news: chemical/bio/ warfare
Healthwire
THE 'POOR MAN'S NUKES'
September 22, 2001
Globe and Mail
F9
Carolyn Abraham
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Also in Food Safety Net, September 22, 2001 issue:
http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/safefood/archives/fsnet-archives.htm
It could, according to this story, be as unspectacular as a cyanide-filled
brown paper bag left in front of an office-tower air vent, or a
street-cleaning machine spewing lethal spores through the suburbs. The
story says that government and health officials are only too aware that
the orchestrated horror of hijacked planes crashing into skyscrapers is
not the only way to extinguish thousands of lives.
If terrorism is the invisible enemy of the new war, biological and
chemical agents are certainly among its unseen weapons -- quiet and
deadly.
Experts have long questioned the actual risk bioterrorism poses to
civilian populations, but debate has all but died in the wake of the
attacks on the United States.
Osama bin Laden, the Saudi multimillionaire and suspected mastermind
behind the carnage of Sept. 11, declared in 1998 that the acquisition of
biological and chemical weapons is a "religious duty."
Satellite pictures taken in the past two weeks reveal dead animals at a
terrorist training camp that bin Laden is believed to operate deep in the
eastern mountains of Afghanistan, according to U.S. news reports.
The images are of several dead dogs, leashed to poles, near what appears
to be a small, cinder-block laboratory, fuelling fears that
chemical-weapons testing is under way.
Raymond Zilinskas, a former inspector with the United Nations Special
Commission investigating biological-weapons programs was quoted as saying,
"To me, that's the frightening development. These people did this with
aeronautics. Why couldn't they do it with microbiology?"
The day the World Trade Center toppled, the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta fired off an urgent alert to North
American hospitals and health departments to watch for any unusual disease
patterns.
Unleash bacteria or viruses in an unsuspecting pool of people and hundreds
could pass infection to thousands of others, erupting in a sudden epidemic
of anthrax, the vanquished smallpox, a wicked influenza strain, pneumonia
or even the plague.
Biological weapons are a cheap and available tool of mass destruction --
"the poor man's nukes," according to Air Force magazine.
The U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment concluded in 1993 that a
single aircraft attack on Washington, D.C., using anthrax could result in
one million to three million deaths. A one-megaton hydrogen bomb in the
same scenario would kill half a million to 1.9 million people.
Yet anyone interested in wreaking havoc with anthrax can literally dig it
out of the ground. The bacillus anthracis spores that cause the lethal
respiratory infection lie dormant in the soil in parts of Canada and the
United States, said Andrew Potter, a bacteriologist and scientific
director of the Veterinary Infectious Disease Organization at the
University of Saskatchewan.
In Oregon in 1984, the Rajneesh cult had no trouble growing salmonella in
petri dishes.
They then spread the toxic bacteria in salad bars, making 751 people sick.
"People don't realize that all these really nasty viruses and bacteria
exist in nature," Potter said. "You don't need a lot of expertise to get
them."
In February, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said many of the 29
declared terrorist organizations are scouring the Internet for information
on using biological and chemical weapons.
Iraq admitted to the United Nations in 1995 that it had a
biological-weapons program, which included stuffing aerial bombs and
missile warheads with biological agents intended for use in the Persian
Gulf war. Although Iraqi officials later claimed to have destroyed the
warheads, Zilinskas said that on his 1994 visit, there he saw no evidence
of that.
"They have a trained work force that could go back to work [on biological
weapons] at any moment. . . . They might also have [the agents] in the
fridges and freezers ready to go," he said.
Ahmed Ressam, a 34-year-old Algerian serving a 130-year sentence after he
was caught with explosives at the Canadian-U.S. border in 1999, testified
this summer that instructors in the terrorist training camp he attended in
Afghanistan showed him how to kill a dog in a box with homemade cyanide
gas. He was also taught to use a similar method to poison office and
apartment buildings by placing the crude chemical weapon near an
air-intake duct.
Despite the chilling information gathered from intelligence sources, many
countries are not well-prepared for such a threat.
Documents revealed earlier this year suggested that Health Canada is
ill-equipped to handle a bioterrorism attack. Although the federal
department is apparently in the midst of drafting a protocol on
bioterrorism, Health Canada spokeswoman Paige Raymond-Kovach said she
could give few details about defensive measures.
The smallpox virus is considered one of the more plausible biological
agents of destruction. It's highly contagious, visually shocking and often
deadly.
But shortly after the World Health Organization declared in 1980 that an
aggressive vaccination campaign had eradicated the disease, most countries
stopped vaccinating their populations against it.
Two decades later, most people have lost immunity and no one can be
certain whether the United States and Russia are truly the only countries
that retain stocks of the ancient plague.
The United States has only 12 million doses of the smallpox vaccine and
has reportedly contracted for the production of 40 million more doses. The
U.S. military is also facing a shortage of anthrax vaccine for its troops.
Yet this summer, the United States refused to back an international effort
to put teeth into a 1972 global treaty that bans germ warfare, which
currently is largely dependent on good faith.
U.S. officials argued that its thriving biotechnology industry might be
harmed by inspections the treaty would enforce. The United States also
probably feared that the pact would expose its military secrets to prying
eyes: The Pentagon confirmed in May that it was producing small amounts of
chemical and biological warfare agents in order to develop protection
against them.
Donald Low, chief microbiologist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, said
many pathogens would leave health authorities with few options other than
containment. In the case of a virulent influenza strain being dispersed,
for example -- where there is no vaccine to treat it -- "we could be faced
with a pandemic."
Low said a terrorist group would probably use different biological agents
for different purposes. To make a political statement, with graphic images
and a high mortality rate, an infectious, airborne pathogen such as
smallpox would be a candidate.
Nerve gases or anthrax might be effective to disable an army -- an option
particularly attractive if one side feels outgunned by a superior military
machine.
If there is any comfort to be found, it's that experts agree that while
the agents are easy to acquire and culture, they are not simple to
disseminate.
>From 1991 to 1993, the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo made nine
separate unsuccessful attempts to unleash anthrax and another bioagent
through Tokyo and its suburbs, Zilinskas said. "And this was a
well-financed group, with microbiology expertise." The cult did manage to
unleash sarin in the subway system in 1995, killing 12 people.
Trying to effectively spread an airborne disease is tricky, the experts
say -- one unexpected wind can thwart the effort.
But another aim of biological warfare could be to cripple the enemy econom
with a disease that might contaminate its livestock. On this front, Potter
feels North America is particularly vulnerable. For example, the
foot-and-mouth virus, to which Britain lost billions of dollars, is hardy
and easy to transport, he said. "It's relatively easy to get hold of and
to infect the animal population through a jab [with a needle] or through
animal feed."
For maximum impact, infiltrating the food chain is a good delivery system:
"It's food. Everybody trusts it. You go to the store, you buy it, you eat
it. . . . Imagine something like E. coli 0157, remember Walkerton? Picture
that on a national scale."
The unseen arsenal
It can take a minute amount of a chemical or biological agent to kill.
Here are some that can be -- and have been -- used as weapons.
______
Sarin.
The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo unleashed the odourless, colourless gas in
the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing 12 and injuring 5,500. Iraq also
used it to attack the Kurdish village of Birjinni in 1988. Sarin attacks
the nervous system and can kill within two to 15 minutes of exposure. A
victim may experience blurred vision, chest tightness, nausea and
vomiting, convulsions, fluctuations in heart rate, a loss of
consciousness, a seizure, eventual paralysis and death.
________
Anthrax.
It takes effect in one to six days and can kill within 24 hours if
untreated. In the early stages, it can be treated with penicillin.
Pulmonary anthrax, the most deadly of the two main types of the disease,
causes severe breathing difficulty and is fatal about 50 per cent of the
time.
_________
Smallpox.
It is a highly infectious viral disease that was declared extinct in 1980
by the World Health Organization after an aggressive worldwide vaccination
campaign. Symptoms resemble those of influenza and are accompanied by a
rash that spreads over the body and eventually develops into pus-filled
blisters. Complications include blindness, pneumonia and kidney damage. It
can be treated if a vaccine is administered early, but only limited
amounts of the vaccine exist today. The mortality rate in unvaccinated
individuals is 35 per cent.
______
Ricin.
Intelligence sources believe Iraq is working with this deadly agent, which
is derived from castor beans. It takes effect in a few hours and can kill
in three days. Victims rapidly become weak and develop a fever and cough.
Fluid builds up in the lungs and the victim goes into respiratory
distress. No antitoxin or vaccine is available.
_________
Botulism.
Produced by the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the toxin causes
progressive muscular paralysis and other disturbances of the central and
peripheral nervous system. Symptoms appear eight to 36 hours after
infection. There may be difficulty swallowing and speaking, nausea,
vomiting and double vision, progressive muscle weakness, paralysis and
abrupt respiratory failure. Prompt treatment with an antitoxin reduces the
risk of death. The mortality rate is 65 per cent.
___________
Tularaemia.
Also known as rabbit fever, tularaemia is an infectious disease of wild
animals that can be transmitted to humans. Symptoms include a high fever,
aching and swollen glands. It can be treated with antibiotics. In general,
tularemia is fatal in about 5 per cent of cases. But without treatment,
the risk of death is more than 30 per cent with certain forms of the
disease, such as the type that triggers atypical pneumonia. No vaccine is
available.
____________________
Genetic engineering.
It could be used to make traditional biological agents more hardy and
deadly. Also, a malignant organism could be coupled with a benign one to
disguise a potentially fatal affliction with the symptoms of a different
ailment so that the illness is misdiagnosed and mistreated. Advances such
as mapping the human genome could raise the possibility of producing
biological weapons that target certain segments of a population based on
race, gender or genetic predisposition to particular conditions.
Sources: Jane's Defence Weekly, Home Medical Encyclopedia, Henry L.
Stimson Center's Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project,
Provet Healthcare Information
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