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Dr. Stephen O. Cunnion, Medical Director, National Security Health Policy Center

Stephen O. Cunnion, MD, PhD, MPH, is a founding partner of the Diogenec Group, a Washington, D.C. based medical emergency preparedness consultancy and is President of International Consultants in Health, Inc. He is a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps and is considered an expert in field investigations of biological and chemical warfare and bioterrorism.

With advance degrees in biochemistry and epidemiology and over twenty years experience in infectious disease investigations, Dr. Cunnion was the principal physician/scientist for the Joint Department of State/ Department of Defense Chemical Biological Warfare (CBW) Team in Southeast and South Asia from 1984 to 1986. From expertise gained in this assignment, he co-authored the CBW sample collection manual for the U.S. Army. During his naval career he constantly has been involved in CBW and its operational concerns. While Director of Preventive Medicine and Occupational Health for the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps, he was able to formalize the Naval Forward Laboratory into Marine doctrine as the early detection and conformation center for battlefield CBW use.

Dr. Cunnion continues to conduct military lectures in CBW and bioterrorism at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) as an adjunct professor and has held a symposium on bioterrorism at the 1999 annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Recently Dr. Cunnion authored an interactive Weapons of Mass Destruction CD training course and scenario for the military. In 2001 and 2002 he assisted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the anthrax crisis among the New Jersey postal workers. Dr. Cunnion helped train over 300 Department of Defense medical personnel to give smallpox vaccinations.

Dr. Cunnion has been credited for alerting the Western medical establishment to the emergence of SARS in China. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news show Disclosure, aired on November 18, 2003 said:

"The week of February 10, 2003 is a critical week in the SARS chronology. Now, the world would learn that a mysterious disease was on the loose in southern China. And how did the world learn? Not from the Chinese, and not from the WHO, but from a man named Dr. Stephen Cunnion."