Laidback Al
Well-known member
April 5, 2010
<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">An Elite Team of Sleuths, Saving Lives in Obscurity</nyt_headline>
<nyt_byline> By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
</nyt_byline> <nyt_correction_top> </nyt_correction_top> Millions of people know what C.D.C. and F.D.A. stand for. Far fewer recognize E.I.S., though they may owe their lives to it.
The E.I.S. is the Epidemic Intelligence Service, an arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its cadre of 160 elite medical detectives — many of them young doctors at the start of their careers — serve two-year hitches that are part adventure, part drudgery.
Suitcases packed, they are poised to fly anywhere on short notice to investigate outbreaks of pneumonia, diarrhea, high fevers, mysterious rashes and many other health threats. Borrowing a term from news reporting, E.I.S. detectives like to call themselves “shoe-leather epidemiologists;” they also like to wear ties and lapel pins displaying their logo — a hole in the well-worn sole of a shoe over a map of the world.
Since its creation in 1951, the service has become a bulwark in the nation’s defense system against disease, often acting as the public’s emergency room. Its doctors have helped identify Legionnaires’ disease, Lyme disease, and toxic shock syndrome from superabsorbent tampons; stop outbreaks of diphtheria and other diseases before they could spread uncontrollably; discover the deadly Ebola and Lassa viruses; and trace paralyzing cases of polio to defective batches of the Salk vaccine. Other E.I.S. investigations have led the Food and Drug Administration to remove potentially lethal products from the market.
Indeed, the E.I.S. “may have saved your life, though you were probably unaware of it,” Mark Pendergrast writes in his new book, “Inside the Outbreaks,” the first history of the program, being published next week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
. . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06docs.html?pagewanted=1
credits rum jal
<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">An Elite Team of Sleuths, Saving Lives in Obscurity</nyt_headline>
<nyt_byline> By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
</nyt_byline> <nyt_correction_top> </nyt_correction_top> Millions of people know what C.D.C. and F.D.A. stand for. Far fewer recognize E.I.S., though they may owe their lives to it.
The E.I.S. is the Epidemic Intelligence Service, an arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its cadre of 160 elite medical detectives — many of them young doctors at the start of their careers — serve two-year hitches that are part adventure, part drudgery.
Suitcases packed, they are poised to fly anywhere on short notice to investigate outbreaks of pneumonia, diarrhea, high fevers, mysterious rashes and many other health threats. Borrowing a term from news reporting, E.I.S. detectives like to call themselves “shoe-leather epidemiologists;” they also like to wear ties and lapel pins displaying their logo — a hole in the well-worn sole of a shoe over a map of the world.
Since its creation in 1951, the service has become a bulwark in the nation’s defense system against disease, often acting as the public’s emergency room. Its doctors have helped identify Legionnaires’ disease, Lyme disease, and toxic shock syndrome from superabsorbent tampons; stop outbreaks of diphtheria and other diseases before they could spread uncontrollably; discover the deadly Ebola and Lassa viruses; and trace paralyzing cases of polio to defective batches of the Salk vaccine. Other E.I.S. investigations have led the Food and Drug Administration to remove potentially lethal products from the market.
Indeed, the E.I.S. “may have saved your life, though you were probably unaware of it,” Mark Pendergrast writes in his new book, “Inside the Outbreaks,” the first history of the program, being published next week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
. . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06docs.html?pagewanted=1
credits rum jal
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