How, then, would diagnostics for biological agents be used in the field?
A clandestine release will become known because it will be picked up on an environmental detector. The area in which the release occurred can then be defined, and sampling and testing can be performed on people that might have been within the plume. But the question is: At what point do they develop recognizable and detectable symptoms? For example, if someone released smallpox today and we picked it up on our sampler, even if we had a diagnostic that could sample people tomorrow I’m not sure that we would detect the virus in anyone. The virus may not be detectable for several days because of the way smallpox and anthrax evolve in the body. This shortcoming in our diagnostics abilities allows us to protect people by either vaccinating or chemoprophylaxing them ahead of time. Then, if a release has occurred, we can start testing people when we presume the infectious agent would become detectable in their bodies. In addition to anthrax, what diseases does your department deem to pose sig
