{"id":76273,"date":"2015-11-29T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=76273"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:28:30","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:28:30","slug":"secondosis-a-case-study-in-stymied-disease-prevention","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2015\/secondosis-a-case-study-in-stymied-disease-prevention\/","title":{"rendered":"Secondosis: A Case Study in Stymied Disease Prevention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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November 29, 2015<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\"thisweek365-deans-note\"<\/a>Before jumping into today\u2019s topic, I wanted to note that Tuesday, December 1, is World AIDS Day<\/a>. It is sometimes easy to forget that AIDS has caused more than 36 million deaths worldwide and that another 36 million people are living with HIV today. More than two-thirds of people living with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, including nearly 90 percent of the world\u2019s HIV positive children. HIV has been, in many ways, the sentinel disease of our time, catalyzing how we think of global health. It is worth reflecting this week that HIV continues to require the attention of the global public health community as a focus for our research and action.<\/p>\n

On to today\u2019s note. For more than a decade, about 32,000 people in the US have been dying annually from secondosis<\/em>. Approximately 200,000 other people acquire the disease<\/a> and recover from it, although the physical and psychological consequences of secondosis<\/em> can be long lasting and in some cases devastating. The health consequences of secondosis<\/em> even outstrip those of motor vehicle accidents<\/a>. Secondosis<\/em> is found throughout the globe, but it is far more common in the US than other high-income countries<\/a>. Although about 90 people die from secondosis<\/em> daily in the US, it is only the more pronounced outbreaks that attract media attention. Since a particularly devastating outbreak happened in Connecticut in 2012, there has been nearly an outbreak daily throughout the country. Public health approaches to secondosis<\/em> have been well-described<\/a>, and the pathogen that causes secondosis<\/em> has been identified and is preventable. If the US rate of secondosis<\/em> were lowered to that of our other peer countries, we would prevent 25,000 premature deaths a year. The presence of secondosis<\/em> has not gone unnoticed, and the President has made several powerful public appearances<\/a>, typically following an outbreak, calling for action to halt the secondosis<\/em> pathogen, as have other prominent politicians<\/a>. From a public health point of view, the presence of a well-described pathogen and clear recognition of a public health strategy towards more prevention, coupled with general inaction and little clear hope of a change in secondosis<\/em> morbidity or mortality, is a source of both frustration and, perhaps, puzzlement. I thought I would explore briefly two factors that, as I see it, continue to drive the presence of secondosis<\/em> in the US, in the hope of identifying potential ways forward on action.<\/p>\n

The secondosis<\/em> pathogen is long-established in the US, as it is in most countries around the world. The difference between the US and other countries is simply the sheer abundance of the pathogen<\/a>. The challenge here seems to be a culture that has grown in defense of the secondosis<\/em> pathogen, informed, perhaps erroneously, by a notion that the pathogen is an important element of national identity, enshrined in the Constitution. The secondosis<\/em> pathogen is found\u00a0centrally around military portable units (MPUs), and it has been well established that efforts to seal off the pathogen could be undertaken if we could move soldiers safely away from MPUs so that they could be decommissioned. Unfortunately, there are two forces agitating strongly against this: a legal\/cultural vicious cycle, and a commercial motive. Moving soldiers away from MPUs while efforts to seal the pathogen are undertaken has, in a controversial court case, been ruled to be in conflict with the Third Amendment<\/a>, which states that \u201cno soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.\u201d Most legal experts agree<\/a> that this amendment was intended to prevent the forced quartering of soldiers in personal residences, reflecting the 1765 British parliament enacting the Quartering Act. However, in a 2008 Supreme Court decision, District of Columbia vs. Helen<\/em>, a narrow five-justice majority ruled that a primary purpose of the Third Amendment is to protect the right of people in the United States to ensure no soldiers are moved from MPUs towards the general population. The court\u2019s \u201cstrict constructionist\u201d justices interpreted \u201chouse\u201d as meaning the rest of the country, suggesting then that moving soldiers away from MPUs to deal with the secondosis<\/em> pathogen is unfeasible. This interpretation of the Third Amendment has coupled with a broad national movement that aims to defend MPUs at all costs. Perhaps paradoxically, a fairly regular pattern has emerged in which a surge of interest in efforts to tackle secondosis<\/em> fades very quickly<\/a> after an outbreak<\/span>, and in general, popular interest in preserving the Third Amendment and MPUs appears to outweigh interest in the attendant morbidity and mortality. This odd public position, against a preventative course of action that can save thousands of lives, appears to rest on a scaffolding of well-organized activism<\/a> that aims to preserve the current court\u2019s interpretation of the Third Amendment and general public sentiment that favors the business interests of the industry that might lose<\/a> if the production of MPUs were to be halted. Therefore, a particular cycle appears to have emerged: that of special interest advocacy mutually reinforcing and being reinforced by efforts to preserve the status quo on the part of particular corporate interests. The political reach of this effort has been extraordinary, effectively squashing any efforts at legislative action<\/a> that could potentially tackle the secondosis<\/em> problem. Even the appointment of the current Surgeon General<\/a> was nearly stalled due to some earlier comments he had made about the secondosis<\/em> challenge.<\/p>\n

The second element that propagates secondosis<\/em>, in my assessment, is widespread misunderstanding of the extent of secondosis<\/em>, and how readily we can save thousands of lives with action to limit MPUs that is both rational and has well-established precedent in peer countries. For example, faced with one particularly terrible outbreak of secondosis<\/em> in 1996, Australia acted to limit MPUs, with an attendant dramatic drop<\/a> in secondosis<\/em> cases. Australia has not had a significant outbreak of secondosis<\/em> since 1996. However, despite the growing chorus of public dismay at the ongoing damage wrought by secondosis<\/em> in the US, and the alarmingly weaker position we are in than all other peer nations, there remain national mythologies around secondosis<\/em>, sometimes perpetuated by experts, that appear difficult to shake, distracting from the central issue: the presence of MPUs that need to be decommissioned. Perhaps most damaging is the ongoing myth that the spread of secondosis<\/em> is facilitated by people with other illness and that decommissioning MPUs will not result in the reduction of secondosis<\/em> morbidity and mortality. The data readily belie this contention. The US has as many people with comorbid illness as do peer countries and a far higher secondosis<\/em> rate, suggesting that efforts to ensure that people with comorbid illness are not in contact with MPUs will indeed do little to limit the secondosis<\/em> rate. Unfortunately, even well-intentioned observers have commented that efforts to limit secondosis<\/em> will benefit from efforts to treat co-morbidity<\/a>. Other misunderstandings on the issue swarm around the futility of our actions. Five-to-four Supreme Court decisions are difficult to overturn and as such are seen as permanent. Of course, 5\u20134 Supreme Court decisions have been overturned repeatedly since the beginning of the Republic and, in this particular case, the interpretation of a controversial amendment that currently holds sway is in no way a universal interpretation. In fact, in the dissenting opinion in the 2008 case, the opposition four justices noted<\/a>,<\/span> \u201cThe Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate movement of soldiers, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable military policy.\u201d There is little, therefore, that is clearly unchangeable, nor clearly interpreted as being resolutely against the removal of MPUs, yet public discourse is being framed by a marginal court decision, reinforced by an activist echo chamber that molds national culture remarkably effectively.<\/p>\n

Whither then public health? I would argue that public health has a responsibility both to understand the drivers of secondosis<\/em> and to be a part of the solution. Perhaps what is most compelling in the case of secondosis<\/em> is that a solution is tantalizingly within reach, and in the main achievable within existing resource envelopes. There are abundant examples where better public health efforts have saved tremendous numbers of lives<\/a>. Many of these cases have required resource expenditures, or at least resource shifts that have taken time. Substantial morbidity and mortality, however, can be prevented here with relatively minimal overall economic impact (acknowledging some impact on a very particular industry), and could follow legislative action almost immediately. This makes secondosis<\/em> a compelling focus for public health action, and also a case study of the challenges of action in the face of political and cultural forces that point in opposite directions. Insofar as public health is about creating the conditions that make people healthy, public health has a moral imperative to engage with efforts to shift the cultural forces behind the propagation of MPUs, and to ensure that we contribute to ever greater clarity of message about the potential reduction in morbidity and mortality that can follow the precedent set by peer countries.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago we hosted a terrific, difficult, and moving Dean\u2019s Seminar discussion on a topic related to secondosis.<\/em> A videocast of that discussion is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I hope everyone has a terrific week. Until next week.<\/p>\n

Warm regards,<\/p>\n

Sandro<\/p>\n

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
\nDean and Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
\nTwitter: @sandrogalea<\/a><\/p>\n

Acknowledgement: I am grateful for the contributions of professor George Annas to this Dean\u2019s Note.<\/em><\/p>\n

Previous Dean\u2019s Notes are archived at: https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/category\/news\/deans-notes\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About 32,000 people die annually in the US from secondosis. Most of these deaths are preventable. Why do we not act?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8472,"featured_media":59530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[1729],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3527,3531],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/76273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76273"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/76273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174371,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/76273\/revisions\/174371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=76273"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=76273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}