FDA was directly involved with anthrax threats last October, when 5 of FDA's buildings in the DC-area tested presumptive positive for anthrax in the mailrooms. Now, we have a lot of smart people at FDA - including scientists, attorneys, and health professionals. But even after All Hands e-mails were sent to staff from the acting Commissioner explaining what was found and the test results, there was still wide-spread confusion and anxiety over the meaning of presumptive positive. The written word wasn't clear enough, so we ended up having a 2-hour video-conference where the Acting Commissioner and the Director of FDA's Office of Counter-terrorism explained in great detail exactly what it meant and what the risks were. We got lucky - all confirmatory tests came back negative -but it was a long week waiting for those results, and anxiety levels were probably higher than they needed to be.

So, Plain Language - Could we have done a better job in communicating this information from the beginning to better allay employee concerns? Probably. I think too often it's human nature to want to "Get it out fast" before we "Get it out right." But no one cleared these All Hands e-mails on anthrax with the "Plain Language police."

Many days I think I need to hand out my favorite PL quote as a bumper sticker (or a mouse pad) "One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand."

The good news is that we learned. This past 4th of July, there were many threats to the Nation's capital - what a perfect opportunity for another terrorist strike. One concern was the fear of a "dirty bomb" that could release radioactive iodine into the atmosphere. If this happened, FDA wanted consumers to know how to protect their children. Many consumers were aware that potassium iodide can protect people against radiation poisoning - but at that time the only form of that drug approved was a tablet in a dosage for adults, NOT for children.

So, FDA scientists looked at various food and drinks that might disguise the unpleasant taste of potassium iodide well enough for children & infants to accept it, in the event the adult pills had to be broken down for them in an emergency. On July 2, FDA was ready to make this information available on the FDA website. But, while the information was all very accurate, it wasn't very easy to understand - especially if you were a frantic parent whose child had been exposed to a harmful substance. So, we did a quick PL rewrite - getting rid of acronyms, adding white space and bullets, and developing an "If-then" table. In less that a few hours, the scientists accepted our changes and even made a few more themselves as new information became available. The resulting website page was up on July 4, and WAS easy to understand. Here is an excerpt: