Posted on 07/13/2014 10:14:43 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spent much of Wednesday completing a report that would let the public see, in embarrassing detail, how the sloppy handling of anthrax by scientists at its headquarters here had potentially exposed dozens of employees to the deadly bacteria.
But just as he was sitting down for a late-afternoon lunch at his Washington, D.C., office, an urgent call came in. There had been another accident, this one just as disturbing, if not more so — and no one in the agency’s top leadership had been informed about it until that Monday, though the C.D.C.’s lab had been told about it more than a month earlier.
C.D.C. workers had somehow shipped a dangerous strain of avian influenza to a poultry research lab run by the Department of Agriculture. Known as H5N1, the virus had killed more than half of the 650 people who had been infected with it since 2003.
“I was, just frankly, stunned and appalled,” Dr. Frieden said in an interview Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.nytimes.com ...
does anyone lose jobs and pnsions over these serious mistakes?
no.
but they’ll come down hard on people who don’t want to take dangerous vax’s, go after peon citizens and farmers that do far, far less with far less serious issues.
Golly gee! Those government workers sure do have some low standards. What’s new under the sun?
In other words: “we were lying all along.” And of course no one will bear any consequences for it. Another day in the course of a government with no accountability—but then again, who are they accountable to? It is obvious we are no longer a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Substitute “government” in place of “people” and you know the truth. This must stop............
Raw milk? SWAT!
CDC to change its name to CD.
I’ve often wondered whether it is really the CDC behind all these world outbreaks of the various flu viruses.
Yep....Center for Disease.
This is a classic example of a psychological phenomenon known as accustomization.
Those who work in dangerous settings tend to gradually become accustomized and stop taking the designated safety precautions as seriously as they should. It’s a natural human tendency to stop thinking of hazards we’re around constantly as really dangerous, while new ones freak us out.
This can be seen in the general public blithely jumping in the car to drive to the airport, but then obsessing about the danger of the flight. When by any logical measure the drive to the airport is much more dangerous than the flight itself.
Also people freaking out about trace amounts of “chemicals” in the water supply or in their food, when they have highly dangerous chemicals such as chlorine bleach in their laundry room, not to mention gasoline in their car’s tank.
Big problem in nuclear power plants and other hazardous settings. The only (partial) solution I’m aware of is constant retraining.
And good management/leadership.
CDC = Centers for Disease Catastrophes
Somebody has rightly pointed out that if electricity were to be discovered today, it would be considered much too dangerous to run into every wall of every home, just waiting for somebody to mishandle.
From http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/07/23/cdc-lab-director-behind-anthrax-mishap-resigns/
Michael Farrell, head of the CDC’s Bioterror Rapid Response and Advanced Technology Laboratory (BRRAT) in Atlanta, had been reassigned from his position last month after the agency disclosed the safety breaches. He submitted his resignation on Tuesday, the CDC said.
“I can confirm that he was the team lead for the BRRAT lab since 2009 and that he’s resigned from that position,” said CDC spokesman Thomas Skinner
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