In a dozen case studies, he shares the stories of people who have been attacked while seeking to serve patients under dire circumstances including health workers hiding from soldiers in the forests of eastern Myanmar as they seek to serve oppressed ethnic communities, surgeons in Syria operating as their hospitals are bombed, and Afghan hospital staff attacked by the Taliban as well as government and foreign forces. Leonard Rubenstein-a human rights lawyer who has investigated atrocities against health workers around the world-offers a gripping and powerful account of the dangers health workers face during conflict and the legal, political, and moral struggle to protect them. Inaction to stop this violence undermines long-standing values and laws designed to ensure that sick and wounded people receive care. These relentless attacks destroy lives and the capacity of health systems to tend to those in need. Pervasive violence against hospitals, patients, doctors, and other health workers has become a horrifically common feature of modern war. New Book – Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Healthcare from the Violence of War The technology serves as both lightweight protection and “ tissue-protective countermeasures.” The goal of SPIDERMAN is to “ create new and improved ways to address different, emerging and uncharacterized threats through advanced technology.” Leidos will “ develop technology that reduces the need for burdensome protective equipment while increasing defense against both existing and future chemical and biological (CB) threats.” DARPA’s PPB program “addresses the national need for lightweight and adaptive personal protection equipment for military and healthcare personnel.” As part of this contract, Leidos will be launching the Smart Protective Integrated Dynamic Ensemble for Reactive, Multifaceted Agent Neutralization – SPIDERMAN – platform. The contract is for $19.3 million and five years. Leidos was just awarded a prime contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for its Personalized Protective Biosystem (PPB) program. Leidos Awarded DARPA Contract to Develop Advanced Protective Equipment for US Military His authority on cruise missiles was such that, at a conference overseas where he was invited as a speaker, a foreign government official asked him if he would authorize the sale of American cruise missiles to his country! In reflecting on why Missile Contagion has had such a profound impact on understanding the cruise missile threat and why so many researchers, including myself, continue to reread the book to remind themselves of specific details or technical information, I realized that Missile Contagion was in fact a microcosm of Dennis’s extraordinary career.” His book Missile Contagion, published in 2008, elevated the threat of land-attack cruise missiles to the level of collective consciousness, influencing how the United States and other countries think about this threat. Dennis was indeed a forward thinker, often ahead of the curve as far as identifying security challenges. His passing created a big void in my life, but the outpouring of letters from former students, friends, colleagues, and perfect strangers reminded me that my sadness was shared by many and that his life and work will have a lasting impact on the security field and on the lives of those who crossed his path.įor many, Dennis is known as the world’s leading expert in cruise missile proliferation sometimes he was introduced as the “king of cruise missiles.” His natural modesty made him wince at these grandiose titles but they were well deserved, and I particularly liked the second one, because if he was king, that made me queen of something. For the past 17 years we were, as he liked to say, “joined at the hip,” working, traveling, laughing, and enjoying life with friends and family, always together. Dennis was my husband and my best friend. “Dennis Gormley passed away on October 15, 2020, and I still can’t find the words to capture the sense of loss that I’ve been feeling ever since. Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley wrote a heartfelt memorial on her late husband, Dennis M. Gormley: An Extraordinary Career, A Kind and Generous Manĭr. Prolonged and strict pandemic measures in North Korea are spurring a growing food crisis, leaving children and the elderly at risk of starvation.ĭennis M. Rebecca Katz recently wrote a piece about the changes needed to the US 1948 resolution that authorized US participation in the World Health Organization. Mary Sproull, a PhD student in the Biodefense Program, recently co-authored a fascinating on article on radioactive mice from Fukushima.