Measure is necessary for self preservation

Measure is necessary for self preservation

The officers of this newspaper, like those at so many corporations around the country, have responded to the proliferation of anthrax incidents by instituting sound and reasonable restrictions on the opening of mail. Frightening though it may seem that a mundane exercise like handling an envelope is treated as a matter of life or death, such is the world as we know it today. Not everyone works in an office.

The majority of Americans have yet to receive the memo instructing them precisely what to do and precisely where to go in the event they suspect biological or chemical jeopardy. It is time they got that word from the smart fellows up top who are charged with the defense of the nation. The fear of the utterly unknown appears to be spreading fast among people who would be greatly relieved by some simple instruction in emergency procedure. When people with little or nothing to fear give way to panic, the terrorist wins. In a sound assessment of the nation's growing biological and chemical weapons threat published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Jerome Goodman of the Harvard Medical School argued persuasively that since America is at war, a civil defense procedure is vital. It is not simply that the nation's stockpiles of medical defenses against biological and chemical agents are woefully low, though, clearly, they are. Worse is the lack of a plan to allocate the scarce resources that are available.

Under pressure from panicky patients, medical doctors around the country are prescribing huge amounts of antibiotics to people who almost certainly will never need such medicines. Lacking precise directives as to when and under what circumstances doctors should prescribe such drugs, the lives of those who very well may need doses of Ciproflaxin, but won't be able to get it because of panic stockpiling, are being placed unnecessarily at risk.

The great fear among government officials is that instituting emergency procedures creates its own alarm among the population. We can only conclude that the American people can take it as long as they know what's going on. This newspaper is in virtual mailroom lock-down. Every reporter looks at every envelope as if it were postmarked from Hades. Yet life goes on.

If nothing else, the anthrax scare is imprinting Americans from coast to coast with the sense that our nation is in jeopardy and that an assertive self-defense is justified. It tells us that unless we act forcefully and immediately to snuff out this threat at its source, the cruelty will continue. If the barbaric attacks on New York City and Washington, D. C., did not persuade the vast majority of Americans that force is necessary for self preservation, they need no convincing now.

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