Smallpox vaccinations for health care workers. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recently recommended that the federal government provide smallpox vaccinations to about 10,000 to 20,000 health care workers. The panel recommended that the smallpox response teams that would investigate smallpox cases, as well as health care workers at hospitals designated to treat smallpox patients and their contacts, be immunized. Hospitals would be designated for smallpox treatment, and response teams created, through state bio-terrorism preparedness plans funded by the CDC. ACIP's recommendations will be submitted to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who will confer with other public health officials and consider changes to the vaccination policy. Dr. Julie Gerberding, acting deputy director of the CDC, said if the panel's recommendations are adopted, vaccinations could begin "by the fall" of 2002. The federal government has pledged to obtain enough of the vaccine to immunize every US citizen by the end of 2002. (Newswires, 25 Jun) United Airlines Seeks $1.8B Federal Loan. United Airlines asked the government Monday for $1.8 billion in loan assistance, making it the biggest carrier to date to seek help from a loan guarantee program created to prop up the ailing industry after 11 September. United Airlines, the nation's No. 2 airline, has lost about $1 billion since the attacks and is the third major carrier to seek federal guarantees, after America West and US Airways. (Washington Post, 24 Jun) Enlisting science in terrorism fight. On 25 June, the National Academy of Sciences released a report titled Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism. The report urges the US to better exploit its vast scientific resources to fight terrorist threats by urging scientists to immediately implement existing technology in order to better control nuclear weapons, create more vaccines, and protect shipping containers, ventilation systems, and key elements of the power grid. Further, it recommends the creating of an independent homeland security institute within the newly proposed Department of Homeland Security with an undersecretary of technology to coordinate communication between national academies, the National Institutes of Health, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (CNET News, 25 Jun) New command would meld missile defense and offense. The Pentagon plans to create a new command that combines the military network that warns of missile attacks with its force that can fire nuclear or non-nuclear weapons at suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons sites around the world. The new command would harness in one entity the nation's missile warning network and the new national missile-defense system, as well as the country's ability to plan and launch offensive strikes with nuclear and conventional weapons. The command would support the Bush administration's new doctrine of pre-emptive action against states and terrorist groups that are trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, officials said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have briefed President Bush on the plan in recent days. (NY Times, 25 Jun)
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