Yesterday, biological defense specialist Dr. Tara O'Toole was tapped by the Obama administration to become the Department of Homeland Security's geek-in-chief -- and was instantly blasted by critics as a bioterror Cassandra. Today, her colleagues fought back, praising her as a public health visionary who helped get the country ready to respond to epidemics like the swine flu.
"She got the conversation going: Are we prepared for a major disease outbreak?" Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, tells Danger Room. The result is "the programs now in place for dealing with a flu outbreak like the one we just faced."
As the director of the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and former chair of the Federation of American Scientists, Dr. O'Toole (pictured, left) brings a gold-plated resume to the job of DHS under secretary for science and technology. About 45 percent of the near billion-dollar research portfolio goes towards chemical and biological defense.
What concerns critics is a perceived pattern for overhyping biological threats -- in particular, the specter of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. "Bioterrorism is a whole new terrain of national security that's going to have the same magnitude of impact as the creation of nuclear weapons," she told the* Los Angeles Times *in 2003. "We should increase spending [on bioterrorism] to $10 billion next year."
In 2001 and 2005, O'Toole produced a pair of emergency preparedness exercises that centered around smallpox outbreaks. Those drills were credited with spurring Washington to action on biopreparedness. But an Army War College report later criticized the tests for inflating the virus' transmission rates - in effect, rigging the results for catastrophe.
Dr. Larry Brilliant had a similar reaction, when he first saw the results of O'Toole's exercises. Brilliant, now the head of Google's philanthropic arm, is credited with helping rid the world of smallpox. So he sat down with O'Toole, to discuss his concerns that she may have exaggerated smallpox's ability to spread. "We had the most rational conversation. Now, I had written a book on small pox, and maybe a hundred articles. She showed me 30 citations I had never heard of," Brilliant tells Danger Room.
Eventually, Brilliant was convinced. He later recruited O'Toole to be on the presidentially-directed National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee. "Tara is one of the smartest, hardest working, and knowledgeable people in the field," he adds in Danger Room's comments. She's a "measured, fact-based decision maker in a complex, rapidly evolving field."
If O'Toole is prone to dark prognostications, like the one she made in March,"that there could be the equivalent of a bio-Katrina on [President Obama's] watch," such warnings have propelled policy-makers to invest more in public health resources that can handle both natural and deliberate biological threats. "She's always both for a health system that can respond to both," says Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity. "You can see that investment now."
UPDATE: During her confirmation hearings, O'Toole may face questions not only about her thoughts on bio terror threats, but also her connections to a controversial congressman. Although O'Toole is a frequent donor to presidential candidates, she has donated money to only one candidate for the national legislature: Congressman John Murtha. The representative has a long history of steering pet projects to his western Pensylvania home district. "In 2004 and 2005, immediately before and after Murtha earmarked money for her center under the Strategic Biodefense Initiative, she gave him $1,750," Harper's Ken Silverstein notes.
[Photo: AP]
