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)
