News outlets have been bombarding viewers in the past few days with word of anthrax outbreaks in both Florida and New York City. One man in Florida has died, two others tested positive for the bacteria, and now a 7-month-old baby of an ABC News worker has anthrax. Suspicious letters to Tom Brokaw of NBC News and the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., in Washington, D.C., have also been laced with anthrax. All the while, our trusty American media outlets and government officials are reporting that these outbreaks are isolated incidents and that there is nothing to worry about.
They are partially right. The issue of bioterrorism has been prevalent for more than a decade. Biological warfare is very serious and real. However, a few isolated incidents on the East Coast are not cause for panic, chaos or any encroachment on our freedom.
It is fairly unlikely that terrorists are going to use biochemical weapons to attack Eugeneans, and the recent increase in calls to the Eugene Police Department to check out “suspicious white powder” are largely due to people overreacting. The incidents are causing more fear than is warranted, especially when one realizes that anthrax is difficult to create in a transmittable form, and that it is not contagious.
At the same time, we need to do a better job of educating the public about biochemical weapons. Our biggest fear is often the unknown, and until people know the facts about possible biochemical weapons and the dangers they pose, we will continue to have a panicked populace. The government and the national media need to step up their efforts to inform the public about these dangers.
As a country, we are responding to these anthrax outbreaks in exactly the manner the attackers intended: with fear. But we should not let our fear dictate how we go about our everyday lives — we should not avoid opening mail or going to the post office, for example. And most importantly, we should not allow security measures to compromise our civil liberties. After all, freedom is what we are supposedly fighting for in Afghanistan — we shouldn’t sacrifice it at home.
Our biggest fear is the unknown
Daily Emerald
October 16, 2001
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