A couple days ago

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A couple days ago I mentioned I was following up my piece on anthrax with a piece on smallpox. Well, hey, you shouldn’t have doubted me! Just released in the new issue of The New Republic is my article on why Donald A. Henderson, Tommy Thompson’s new bioterrorism czar at HHS, maybe ain’t all he’s cracked up to be.

Henderson is justly acclaimed for directing the World Health Organization’s successful smallpox eradication program in the 1960s and 1970s. But, as I explain in the article, he’s spent the better part of the last decade lobbying for the destruction of the last lab stocks of the smallpox virus — something which most experts think would have prevented the development of drugs which might save your life in the event of a bioterrorist smallpox attack.

For all the details, see the article, which is out today.

I’ll also have a short … well, what I can only think to call a short humor piece on terrorism experts coming out in the new issue of Talk, which I imagine will be out soon.

Talking Points Memo: piquant commentary, overclass humor, cutting edge epidemiology.

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