The Wanderer
Kid A
Bioterrorism: An Even More Devastating Threat
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 17, 2001; Page A24
It would require just a small private plane, not a hijacked commercial jetliner. A helper could casually dump a bag of powdery bacterial spores while in flight, rather than having to overpower a planeload of passengers. And the team could land and be home in time for dinner instead of ending it all in a suicidal inferno.
It's called bioterrorism, and experts say it would be a lot easier to conduct and is more likely to occur in the next few years than a replay of last week's terrorist tragedies. A small cloud of bacteria or viruses could easily and silently infect tens of thousands of people, triggering fatal outbreaks of anthrax, smallpox, pneumonic plague or any of a dozen other deadly diseases. And victims infected with contagious ailments could pass the microbes to thousands of others before doctors even figured out what was going on.
Moreover, bioterrorism could foment political instability, given the panic that fast-moving plagues have historically engendered.
"The events in New York and Washington were tragedies beyond what anyone had previously imagined, but the potential of biological terrorism is far greater in terms of loss of life and disruption," said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "It would be less graphic -- no flames and explosions -- but much more insidious. Anyone with a cough would be a weapon."
In many respects the nation is less prepared for bioterrorism than it is for conventional acts of terrorism. An October 1999 General Accounting Office (GAO) report documented major gaps in the nation's system for protecting itself against biological attacks. Inspectors found shortages of vaccines and medicines, stockrooms filled with expired drugs, and lax security measures where crucial drugs were stored.
A January 2001 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta concluded that the nation's public health infrastructure is "not adequate to detect and respond to a bioterrorist event." And a March 2001 GAO report noted that 20 percent of the nation's pharmaceutical and medical supplies held by the federal Office of Emergency Preparedness for a bioterrorist attack were stored in a vault whose temperature was 95 degrees and that had no air-conditioning. The medicines' potency could be assured only if kept cooler than 86 degrees.
Some improvements have been implemented since then. Still, the nation and the world are largely unprepared to fight major outbreaks of deadly diseases like plague, said Norman Cantor, an emeritus professor at New York University and a plague scholar.
"It would be some improvement over the Middle Ages, but not all that great an improvement," he said.
Bioterrorism is not new. Fourteenth-century barbarians tossed plague-infected corpses over the walls of fortified cities to spread the deadly infection among their enemies. In 1763, the English at Fort Pitt, Pa., gave smallpox-laden blankets to Indians who had been loyal to the French. And, as recently as the mid-1990s, U.N. weapons inspectors discovered that Iraq had stockpiled warheads containing anthrax spores and the toxin that causes botulism.
Russian scientists have revealed that the former Soviet Union produced large volumes of weapons-grade anthrax spores. And Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese religious cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, made several tentative efforts to release biological agents. Members even went to Zaire to learn more about the deadly ebola virus.
An international biological weapons convention signed by 143 nations has outlawed the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons since 1975, but the absence of any formal verification regime to monitor compliance has limited the effectiveness of the convention, according to the United Nations. In any case, terrorists don't play by the rules. And at least five countries known to sponsor international terrorism have acquired the capacity to produce biological weapons, according to U.S. Army experts.
Despite those capabilities, U.S. preparedness has lagged, in part because bioterrorism has been deemed so unlikely. "Who would do such a thing?" skeptics asked. Last week's attacks in New York and Washington seriously undermined such rational assurances.
Biological attacks can be far more difficult to respond to than conventional terrorist attacks. For one thing, they are covert rather than overt; for days, no one would know that one had occurred. That's a huge problem for a disease like anthrax. Up to 80 percent of people infected by inhaled spores die within days if untreated. By the time symptoms appear -- fever, rash and congested lungs -- it's generally too late.
Another problem is that the first-line defenders against a biological attack would not be police and fire officials, who are specially trained for public safety emergencies. They would be local doctors and hospital staffers, most of whom have received little training in the art and science of being able to recognize and respond to unusual outbreaks quickly.
And contagious diseases -- unlike explosions -- keep spreading long after an initial attack. Smallpox, for example, is easily spread by coughing and sneezing. The disease was declared eradicated in 1980, but vials of the virus were saved and the whereabouts of some are uncertain. Vaccination no longer occurs, leaving an entire generation susceptible to attack. And few doses of the old vaccine remain in storage.
In a federal exercise three months ago, 24 simulated cases of smallpox were "discovered" in U.S. hospitals as part of an assessment of U.S. bioterrorism preparedness. Less than two weeks after those cases popped up, computer models indicated that -- if the exercise had been real -- 15,000 people would have contracted the disease and 1,000 would have died. The "epidemic" was still raging when the exercise ended, and, the computer models predicted, rioting and looting would have broken out as vaccine supplies ran out.
"This would cripple the United States if it were to occur," a former defense department official testified to Congress after the exercise.
A Clinton administration bioterrorism initiative, administered jointly by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, is speeding development of protective technologies, including portable DNA diagnostic devices that may someday help identify mystery microbes raining from the sky. But the initiative's $300 million budget is a fraction of what will be needed to protect the nation in years to come, Osterholm and others said.
Meanwhile, just in case, the CDC has contracted with two biotech companies to make and stockpile 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine. The first batches that could be used by civilians are expected to be ready in 2004.
----
charming the world we live in, isn't it? i'm still not sure how great the threat is, but if you asked me 1 week ago how great a threat i thought it was that 4 planes would be hijacked and crashed into buildings...
yeah, well anyway, anyone know anything more about this?
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 17, 2001; Page A24
It would require just a small private plane, not a hijacked commercial jetliner. A helper could casually dump a bag of powdery bacterial spores while in flight, rather than having to overpower a planeload of passengers. And the team could land and be home in time for dinner instead of ending it all in a suicidal inferno.
It's called bioterrorism, and experts say it would be a lot easier to conduct and is more likely to occur in the next few years than a replay of last week's terrorist tragedies. A small cloud of bacteria or viruses could easily and silently infect tens of thousands of people, triggering fatal outbreaks of anthrax, smallpox, pneumonic plague or any of a dozen other deadly diseases. And victims infected with contagious ailments could pass the microbes to thousands of others before doctors even figured out what was going on.
Moreover, bioterrorism could foment political instability, given the panic that fast-moving plagues have historically engendered.
"The events in New York and Washington were tragedies beyond what anyone had previously imagined, but the potential of biological terrorism is far greater in terms of loss of life and disruption," said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "It would be less graphic -- no flames and explosions -- but much more insidious. Anyone with a cough would be a weapon."
In many respects the nation is less prepared for bioterrorism than it is for conventional acts of terrorism. An October 1999 General Accounting Office (GAO) report documented major gaps in the nation's system for protecting itself against biological attacks. Inspectors found shortages of vaccines and medicines, stockrooms filled with expired drugs, and lax security measures where crucial drugs were stored.
A January 2001 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta concluded that the nation's public health infrastructure is "not adequate to detect and respond to a bioterrorist event." And a March 2001 GAO report noted that 20 percent of the nation's pharmaceutical and medical supplies held by the federal Office of Emergency Preparedness for a bioterrorist attack were stored in a vault whose temperature was 95 degrees and that had no air-conditioning. The medicines' potency could be assured only if kept cooler than 86 degrees.
Some improvements have been implemented since then. Still, the nation and the world are largely unprepared to fight major outbreaks of deadly diseases like plague, said Norman Cantor, an emeritus professor at New York University and a plague scholar.
"It would be some improvement over the Middle Ages, but not all that great an improvement," he said.
Bioterrorism is not new. Fourteenth-century barbarians tossed plague-infected corpses over the walls of fortified cities to spread the deadly infection among their enemies. In 1763, the English at Fort Pitt, Pa., gave smallpox-laden blankets to Indians who had been loyal to the French. And, as recently as the mid-1990s, U.N. weapons inspectors discovered that Iraq had stockpiled warheads containing anthrax spores and the toxin that causes botulism.
Russian scientists have revealed that the former Soviet Union produced large volumes of weapons-grade anthrax spores. And Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese religious cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, made several tentative efforts to release biological agents. Members even went to Zaire to learn more about the deadly ebola virus.
An international biological weapons convention signed by 143 nations has outlawed the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons since 1975, but the absence of any formal verification regime to monitor compliance has limited the effectiveness of the convention, according to the United Nations. In any case, terrorists don't play by the rules. And at least five countries known to sponsor international terrorism have acquired the capacity to produce biological weapons, according to U.S. Army experts.
Despite those capabilities, U.S. preparedness has lagged, in part because bioterrorism has been deemed so unlikely. "Who would do such a thing?" skeptics asked. Last week's attacks in New York and Washington seriously undermined such rational assurances.
Biological attacks can be far more difficult to respond to than conventional terrorist attacks. For one thing, they are covert rather than overt; for days, no one would know that one had occurred. That's a huge problem for a disease like anthrax. Up to 80 percent of people infected by inhaled spores die within days if untreated. By the time symptoms appear -- fever, rash and congested lungs -- it's generally too late.
Another problem is that the first-line defenders against a biological attack would not be police and fire officials, who are specially trained for public safety emergencies. They would be local doctors and hospital staffers, most of whom have received little training in the art and science of being able to recognize and respond to unusual outbreaks quickly.
And contagious diseases -- unlike explosions -- keep spreading long after an initial attack. Smallpox, for example, is easily spread by coughing and sneezing. The disease was declared eradicated in 1980, but vials of the virus were saved and the whereabouts of some are uncertain. Vaccination no longer occurs, leaving an entire generation susceptible to attack. And few doses of the old vaccine remain in storage.
In a federal exercise three months ago, 24 simulated cases of smallpox were "discovered" in U.S. hospitals as part of an assessment of U.S. bioterrorism preparedness. Less than two weeks after those cases popped up, computer models indicated that -- if the exercise had been real -- 15,000 people would have contracted the disease and 1,000 would have died. The "epidemic" was still raging when the exercise ended, and, the computer models predicted, rioting and looting would have broken out as vaccine supplies ran out.
"This would cripple the United States if it were to occur," a former defense department official testified to Congress after the exercise.
A Clinton administration bioterrorism initiative, administered jointly by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, is speeding development of protective technologies, including portable DNA diagnostic devices that may someday help identify mystery microbes raining from the sky. But the initiative's $300 million budget is a fraction of what will be needed to protect the nation in years to come, Osterholm and others said.
Meanwhile, just in case, the CDC has contracted with two biotech companies to make and stockpile 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine. The first batches that could be used by civilians are expected to be ready in 2004.
----
charming the world we live in, isn't it? i'm still not sure how great the threat is, but if you asked me 1 week ago how great a threat i thought it was that 4 planes would be hijacked and crashed into buildings...
yeah, well anyway, anyone know anything more about this?
