7 deadly myths about weapons of terror.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

* Among JFK's best known maxims is that the great enemy of the truth is not the deliberate lie, but the myth. In the age of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and flu pandemics, there is no shortage of half-truths floating around. But we can't blame people for being confused. For an overwhelming majority--based on a recent Google search--the biggest myth that comes to mind in the world of weapons of terror is Iraq's infamous WMDs that were never found. There are other myths, perhaps not nearly as riveting, that pervade in the nation's collective consciousness and should be dispelled.

Following is what we regard as seven noteworthy misconceptions associated with weapons of terror.

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1 Myth: U.S. Medical Excellence Extends to Disaster Response

* The U.S. medical system is the best in the world, or so goes the conventional wisdom.

It works great when a patient needs a heart transplant, but in the event of a wide scale disaster or quickly spreading disease, local hospitals are likely to be overwhelmed, a number of reports and congressional hearings have pointed out.

Just-in-time delivery of medicine and supplies means that hospitals don't find it profitable to stockpile essential items such as vaccines. Because of shortages of nurses and doctors, such institutions may already be understaffed. It can also be assumed that many of these emergency workers will fall victim to the disasters that they are expected to respond to.

The beginnings of the swine flu epidemic in April showed that a pandemic will not immediately overwhelm hospitals. In such cases, there will be time for officials to formulate a response. The Department of Health and Human Services has pre-positioned medical stockpiles throughout the country and claims that it can transport them anywhere within 12 hours. Even so, early media reports said that officials in New York City were advising those who received tamiflu prescriptions not to use them because there was a shortage. And that was in the nation's largest city. But any number of the scenarios--anthrax, nerve gas, nuclear detonation or natural disasters such as earthquakes--will most likely result in medical centers that are ill prepared to take on the challenge.

Center for American Progress analysts Andy Grotto and RJ. Crowley, said, "Despite our state-of-the-art medical technology and dedicated health professionals, we do not have sufficient medical infrastructure in many parts of the country to accommodate everyone who might need medical care in a crisis."

Every December, the Trust for America's Health releases a report card on states' readiness in public health emergencies.

Progress has been made, nevertheless, "major gaps remain in many critical areas of preparedness, including surge capacity, rapid disease detection and food safety," the 2008 report said.

Also, the worsening economy and resulting state budget cuts could mean a rollback in what progress has been made since 9/11, the report said.

"The cuts to state budgets in the next few years could lead to a disaster for the nation's preparedness," the report said.

The federal government also cut off supplemental funding for pandemic flu preparedness. After the swine flu scare, that may soon change.

Different disasters will, of course, require different responses. Biological, chemical or radiological attacks will call for a variety of different medicines and decontamination procedures to be in place.

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Only a handful of major cities have chemical-biological-nuclear

response teams. The Marine Corps and the National Guard have units that can be called upon, but deploying them to a scene can take several hours.

Officials must also be prepared for a populace that may not know what to do in case of a public health emergency. The 1995 sarin gas incident in Japan showed that citizens who are the victims of such attacks may skip triage areas or decontamination tents and make their way to hospitals on their own. Hundreds did so in that case.

A dirty bomb, which is not a nuclear device but may be interpreted as one by the general public, may send thousands of panicked citizens to hospitals with real or imagined symptoms.

HHS since 2002 has administered the Hospital Preparedness Program and sent $3 billion to states and three major cities since then.

Some individual hospitals have improved, a study by the Center of Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said in March report, "Hospitals Rising to the Challenge." The nation's healthcare system still remains "largely unprepared to respond to large-scale catastrophic emergencies."

A 10-kiloton nuclear detonation or a large-scale anthrax attack in a major city will require a complex and coordinated response.

"Current public and healthcare sector emergency plans will not work during this scale of catastrophe," the report said.

2 Myth: Big-Budget Technology Is Needed to Counter Biological Terrorism

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* Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff stated many times that the threat that worried him most was biological terrorism.

And there is a history of such attacks. Anthrax spores were sent through the mail by a domestic terrorist in early 2001. Five died as a result.

The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction said last year that U.S. laboratories have the strictest guidelines as far as securing dangerous pathogens. But that might not be so overseas.

In the case of biological attacks, the best defense might be a good response.

It would be nearly impossible to detect a pathological agent being smuggled into the United States with sensors. Detecting highly enriched uranium is one thing. Finding a small vial of anthrax in a suitcase is another.

Michael Pantella, associate director for infectious disease at the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory, said that the approach to combating a biological attack should be the same as any infectious disease.

It will fall on the public health system to mitigate the effects of a biological weapon. If antibiotics are stockpiled in sufficient numbers, and...