Download Casey Gailey 1 Biological Warfare: Preventing a Preplanned Plague

Casey Gailey
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Biological Warfare: Preventing a Preplanned Plague
History of Biological Weapons and Warfare
While not as widely publicized as other methods, biological warfare has been utilized by
man for centuries. This is not to say that the ancient methodology was anywhere near the
complexity of modern biological warfare. Early examples of biological weaponization date
centuries ago with the use of amphibian-based toxins for arrow poisons by nomadic people such
as some South American tribes (Miller 6) and blood from the decaying corpses of venomous
adder snakes used as poisons for Scythian arrows (Johnson). Because ancient civilizations did
not have the knowledge of microbiology, they could not typically provide the types of
widespread devastation that have defined modern biological methods as Weapons of Mass
Destruction, or WMD. Despite this, even the crude application of toxins and pathogens can cause
gross damage.
During the French and Indian War, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British troops in
North America, reportedly acquired blankets and a handkerchief contaminated with smallpox
from an infirmary for infected British troops in Fort Pitt, and instructed one of his aids, Captain
Ecuyer, to distribute the infected material to Native Americans (Miller 6; Johnson). What is
astounding about these antique practices, is that they predated the germ theory of the 1860s and
1870s, which determined microscopic organisms, “germs,” as the source of diseases spreading.
In the past century, human understanding of microbiology has dramatically increased.
This knowledge has led to many advancements and saved millions of lives. New methods of
identification and treatment for pathogens allows medical professionals to remedy or prevent
infection and has led to further understanding of the human body. On the other hand, individuals
with less beneficent plans have also achieved increased awareness.
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Since the major discoveries of modern microbiology, various countries have researched
and experimented with pathogens and toxins. Some of the more developed countries, though,
formulated the idea of using the new methodologies to isolate specific pathogens and toxins for
use as national offensive or defensive weapons. Germany is one country that is known to have
undertaken more sophisticated experiments with biological warfare as early as World War I.
After the Great War, scientists found evidence that Germany had organized a biological warfare
program which attempted to covertly sabotage the United States and France by inoculating farm
animals (Miller 6; Johnson). In particular, cultures confiscated from the Bucharest Institute of
Bacteriology and Pathology contained bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus mallei,
commonly known as anthrax and glanders respectively (Johnson).
The first real, though ineffective, attempt to prohibit biological agents as weapons
occurred following World War I. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of
“bacteriological methods” as weapons (“Protocol for the Prohibition” 3). Despite the intent of the
Protocol, countries still used germ weaponry. Japan, for instance, used pathogenic agents on a
large scale against prisoners as well as eleven Chinese cities between 1932 and the end of World
War II (Miller 7). The devastation of Japan’s experiments exposed the true power of biological
agents and, considering that the devastation was the result of mere experiments, it showcased just
how grotesquely effective such agents could be if used in actual wartime situations.
Thankfully, more recent treaties such as the Biological Weapons Convention, or BWC,
entered into force in 1975 and prohibits State Parties to “develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise
acquire or retain” biological agents or toxins “of types and in quantities that have no justification
for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes” or which are intended for “hostile
purposes or in armed conflict” (“Biological Weapons Convention”). This treaty is still in place
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and most countries have complied with the demands. The weakness of this treaty, however, is
that, despite the United Nations enforcing it, it is extremely difficult to obtain physical evidence
if any country does break it. After all, if a country were to engineer germ weapons in a
pharmaceutical building, etc., there would be little to no evidence gathered by drones or spies.
History of the Plague
Plague is a disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. It is one of the most devastating
maladies mankind has ever faced, historically causing mass deaths, even wiping out entire
populations at times. In recorded history, there have been three major pandemics of plague: The
Justinian Plague, the Great Plague, and the Modern Plague (“Plague: History”).
The Justinian Plague, named after Byzantine emperor Justinian I, began in 541 CE and
continued with reoccurring outbreaks in the following two hundred years; it killed tens of
millions of people of the Mediterranean basin (“Plague: History”).
The Great Plague, also known as the Black Death, devastated Europe in the thirteenth
century. Believed to have originated in China, the pandemic struck Europe in the 1330s and
decimated approximately 60% of the European population in a few years (“Plague: History”).
This is the most well-known of the plague pandemics.
The Modern Plague was the most recent major outbreak, taking place primarily in China
during the mid- to late-eighteen hundreds (“Plague: History”). Despite the millions of deaths,
this epidemic led to the identification of rats and fleas as the source of bubonic plague.
Today, small outbreaks of plague still occur naturally in endemic areas. Africa faces the
most yearly cases of plague, as well as parts of Asia and South America (“Plague: Maps”). Even
the US handles a handful of cases in the West and Southwest, particularly in the New MexicoArizona-Colorado region (“Plague: Maps”).
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While the most cataclysmic plague pandemics have, as far as experts have discovered,
been natural occurrences, humans have also used the disease as a biological weapon. Before it
arrived in Europe for the Black Death, the plague traversed much of Asia and the Middle East to
slink its way to Eastern Europe. The first known utilization of plague as a weapon occurred
through this time during the Siege of Kaffa. The Tartar army laid siege to the port town Kaffa, in
modern day Ukraine (Miller 6). During the standstill, the plague creeping its way into Europe
infected the Tartar army, and, realizing the deadly results of the disease, Tartar soldiers
catapulted the infected corpses of their comrades over the city walls of Kaffa to purposefully
poison the city’s inhabitants (Miller 6; Johnson).
As previously mentioned, Japan organized extensive experimentations with biological
weapons from 1932 until the end of World War II. One of the pathogens used in the Japanese
research was Y. pestis (Miller 7). Scientists contrived an ingeniously depraved plan to inoculate
fleas with the bacteria from rats and then release the contaminated fleas from planes over
Chinese cities (Johnson). This method was particularly inventive because at the time, the actual
bacteria were difficult to isolate, and so pneumonic plague couldn’t be used as a weapon since
that involves the bacteria in the air being inhaled, yet this method allowed a crude, but equally
widespread way to infect people. It wasn’t as direct because the victims had to be bitten by the
fleas to develop the infection, but it was a major step in the development of plague as a WMD.
Why is Biological Warfare a Threat to the US?
Weapons derived from bacteria are rising as a national threat to the US. While the
Biological Warfare Convention, and the United Nations which enforces it, regulates state
development of germ weapons, there are no set methods to ensure that countries abide by the
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treaty. Theoretically, and probably occurring in some countries, states may be developing
biological weapons.
Within the United States borders, it is difficult for individuals or groups to produce
biological weapons because proper facilities and instruments are needed as well as the education
required to safely develop highly infectious cultures. However, bacteriological weapons have the
unique ability to affect widespread areas from singular sources. In other words, if an individual
were to attain even a small culture of an infectious disease he could easily enough infect himself
or others living in urban areas; if he infected himself in New York, for instance, he could quickly
contaminate hundreds of people.
The US government tested the prospect of a biological attack on various major targets. In
the 1940s and 1950s, a Special Operations Division of the US Army’s Chemical Corps led
experiments by releasing airborne bacteria into the Pentagon’s air system and from Navy ships
off the coasts of Norfolk, Virginia, and San Francisco, California (“Secret Testing”). Had the
supposedly harmless bacteria been something more deadly, thousands of citizens would have
been infected and possibly killed. Further field tests released model bacteria from generators in
cities like St. Louis and Minneapolis and from planes travelling from South Dakota to
Minnesota, Ohio to Texas, and Michigan to Kansas (“Secret Testing”). Once more, the mockpathogens traversed enough area to contaminate thousands. Additional experiments in the 1960s
released bacteria in the National Airport and in the New York subway system (“Secret Testing”).
More recently, US government agencies have utilized exercises which focus on the
theoretical reaction to outbreaks, rather than actually spreading pathogens (Stern). The exercises
suggested that hospitals would quickly exhaust antibiotic and vaccine supplies, first responders
are inefficiently trained to handle such situations, and local, state and federal agencies are poorly
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coordinated (Stern). Needless to say, if an enemy of the United States procured an airborne
pathogen and managed to release it to highly populated areas, the US could not protect itself.
Why would someone want to cause such devastation in the first place? For mankind’s
ancient goals: Power and security. In the movie V for Vendetta, for example, a futuristic society
is controlled by a totalitarian government. However, the tyrannical government only achieved
power over the society after creating a deadly virus and infecting innocent civilians with it (V for
Vendetta). The virus decimated the population and instigated panic in the civilians; then the
regiment provided the cure for the virus (V for Vendetta). As the civilians rushed to procure the
only vaccination, the regiment took control of the economy of the society and then used the
financial backing as well as the adoration of the ignorant civilians, who saw the regiment as a
savior rather than the villain, to legally replace their government with the totalitarian regiment (V
for Vendetta).
Of course the movie represents a tremendous exaggeration; however, it suggests the idea
that a group capable of creating biological weapons, could genetically engineer a new pathogen
for which no one else has developed a vaccine for. Moreover, the movie also emphasizes the
effects of biological terrorism in creating mass hysteria, which can lead to distorted and illogical
thinking. In an actual biological war, this would inhibit the assailed people in countering the
attack, because they would struggle to keep a clear mind for trying to treat the infected, create
medicine, and protect themselves from the infection.
Why is Plague a Threat to the US?
So how is plague specifically a threat to the US? Firstly, there are three primary types of
plague: Pneumonic, bubonic, and septicemic. Pneumonic plague infects the lungs and spreads
more easily because the bacteria can be released from infected persons through the water exhaled
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from respiration (“Facts about Pneumonic Plague”). Bubonic plague is more common and infects
humans typically through the bite of infected fleas; in this type, individuals develop
characteristic swollen lymph glands, called buboes (“Facts about Pneumonic Plague”).
Septicemic plague infects the blood and results from the bite of infected fleas, but buboes do not
develop (“Facts about Pneumonic Plague”). While bubonic plague is the most infamous,
pneumonic plague is actually why the pathogen is categorized as a Category A Disease.
Category A agents or diseases are those which are declared by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, also known as the CDC, as the most high-priority agents that may constitute a
risk to national security (“Bioterrorism”). Other examples of Category A are anthrax and
smallpox.
Furthermore, symptom development of pneumonic plague typically is delayed by a few
days, so once it infects an individual, he can still travel and infect others silently. Plague also
must be treated with antibiotics “preferably within 24 hours” after symptoms appear to prevent
high risk of death (“Emergency Preparedness and Response”). Because of the delay in
symptoms, this disease would spread quickly, especially in urban settings, and if large enough
populations were infected simultaneously, hospitals would struggle to treat everyone at once,
leading to high death tolls, despite the fact that fairly common antibiotics can treat it early on.
In addition to the calamitous effects of the pathogen itself, Inglesby et al. in the article
“Plague as a Biological Weapon,” states that Russian scientists in particular are known to have
manufactured plague as an “agent suitable for placing in weapons” and that thousands of
scientists of the former Soviet Union claim to have worked with the disease before the program
was disbanded. While the US and Russia aren’t necessarily antagonistic right now, if another war
occurs in the future, placing the two countries to opposing sides, Russia probably retained the
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research and will be able to manufacture plague weapons again, and might distribute the
methodology to its allies.
US Preventive Measures
For biological attacks in general, the US government has a few measures in place. Some
measures include stocks of antibiotics and vaccines and isolation wards or single rooms in
hospitals. Another set of measures specific for important national buildings, like the Pentagon, is
the introduction of air filters to reduce the possibility of airborne pathogens within. The CDC has
also expanded the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System to provide an electronic
system, National Electronic Disease Surveillance System or NEDSS, which facilitates the
exchange of information about diseases between the national government, forty-six states, New
York City, and Washington D.C. (“National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System”). This
system allows a medical facility connected to the NEDSS to quickly alert the CDC of any
pathogen outbreaks, including plague.
There are currently no active preventive measures for plague specifically, however. The
CDC merely recommends that residents of endemic areas reduce habitat and food supplies for
rodents around their homes, use flea control on any pets, disallow pets that roam freely outside
from sleeping with owners, carefully handle any potentially infected animal with gloves or other
protection, and use insect repellent on skin and clothes to prevent flea bites (“Plague:
Prevention”). In other words, the residents should behave like typical American citizens and
hope they don’t contract the disease.
One of the measures that needs to be incorporated on a national level, is a quicker method
to identify pathogens. Currently, infectious diseases are primarily identified by processes such as
culturing and take days to properly make a diagnosis. Bacteria, fungi, and viruses take so long to
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identify because scientists run DNA analyses on isolated microbes. It’s not necessarily a
complex process to isolate the minute microbes from the patient’s blood, however scientists need
quite a bit of DNA to run the analysis, so they use cultures to grow more of the pathogen, which
takes time.
In David Ecker’s “Germ Catcher,” he describes a biosensor system, developed by his
team at Ibis Biosciences, which expedites this procedure. In Ecker’s process, they use PCR to
amplify particular genes from microbes (“Germ Catcher”). PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, is
a way to copy DNA strands very quickly: DNA is double stranded, so PCR separates the two
strands and then an enzyme, polymerase, makes a complimentary copy for each, so that instead
of one double-strand, PCR amplifies it to create two identical double-strands. PCR ends up
repeating that until there are thousands of copies. Primers are also used to identify a start point
and stop point on the DNA strand, so the copy will only be of a particular area on the strand.
Ecker uses this because he can use primers to copy particular genes in microbes, genes which are
more unique to a specific organism. Then, Ecker’s process identifies the mass of the amplified
DNA strands through mass spectrometry and is able to apply a mathematical formula to identify
how many of each nucleotide are present (“Germ Catcher”). Nucleotides are the basic units of
DNA and each one has a unique mass. After he finds out how many of each nucleotide there are
in the DNA, he can cross-reference the numbers in a database and the database will be able to
identify the most likely pathogen (“Germ Catcher”). If these biosensors, or others, were installed
in various hospitals around the US, medical professionals might be able to identify pathogens
more quickly, and alert the public to possible signs of biological warfare.
Another vital goal for bio-weapon defense is medical fortification of hospitals. As
previously mentioned with Jessica Stern’s “Confronting Biological Terrorism,” exercises
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conducted by the government suggest that hospitals would be likely to exhaust medicinal
resources quickly in the case of a biological attack. To negate this viable risk, the government
should organize various laboratories to remain on call in case of emergencies; so, if there is a
plague epidemic and the hospitals involved begin to exhaust their antibiotic supplies, these labs
could begin to manufacture more. Currently, if a hospital needs more, it will contact other nearby
hospitals and clinics, which works short term, but then those facilities would lack the medicine
for any patients that may seek treatment from them. In relation to plague, agencies or
corporations should put forth more research into developing a vaccine, as there is no plague
vaccine available in the United States. Overall, an effective vaccine could profoundly reduce the
threat of plague as a viable weapon.
On the political and social end, more stringent regulations for the Biological Weapons
Convention could also lessen the risk of biological warfare. As one of the primary fallacies of the
treaty is a lack of ability to ensure no country is breaking the accord, changes to allow inspection
contingents comprised of delegates from multiple countries could help assure that no country is
concealing illegal biological agents behind pharmaceutical businesses or so on.
Perhaps the best way to instigate reforms on preventive measures for plague is to
emphasize the need for more scientific research and to publicize the reality of the disease to the
general population. The research could focus on setting procedures for biosensors and creating a
plague vaccine, while public awareness would lead the social reform on international policy.
Moreover, these reforms could pertain to general biodefense rather than plague specifically since
the same basic suggestions can apply to various biological threats, and citizens are more likely to
actively join the cause if they see it as a way to stop numerous safety threats instead of one
disease most civilians don’t even realize is still active in the world.
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Works Cited
"Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2014. Web. 19
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---. “Emergency Preparedness and Response: Pneumonic Plague.” emergency.cdc.gov. Centers
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