An old tactic in warfare
The neglect is all the more shameful, Professor Lockwood points out, because using insects as weapons of mass destruction is nothing new. It has been part of the weaponry since the dawn of time.
Indeed, one of the oldest tactics in all warfare involves throwing beehives at an enemy army. And it wasn't just bees that were used. Roman historian Pliny the Elder records that, in the second century AD, inhabitants of the Middle Eastern fortress city of Hatra forced the Roman legions surrounding them to flee for their lives by dropping scorpions on them.
Bees and wasps were certainly an essential part of any army's weaponry in the Middle Ages. In the 12th century, King Henry I of England ordered his men to launch 'nest bombs' into the middle of the Duke of Lorraine's marauding army in Normandy.
And by the 14th century, some European armies had even created a vast windmill-like device that propelled the hives from the ends of its rapidly rotating arms.
No sooner were armies capable of hurling hives by machine, however, than they had devised a machine capable of throwing far heavier objects - such as the rotting human corpses of victims of insect-born diseases.
Bugs of war! From killer hornets to murderous fleas, a new book reveals how insects can be weapons of mass destruction
By Geoffrey Wansell
FULL REPORT:>>===============================
Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in ... This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics. ... being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to ... Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane ...
Biological warfare: what you need to know
Biological weapons may seem a relatively recent feature on the landscape of war, but deadly biological agents, be they bacteria, viruses or poisons from plants, and the methods of spreading them effectively, have been a focus of military strategists and terrorists for many years.
As far back as the 1760s, even the British werent above a bit of viral warfare, deliberately introducing smallpox in their bid to exterminate the native peoples of North America. Blankets from the local smallpox hospital were proferred as a gift to the Indians. The resulting outbreak of smallpox killed more than half of the local native population.
The agents of disease may not have changed much, but the methods of delivery have become more sophisticated. Here, we take a look at the agents believed to pose the biggest threat and how they might be spread.
The biological threat
The development of bioweapons and the capability to produce large enough quantities of biological agents for war carried on throughout the twentieth century. In 1972 the Biological Weapons Convention was signed by more than 100 countries, including the USA, which, by 1973, along with most other countries, had destroyed its biological weapons. By the end of 2002, 146 countries had signed the Biological Weapons Convention.
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the USA, governments and health authorities worldwide have honed and developed their contingency plans for dealing with bioterrorist attacks. Possible biological agents have been stratified according to their risk and potential for spreading disease and causing death.
Successful bioweapons
While there are many poisonous or deadly infections, not all lend themselves to being used as agents of war. Some key features of a successful bioweapon agent are that it:
* can be spread from person to person easily;
* results in a high death rate;
* would cause public panic;
* would require special action from public health authorities for them to be prepared; and
* has no easily available treatment, vaccine or antidote.
Methods of delivery
The method used to deliver bacteria or viruses as a bioweapon would depend on the particular organism and its characteristics. People could become infected by breathing in droplets infected with the organism (as an aerosol), through their skin, by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water. Spores of an organism like anthrax, that can survive in a dormant state for decades in suitable soil, could be spread through the air and remain in soil as a source of possible infection.
The methods most often feared for biological warfare are the aerosolisation of large quantities of organisms or spores over a densely populated area by detonating a weapon, or the widespread contamination of food or drinking water supplies with deadly organisms or poisons.
The agents
Here are some of the agents that have been identified worldwide as posing the greatest potential threat.
Biological warfare agents
SEE CHART:
http://www.mydr.com.au/travel-health/biological-warfare-what-you-need-to-knowPlague
Plague has been around for centuries: the Black Death killed a third of Europes population in the 1300s. Its spread was unrelenting, carried by rats and humans from settlement to settlement. Fleas infected by plague lived on the rats and then moved to humans. The people bitten by infected fleas developed bubonic plague.
Australia is said to be the only populated continent without an animal reservoir of plague. Ground squirrels, rats and other rodents on the other continents provide a reservoir for the less than 2000 natural cases that occur every year in humans.
A more recent plague epidemic started in the Manchuria region of China during World War II, after the Japanese reportedly dropped plague-infected fleas from aircraft onto the populated region.
Since then, biological weapons programmes have eliminated the need for the flea and, nowadays, a bioterrorist attack using plague would probably be via the aerosol method, with the people infected getting pneumonic, rather than bubonic, plague. Antibiotics need to be given in the first 24 hours to reduce the chance of death.
Tularaemia
The tularaemia bacterium is one of the most infectious disease-causing bacteria known. For this reason it has been studied as a biological weapon and was probably used in World War II on the Eastern European front, when there were large outbreaks among German and Soviet troops.
The bacterium can live in soil, water and in voles, mice, rabbits and other mammals. Humans catch tularaemia from bites of infected ticks and flies, or from food and water, or by breathing in infected aerosols.
Botulism
Botulinum toxin is a highly poisonous nerve toxin produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacterium. We know it more commonly as botox and because of its muscle paralysing properties it is used in cosmetic injections to relax (paralyse) the muscles of the forehead.
Botulinum toxins ability to relax muscles can also be harnessed for more serious medical uses, such as relaxing muscles in cerebral palsy and in facial nerve disorders. However, when this same muscle relaxing ability is applied to the breathing muscles, as happens in the course of a botulism infection, then respiratory failure and death will result.
There are 3 kinds of botulism infections: foodborne botulism; infant botulism; and wound botulism. If not treated, they can all progress to cause paralysis of the limbs and the breathing muscles, leading to respiratory failure and death. Even with treatment such as antitoxin, recovery from botulism takes months and the person may have to be on a ventilator to help them breathe during this time.
The haemorrhagic fevers
The haemorrhagic fevers are caused by viruses which include Ebola and Marburg viruses, Rift Valley fever, Lassa fever and yellow fever viruses.
The haemorrhagic fever viruses attack all systems of the body. The damage to the vascular (blood) system usually results in bleeding under the skin (haemorrhage), hence the name haemorrhagic fever. The viruses can show different symptoms and not all infected people will show the same signs. Fever, joint and muscle pain and skin flushing or rash are typical symptoms. Later on in the disease, signs of haemorrhage in the skin and eyes can be seen and the circulatory system goes into shock.
These fevers have many of the characteristics needed to make them a serious risk if used as a bioweapon, such as a high death rate in people who become infected, and they are highly infectious by aerosol spread. This means that a sufficient quantity of live virus could be aerosolised over an urban area by the detonation of a weapon and so result in a serious outbreak of disease.
Haemorrhagic fever viruses are reported to have been developed as weapons by several countries in the past, including the USA, although all such research and development should have been stopped by countries ratifying the Biological Weapons Convention.
Apart from yellow fever, the haemorrhagic fevers do not have licensed vaccines to prevent them.
Ricin
Ricin is a deadly poison made from the seeds of the castor bean. It is not a live organism, like a virus or bacterium, but a biological poison. It can be extracted fairly easily from the waste left over from processing castor beans. Only a very small amount is needed to kill.
The Bulgarian Georgi Markov was assassinated with ricin in London in 1978. On Waterloo Bridge on his way to work, he was bumped by a man carrying an umbrella. The umbrella injected into his leg a tiny metal ball, which after his death was found to contain traces of ricin.
People can be exposed to ricin by being injected with it, by swallowing it or by breathing it in. It stops the body from making proteins. Without proteins, the cells of the body start to die. If ricin is eaten or injected, the liver and kidneys would stop working and the person would eventually die from multi-organ failure. If ricin is breathed in, after various respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, the lungs might fail. It can be hours before any symptoms appear.
Ricin normally exists as a white powder and is a very stable compound. It can be mixed with water or other liquids to make an aerosol or a liquid mix (such as was found in a station locker in Paris in March 2003).
myDr, 2003
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