and the economic impact could exceed $1.8 trillion in cleanup and other costs.”
An anthrax attack, in other words, would make World War II and the economic collapse seem like walks on a sunny day.
The Graham-Talent bioterror defense industry lobby regularly astro-turfed this substance-free meme into the mainstream press.
For the Miami Herald, Bob Graham, in an opinion piece:
“Is the biothreat overblown?” Graham asked. (The correct answer is “Yes.” And he has been one of the parties overblowing it.)
“No,” continued Graham’s opinion piece. “Just two or three pounds of anthrax scattered over a major city could kill more Americans than the number who died in World War II, according to the National Counter Terrorism Center. Cleanup and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.”
And in various other newspapers, various third and fourth tier right-wing pundits like Cliff May and Deroy Murdock delivered the same item.
“In an October 21 progress report, [Graham-Talent] cautioned that ‘a one-to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II,’ specifically, 380,000.” — Murdock
“A scenario perhaps even more frightening: terrorists using biological weapons, setting off epidemics of smallpox, Ebola virus or other hemorrhagic fevers; a crop duster spreading 10 pounds of anthrax causing more deaths than in World War II.” — May
But despite the pliant and suggestible nature of various newspaper editors, the general public would seem to have virtually no interest in this much foretold catastrophe.
Which is sort of good news, considering the amount of effort Graham-Talent brought to the table in trying to manipulate opinion.
Another matter worth noting is the gracelessness with which parties in the bioterror defense industry deal with each other. Having done so much for the cause of the O’Toole shop, the UPMC Center for Biosecurity, you’d think those folks — with their plan for a big bioterror defense installation — might have thrown some money at Graham-Talent.
Where’s the love?
But perhaps they’ll still come through.
“One wonders which pharmaceutical firms will fund this ‘non-profit’ organization,” writes Jason Sigger today at Armchair Generalist. “Interestingly, the commission is not going to address the nuclear weapons or proliferation prevention aspects of its report, but only the issue of biopreparedness.”
“We’re not a lame duck. We’re not going away,??? was one promise, delivered by the commission’s executive director before a women’s group in Washington, DC.