Something's in the air: liberties in the face of SARS and other infectious diseases - Singapore

Reason, August, 2003 by Declan McCullagh

An in-depth New York Times analysis showed that America is not immune to this 21st-century information contagion. The Times reported that high levels of anxiety existed in states such as New York, California, and Washington that experienced the most SARS cases or had sizeable Asian-American communities. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was worried enough about public panic to dine in a Chinatown restaurant and then hold a press conference about it. OnlineAllergyRelief.com, an Internet retailer in Metairie, Louisiana, that sells air filters and purification products, reports that business is booming. "We have gone through case after case of masks," a representative says. "They're just slow to come in now....A lot of things are back ordered. Our manufacturer doesn't have a really big supply."

Panic mongers inevitably arise to prey on public nervousness. Web sites of dubious provenance tout dietary supplements--colloidal silver, oregano oil--as effective anti-SARS measures. Spain touting SARS remedies is on the rise. Gary North, the Christian Reconstructionist who has made a living predicting that modern society will end in panic and ruin, has seized on SARS. In 1980, North forecast rationing of housing and a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, warning his followers to buy "gold, silver, a safe place outside the major cities." Later he found rich topics in AIDS and then Y2K, recommending to his newsletter subscribers that they head for the hills to avoid total social collapse. In an announcement in April, North seized on SARS. He wrote: "It's a race between medical science and the bugs. There is no scientific reason to believe that the scientists will always beat the bugs."

Perhaps not. While technology may aid panic-mongering, technological advance is also what makes the fight against SARS so different from previous epidemics. Technology lets researchers collaborate in ways simply not possible just a few years ago. Perhaps the most impressive way in which research has been accelerated is in the analysis of the virus' complete genetic code. More than a dozen sequences of the virus--all demonstrating slight differences, which is typical for a coronavirus--are up on the WHO's Web site. As a result of this genetic sequencing and collaboration, companies like AVI BioPharma in Oregon think that the first drug to combat SARS could be available in months, not years.

Henry Niman, a Harvard instructor in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has long studied retroviruses. He says the collaborative process normally would have taken researchers at least months. "The fact that the virus has been sequenced in two weeks by two groups, that's pretty quick," Niman says. "That's unprecedented speed. You would probably not have had two groups going simultaneously if you didn't have this information out there. The exchange of information has sped things up."

Niman cautions against SARS complacency. "It's not really clear that the epidemic is that much under control," Niman says. "This has the potential to spread very dramatically. It's something that many people are trying to slow down. How successful that's going to be is an open question."