posted
It comes as no suprise to me that the arch-Denialist Dr Tim Brooks, who is in charge of Britain's Lyme testing at Porton Down (our main biowarfare research centre) is a veteran biowar scientist who spent ten years in the Army's Defence Scientific and Technical Laboratories (DSTL). (see below)
It might come as a surprise though to some of our campaigners here in the UK who were naive enough to actually believe Brooks that the transfer of all our Lyme testing to Porton in 2012 had nothing to do with military matters.
They accepted his explanation that it was moved because Porton had "more space" and better testing equipment.
They also accepted his attempt to pass himself of as a civilian doing public health work, rather than a military man in charge of a biowar pathogen. Public Health England is a civilian agency, but then so is CDC.
No major decision on Lyme policy is made without the involvement of CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS),a military organisation.
Still, he is in good company,as Steere, Klempner, Barbour, Paul Mead, Dattwyler, Phil Baker, Ed McSweegan etc etc are all from the same background.
Is it really safe to have so many of our biowarfare scientists spending all their time on a trivial, hard-to-catch,easy-to-cure disease like Lyme?
Head of Clinical Services, Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory, Public Health England, Public Health England
BIOGRAPHY: Dr Tim Brooks is Head of the Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory (RIPL) at Public Health England, based at Porton Down in the UK. He qualified in medicine fromCambridgeUniversityand King’sCollegeHospital,Londonin 1980 and worked briefly in the National Health Service as a trainee surgeon before joining the British Army.
After an enjoyable period as a regimental doctor, he returned to hospital medicine and eventually became a pathologist and microbiologist. On becoming a consultant he was advised that he had an interest in dangerous pathogens, and research into therapeutics and vaccines for them.
After 10 years at the Defence Scientific and Technical Laboratories at Porton he joined the nascent Health Protection Agency in his present capacity. The department works on hazard group 3 and 4 agents, and provides the UK acute diagnostic facilities for a wide range of arboviruses, ricketssiae and viral haemorrhagic fevers, vector-borne disease and zoonoses, including anthrax, tularemia and Q fever and is a WHO collaborating laboratory for these diseases.
RIPL is now home to Lyme Disease diagnostic and clinical advice service, combining this with wider range of tests offered by the laboratory.
Tim Brooks is one of the leading partners in the national Imported Fever Service, which combines the clinical skills of the Liverpool Tropical Infectious Disease Unit and the London Hospital for Tropical Disease with RIPL laboratory services and access to broader PHE specialist laboratories.
The IFS offers a 24 hour service for acutely ill travellers arriving in the UK from anywhere in the world. Rare and Imported Pathogens Department are closely involved in the design, assessment and production of therapeutics and vaccine for some of these agents, and provides the surge capacity for diagnostics of major outbreaks of infectious diseases in the UK.
Our research interests range from environmental detection of micro organisms and clinical diagnostics, through aerobiology and decontamination, to disease pathogenesis and work for the European Space Agency.
TOPIC: Novel diagnostics methods for imported fevers
-------- Elena Cook
-------------------- Justice will be ours. Posts: 786 | From UK | Registered: Oct 2007
| IP: Logged |
poppy
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 5355
posted
Sounds like he is spread pretty thin. That is a very big scope of work. How could he be an expert in all of this?
Posts: 2888 | From USA | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
The Lyme Disease Network is a non-profit organization funded by individual donations. If you would like to support the Network and the LymeNet system of Web services, please send your donations to:
The
Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey 907 Pebble Creek Court,
Pennington,
NJ08534USA http://www.lymenet.org/
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic