Raised in Brooklyn, I rarely trekked into Manhattan’s Financial District as a child, but when crossing the Verrazano Bridge, I’d often gaze in awe of the Twin Towers’ command of the never-ending Manhattan skyline. For many, that skyline of our youth is irrevocably scarred and it is this wound that has shaped my viewpoint and the urgent call-to-action I share with you today.
Early in my service career and just one month before 9/11, I transitioned from the U.S. Air Force to the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). Our team was responsible for managing and deploying medical response teams to support national emergencies, and ultimately deployed more than 800 PHS Officers on over 20 missions related to 9/11 and anthrax attacks.
I deployed to Ground Zero and served as a preventive medicine officer charged with protecting people from chemical, biological, and radiation hazards in an effort to prevent disease. Though a young officer and environmental engineer with early-career Air Force deployments to the Middle East, Albania, and Mozambique, I was still emotionally unprepared to witness the devastation to my hometown and my fellow New Yorkers.
Arriving on-site three weeks after the attack, I was immediately overwhelmed with the odor of thousands of lost lives still buried in the rubble. I could also taste what I can only describe as metallic-like fumes from the still-smoldering heaps. I told my commander that we must make sure that our team wears respirators because the cancers would begin showing up in 10 to 20 years if they didn’t. The environmental hazards, resulting in cancers and respiratory diseases among firefighters, other responders, and volunteers at Ground Zero are well-documented and have led to more deaths than those that occurred on that tragic day.
However, there was another hazard, an invisible threat: The lasting mental health impact of the traumatic experiences of suddenly losing a loved one or watching your fellow firefighters be crushed by a 100-story building. There was no protecting any of us from this invisible wound.
Standing witness to the trauma and the national grief seeded at Ground Zero changed my worldview: There had to be a better way to help those who have given – and lost – so much. My career trajectory shifted thereafter; I’d soon go on to work for the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, and other organizations that helped me gain experience in medical technology and interventions for mental health and brain diseases.
These invisible wounds would also become prevalent in military service members and veterans who went on to participate in the nearly 20 years of continuous war after 9/11. Every day, we lose 22 veterans by suicide while many more suffer from undiagnosed mental health conditions, despite enormous resources and personnel to combat the issue.
But trauma and the devastation of post-traumatic stress disorder, (PTSD), are not exclusive to veterans and first responders. Twenty years later, today we stand witness to healthcare workers responding to the pandemic, and they’re now enduring PTSD from the frontline.
Despite increased mental health screenings and millions invested in behavioral health research and programs, suicide rates among service members and veterans – and our nation’s general population – have not declined: suicide rates are rising. It’s like fighting a war with our hands tied behind our backs. The problem isn’t a lack of resources or commitment; the problem is that the tools we use to identify PTSD are outdated and ineffective. The current standard protocol for PTSD diagnosis is a subjective patient survey plagued by high rates of false negatives and false positives.
But there is hope: Through decades of research and harnessing genomics, new tools are being developed to empower clinicians and save lives.
Not only did experiencing the aftermath at Ground Zero lay the groundwork for founding Polaris Genomics, the biological data from responders of 9/11 is integral to the roots of the research. After studying blood samples from 9/11 first responders, sexual assault survivors, and Holocaust survivors and their descendants, PTSD research pioneer Dr. Rachel Yehuda at Mount Sinai and Dr. Florian Holsboer at the Max Planck Institute discovered the genomic biomarkers that paved the way for PTS-ID, our genomic blood test, to advance the future of PTSD diagnosis & treatment.
On what is now National Suicide Prevention Awareness Day, September 10, The New York Times columnist David Leonhardt posed this question: “Twenty years after Sept. 11, the attacks seem likely to be remembered as a double tragedy. There were the tangible horrors: The attacks on that day killed almost 3,000 people, and the ensuing wars killed hundreds of thousands more. And there is the haunting question that lingers: Out of the trauma, did the country manage to create a better future?”
I believe we have. For those suffering from PTSD today, there is a path to a brighter future and our very DNA has illuminated the way.
Charles Cathlin, U.S. Veteran & CEO/Co-Founder of Polaris Genomics