Laurie Garrett is a columnist at Foreign Policy, a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer.
A CSX locomotive passes by a heroin encampment in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 10, 2017.
In North Philadelphia, railroad gulch as it is known, is ground zero in Philadelphia?s opioid epidemic. The tracks and the surrounding property are owned and operated by the Consolidated Rail Corporation, a joint subsidiary of Norfolk Southern and CSX. Last month, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney announced citations against the Consolidated Rail Corporation for what the mayor, in a release, said was Conrail?s failure to clean and secure their own property. Visitors and homeless residents of the gulch say the trash isn?t their fault, and that they are only there because they have nowhere else to go
/ AFP PHOTO / DOMINICK REUTER (Photo credit should read DOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Images)
BANGKOK - JULY 18: A nurse prepares the AIDSVAX B/E vaccine for injection July 18, 2002 at the Boon Mee Clinic in Bangkok, Thailand. Some 2,500 uninfected intravenous drug users at risk of HIV-1 infection are being tested at 17 different clinics in Bangkok on a volunteer basis during the Phase III trial to determine the efficacy of the vaccine. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
An employee of Sanofi-Pasteur packages vaccines against the flu at the factory Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis pharmaceutical company on November 26, 2012 in the northwestern city of Val-de-Reuil, western France. French health care giant Sanofi Pasteur will soon produce a vaccine against dengue fever near Lyon, central-easter France. Dengue causes a flu-like illness for most victims but one of its strains can cause life-threatening internal bleeding. AFP PHOTO/CHARLY TRIBALLEAU (Photo credit should read CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images)
MONROVIA, LIBERIA - OCTOBER 03: A World Health Organization (WHO), instructor teaches new health workers during a training session on October 3, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia. The WHO is training some 400 new health workers in two-week courses for the Liberian Ministry of Health. Many of the new health workers will be stationed in some of th 17 Ebola treatment units to be built by the U.S. military. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Passengers get their temperature measured as part of prophylactic measures against the spread of the Ebola virus upon their arrival at Boende's airport, on October 8, 2014. AFP PHOTO KATHY KATAYI (Photo credit should read KATHY KATAYI/AFP/Getty Images)
CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM - DECEMBER 09: A scientist lowers biological samples into a liquid nitrogen storage tank at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute on December 9, 2014 in Cambridge, England. Healthy and cancerous biological samples are stored at -196degrees to preserve them for use laboratory tests and experiments. Cancer Research UK is the world's leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research. Its vision is to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. They have saved millions of lives by discovering new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, and as such the survival rate in the UK has doubled in the last 40 years. Cancer Research UK funds over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses across the UK, more than 33,000 patients who join clinical trials each year and a further 40,000 volunteers that give their time to support the work. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images/Cancer Research UK)
A nurse injects an anti-flu vaccine to a woman on September 14, 2009 at the Clermont-Ferrand hospital, central France, during a test with volunteers directed by medicine Claude Dubray as a preventive measure from the H1N1 virus (swine flu). At least 3,205 people have died of the disease worldwide since it was uncovered in April, the World Health Organisation (WTO) told in a conference in Vienna today. AFP PHOTO THIERRY ZOCCOLAN (Photo credit should read THIERRY ZOCCOLAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Exxon Mobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson speaks at a discussion organized by the Economic Club of Washington on the energy innovations that have led to a new era of energy abundance for North America in Washington, DC on March 12, 2015. AFP PHOTO/ NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
A Research Scientist demonstrates how they will disect the mosquitos to collect the saliva glands, here using dead insects, in the new mosquito harvesting labs at Sanaria Inc., a new Manufacturing Facility for producing the World's first "Whole-Parasite" Malaria Vaccine, 26 October 2007 in Rockville, Maryland. Sanaria in partnership with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, a nonprofit health initiative, is developing a new vaccine that uses a weakened form of the malaria parasite to fight the disease. The vaccines is expected to go to clinical trials in 2008 in adult US volunteers. AFP PHOTO / TIM SLOAN =MORE PHOTOS IN IMAGE FORUM= (Photo credit should read )
KENEMA, SIERRA LEONE - AUGUST 26: A member of a volunteer medical team wears special uniform for the burial of 7 people, sterilized after dying due to the Ebola virus, in Kptema graveyard in Kenema, Sierra Leone on August 26, 2014. In recent months, Ebola a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure has claimed at least 1429 lives in West Africa, mostly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. (Photo by )
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES: A model dressed as a fairy dropping dust is suspended over the runway during the Victoria's Secret Spring Fashion show 03 February in New York. The theme of the show was fantasy and myth. The show was web-cast as of 7:15 pm ET 03 February. AFP PHOTO Stan HONDA (Photo credit should read STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)
RECIFE, BRAZIL - JANUARY 26: Aedes aegypti mosquitos are seen in a lab at the Fiocruz institute on January 26, 2016 in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil. The mosquito transmits the Zika virus and is being studied at the institute. In the last four months, authorities have recorded close to 4,000 cases in Brazil in which the mosquito-borne Zika virus may have led to microcephaly in infants. The ailment results in an abnormally small head in newborns and is associated with various disorders including decreased brain development. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Zika virus outbreak is likely to spread throughout nearly all the Americas. At least twelve cases in the United States have now been confirmed by the CDC. (Photo by )
HAMPSTEAD, NH - FEBRUARY 8: Republican presidential candidate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie holds a town hall meeting at BeanTowne Coffee on February 8, 2016 in Hampstead, New Hampshire. Candidates are in a last push one day before voters go to the polls in the "First in the Nation" presidential primary on February 9. (Photo by Kayana Szymczak/Getty Images)
