University of Pittsburgh’s Bernard Goldstein will lead a panel of the nation’s top experts to determine the effectiveness of the nation’s biosurveillance program against terrorism.
Congress has assigned the 25-member panel—the National Academies Effectiveness of the National Biosurveillance Systems—the task of evaluating the strength and effectiveness of the U.S. public health response in the event of a bioterrorism attack. The advanced monitoring system collects and tests airborne particles in the environment to determine and respond to the release of toxic pathogens.
Sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, the evaluation is comprehensive in scope and will tap experts across the country.
“We can be pretty proud that there’s a lot of cutting-edge things coming out of our attempts to protect the nation through biosurveillance,” says Goldstein, a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. “This is the first time the national academy of sciences has been asked (by Congress) to look into this.”
The news of Goldstein’s appointment comes during a week of heated public debate regarding the FBI’s scientific methods used to link biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins to the anthrax mailings that killed five and sickened 17 in 2001.
Another local biosecurity expert, Donald Henderson of University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity and head of the federal office of Public Health Preparedness, recently questioned the validity of FBI’s current testing system. (For the Time article, click here.)
Writer: Deb Smit
Source: Bernard Goldstein, University of Pittsburgh
Image courtesy University of Pittsburgh