Download Bioterrorism: An Even More Devastating Threat By Rick Weiss It

Bioterrorism: An Even More Devastating Threat
By Rick Weiss
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 fastmoving 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.