Could Bioterror Warnings Make You Sick?

By Rhitu Chatterjee
ScienceNOW Daily News
22 December 2006
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the 2001 anthrax letters, the  
U.S. public has been bombarded with information about the dangers of  
bioterrorism. But some say that the messages often overstate the  
risks and hurt more than they help. Now, these critics have some data  
to back up their claim: A small study shows that reading scary  
information about bioterrorism can actually lead to increased anxiety  
and stress levels.

People learn about bioterrorism in many ways, from government advice  
to buy duct tape and plastic sheets to newspaper articles and even  
blockbuster movies. Many believe this information is vital to prepare  
the public for a growing threat. But epidemiologist Hillel Cohen of  
Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City says that, in  
contrast to messages about drunk driving or smoking, it's often not  
clear how the public is supposed to change their behavior in response  
to bioterror warnings. The advice to buy duct tape was highly  
controversial, for instance, as was a large drive to vaccinate  
Americans against smallpox launched late 2002. That makes it even  
more important to evaluate the warnings' downsides, he says-- 
something that isn't usually done.

Cohen's team recruited 116 graduate students, 96% of whom considered  
bioterrorism a likely threat. The group was given a standard anxiety  
test. Half of the volunteers were then asked to read about a 17-year- 
old girl dying a horrible death from an engineered virus and an  
expert warning that such threats are real. (The text was based on The  
Cobra Event, a novel by Richard Preston that former president Bill  
Clinton cited when he announced the first bioterror preparedness  
program.) The other half was given a message of equal length that  
portrayed bioterrorism as a minor risk.

The subjects who had read the scary message scored significantly  
higher on a post-test, whereas the control group was less anxious  
after reading their message. Writing in International Quarterly of  
Community Health Education, the team notes that anxiety and stress  
are known to lead to other problems and concludes that bioterrorism  
messages may be harmful, especially to people susceptible to stress- 
induced health problems.

"They are right to conclude that these [public health messages] do  
need careful analysis and justification," says Ruth Faden, a  
bioterrorism expert at the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute  
of Bioethics in Baltimore, Maryland. But the study was small and only  
looked for an immediate effect, Faden cautions; whether the messages  
pose an ongoing mental health hazard "is an open question."






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Srinandan Dasmahapatra
Science and Engineering of Natural Systems
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

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