On November 27, with the United States still reeling from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the series of anthrax-spiked letters, legislators at a hearing on Capitol Hill got more shocking news. They learned that the country was ill prepared to deal with future attacks from microbes-and not just the kind released by terrorists. One expert after another testified to the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that in the past year the country had suffered various shortages of the vaccines critical to fighting infectious diseases. The witnesses' warnings went beyond the threats of anthrax and smallpox, describing a chronic lack of vaccines for common influenza, which claims 20,000 American lives a year, and the childhood menaces tetanus, pertussis, diphtheria and pneumococcal disease.

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