At least that is what I take away from this press release from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services:
HHS enhances preparedness with new products to treat severe burns
Four novel products to treat severe thermal burns will be developed and acquired under contracts with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The products are intended to enhance the available treatment options for disaster response and are being designed to find uses in routine clinical burn care.
ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) will leverage authority granted under the Project BioShield Act of 2004 to purchase one of the products currently available commercially and fund late-stage development and procurement of the other three. These products will be added to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) or managed by vendors to help protect people from burn injuries resulting from radiological and nuclear threats.
The detonation of an improvised nuclear device would produce intense heat, resulting in many patients with severe burns. The treatments for such burns require complex procedures including surgical skin grafting that is resource-intensive and technically demanding. With only 127 burn centers nationwide, a mass casualty incident of this scale could easily overwhelm the nation’s burn care infrastructure.
“To protect health and save lives from the impacts of multiple types of disasters, we have to address critical challenges in burn care,” explained BARDA Director Robin Robinson, Ph.D. “These products are intended to offer greater options and help create a continuum of care in a mass casualty incident; together they have the potential to eliminate resource-intensive steps, shorten hospital stays and improve patient outcomes.”
Emphases mine - if we spent more time rooting out the terrorists who are attempting to gain this capacity, we would not be in such a predicament. Our "treaty" with Iran is going to put nukes in terrorists hands in five years or less.
Leave a comment