CDC says it should do more in shaping climate change response

WASHINGTON — Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is "uniquely poised" to deal with emerging health threats, the director of the Atlanta-based center said Tuesday, it has not done enough to help shape the world's response to climate change.

"We are not really exhibiting our leadership as we should be doing," Dr. Julie Gerberding told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "It's time we stepped up."

Gerberding made the comments while testifying — not in her prepared remarks, which the White House severely edited, the Associated Press reported, citing two sources familiar with the documents. The administration, they said, removed specific scientific references to potential health risks associated with global warming.

Gerberding told the committee that CDC's expertise in areas like disease surveillance and epidemic modeling "and our ability to communicate health information" are assets the agency can bring to international collaborations set up to anticipate climate change.

Republicans and Democrats on the committee took turns praising CDC's role in disease control during a brief hearing on the likely health aspects of climate change.

But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, said public health systems are already overburdened and could be "overwhelmed" by unexpected disease outbreaks if the Earth heats up the way most climate experts say it will.

She cited six deaths among swimmers this year from a normally rare amoeba called Naegleria.

Swimmers in Florida, Texas and Arizona have died from the deadly germ, which thrives in warm water. It enters victims through the nose and rapidly moves into the brain, causing death.

During the previous 10 years, only 23 deaths were reported, according to CDC.

"Right now, this is a rare disease, but it's exactly the kind of thing we need to be talking about," Boxer said.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., appointed to serve out the term of the late Sen. Craig Thomas, asked Gerberding to comment on an article in a newspaper for investors stating that every dollar spent on controlling HIV-AIDS results in a saving of $40, while a dollar spent on climate change saves only two or three cents.

"I'm a scientist, not an economist," she responded, adding that a "recent article in the Harvard Business Review made a very strong case that it's not an issue of corporate philanthropy for business to invest in climate change, but one of corporate survival."

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, praised CDC's award-winning Web site for communicating health information to the public and said individual lifestyle changes will be necessary to deal with global warming.

"I think information and knowledge are power, and I am not one to suggest that we ought to wait" to deal with climate change, Craig said.

"We are all creatures of habit," he added, "and we don't change our habits easily."