Breaking yet another capable and important federal agency

The loyal Bushies take away another protection from the American people.

Blue Girl at Blue Girl, Red State:

Julie Gerberding has trashed the CDC, and spent a few billion of your dollars doing it. She took an agency that worked, that was the global gold standard 0f public health, and demoralized the staff, drove off the top talent, changed the structure of the agency so it now has a centralized command structure, and, in general, ruined it. (This is considered "success" by the Bush cabal.)

And in no department within the CDC has her ham-fisted politicized management style been more acutely felt than in the vaccine safety office. The vaccine safety office was, until 2004, led by a charismatic Taiwanese immigrant named Robert T. Chen.

Thanks, Julie. When the next pandemic hits, we'll think of you.

Gassing the poor and the helpless

No, not Saddam, George Bush:

Hope, Arkansas (AHN) - The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that there were high levels of formaldehyde in travel trailers and mobile homes that were used by victims of hurricane Katrina and Rita as emergency housing.

FEMA officials said that the residents of these trailers will be transferred as quickly as possible into hotels and apartments because exposing them to formaldehyde makes them sick. They said that transferring them will be beneficial for those who already have symptoms of respiratory illnesses such as the children, elderly persons or occupants.

Formaldehyde is a gas at room temperature. When exposed to this, it can cause burning eyes and/or nose, coughing and difficulty breathing. It is also shown to be carcinogenic - causing nasal and nasopharyngeal cancer and possibly leukemia also.

CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding said that higher temperatures may cause formaldehyde levels to go up. She also added that the high levels were found in December and January and that the people should be relocated before summer.

Heckovajob, Georgie!

crossposted at SteveAudio.

Homegrown incompetents?

I don't think duct tape and plastic wrap will save us from these guys....

The Centers for Disease Control has suspended bioweapons research at Texas A+M University, after the school failed to report four workers' exposure to biological agents. It's the first time the CDC has ever forced a research facility to stop work on so-called "select agents." Five labs and more than 120 lab researchers' efforts have been halted, pending a CDC investigation.

Three researchers tested positive for exposure to the weapons agent Q fever in April 2006, two months after another researcher fell ill from contact with the another agent, Brucella, according to documents obtained by an Austin-based bioweapons watchdog group.

University officials waited one year to report the Brucella case to the Centers for Disease Control. The Q fever case still has not been reported. Federal law requires quick reporting of incidents.

"The diseases, while rarely fatal in humans, cause high fevers and flulike symptoms, and both are difficult to cure," the Dallas Morning-News notes. "There was little danger of a disease outbreak – transmission of one of the diseases between humans is rare, and it's unheard of with the other – but the breakdown in reporting on the diseases could indicate a broader problem in bioweapons research, say the activists who uncovered it."

Weird update by the blogger asking was he the only one who's creeped out by the fact that this guy was running Texas A+M during the incidents?