Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat

[JJackson]

Mother Nature is the most dangerous terrorist. The microbial world is almost unlimited in its [terrorist] potential

Bioengineering pathogens is at the extremes of our abilities (man’s that is) we have recently 'created life' from scratch for the first time. This was a fairly big deal but all we did was manufacture some DNA to match that of another organism, we do not know enough to make even minor changes to the genetic sequence and be able to predict the effects. The money thrown at bio-terrorism has had two effects (well three if you include that it was diverted from some where it might have done more good) firstly it has probably increased the threat to US citizens from dangerous biological agents by vastly increasing the number of US labs licensed to work with dangerous pathogens. There has, naturally enough, been a commensurate increase in the number of lab accidents, researchers infected etc. (link to post on Texas A&M University lab failures that eventually made the CDC do something). The second, and beneficial effect, of bio-terrorism research has been the fact that a lot of it is dual use and could be of genuine benefit in what is the far greater, and very real danger, posed by zoonotic emergence - H5N1 being the poster-boy candidate. In this field, to paraphrase Ex. Sec. Rumsfeld, it is the known unknowns that we should be losing sleep over HIV/AIDS, SARS, Nipah, Ebola/Marburg etc. are all recent zoonotics. None of our (human) communicable diseases was originally a human disease from Yellow fever & Smallpox to cold & flu they have all been acquired by humans from - and since - the domestication of animals.

H5N1 an object lesson.
For the first time in history we have been given forewarning of an impending zoonotic emergence and it is a humbling (humiliating might be closer) lesson in how poor a match our technology is to this very basic virus' ability to mutate away from any solution we may try and develop. HIV is a classical zoonotic pandemic and despite the research effort over a quarter of a century this is the first year in which we may have broken even. A flu pandemic would follow the same course but due to the difference in its transmission method would reach the same point in the pandemic cycle in about three months. We have no vaccines and no likelihood of producing any in the foreseeable future, we have one antiviral (Tamiflu) that has shown some usefulness (not a cure but can reduce symptoms) but resistance is rapidly developing in seasonal flu and most epidemiological models show this becoming the norm early in a pandemic. Here is an enemy that is a truly worthy advisory only full scale nuclear war can come close to matching its potential for destruction of our cosy human existence.
Y’all have a nice day now.

[Jedburgh]

Officer.com, 26 May 08: Bioterrorist Attack: Fact or Fiction?

....The point to all this is that by the end of the 2008 fiscal year DHS will have spent $50 billion on defense against bioterrorism attacks. Let's assume for the moment that the biological weapons threat is more fantasy then fact, how much law enforcement and emergency response equipment would State and local police department have bought with that amount of your tax payer dollars? Need updated cruisers, computers, commutations systems and centers, or weapons and ammo for use on your beat? Fifty billion will buy a bunch of that stuff....

....So what exactly have we gotten for all that money? For one thing we have a series of National Centers for study of bioterrorism organisms established at major universities around the country. That sounds good on the surface until you realize that most of these were university research departments that were hurting for grant money and all of a sudden saw a way to keep their research going under the guise of "Bioterrorism prevention".....

[Ron Humphrey]

Officer.com, 26 May 08: Bioterrorist Attack: Fact or Fiction?

One thing I wonder about the "smaller incidents is simply that as he pretty much describes it could have been worse, just would have required more detailed prep and larger manufacture capabilities. Ummm we know that any robber worth half a darn will test the waters, or scope out the job first. Then comes tha planning.

I guess I just don't buy the don't worry so much about it as you do the responders because unless I'm mistaken those responders and their equipment generally tend to be first in line for effective fire of that type of attack. So you do still have to do everything you can to study the agents themselves.

That said I would agree with the fact that up goes the call for something to be researched and all the sudden everyone and their grandmother are rarin to jump on the band wagon. Maybe the key here is to recognize this and make sure the dang band knows how to play and that your conductors are well trained enough to recognize when the band is stinkin up the place?

[William F. Owen]

Talking to Tom Hammes, a week or so ago, he was extremely concerned with the BIO threat, as a lot of genetic modification work is now becoming more easily accessible.

[JJackson]

While I agree with the core of the argument in Dr. Hanson’s ‘Bioterrorist Attack: Fact or Fiction?’ That the $50 billion dollars has largely been wasted it brings up a few questions. Firstly what are these potential bio-weapons. He starts off by discussing Ricin which is not a bio-weapon it is a chemical weapon, and he mentions the film Outbreak which was not about bio-terrorism but about a zoonotics re-emergence event (the only malice was on the part of the US military which had a cure but would not give it to its citizens because of national security considerations and not wanting to admit what it had been up to) and the fact that a Maginot line across the Mexican boarder will not stop much but it will cause a fair bit of re-routing. These may seem minor quibbles but the first two are symptoms of a poor understanding of the bio-weapons threat - the good Dr. should have known better – but the general public do not have the background to understand and are so easily led – or misled. I would class the threat into three groups Major, Minor & Engineered.

I will start with Engineered as this is the nightmare scenario used to scare up funding and is generally useful for getting your agenda through. As a threat it is a non starter as the required technology is all science fiction. What we can do – given a well equipped level 3 or 4 bio lab and access to an existing deadly pathogen – is tinker with its genetic sequence and test the results to see if they make it any more of a super bug. As nature does this all the time and on a much larger scale it is unlikely you will get anything significantly more dangerous that you started with and I can not imagine anyone would bother, if you have the pathogen and were of a mind to use it you would just release it as it is.

Major. This is where you have a highly dangerous communicable disease (1918 H1N1, smallpox) the release is relatively simple (bio-suicide ‘bomber’ spends the day coughing and sneezing at Heathrow) the problem is it is totally untargeted the newly infected could just as easily be on there way to Mecca as Washington. This is more of an extortionist’s weapon (think Bond films).

The Minor has a disproportionate scare effect but is like the anthrax release. This type of weapon has a low CAR (see the quote box for an explanation of terms) so spreads little or not at all, it needs a dispersal mechanism and will normally only infect those directly targeted or those in close contact with this group.

A couple of other misconceptions re testing. I suspect most of the public think when a blood sample is tested it enters some black box procedure which then reports the pathogens found, the reality is you have to guess, based on symptoms, what you are dealing with and test for it if you do not find it you guess again and repeat. If the pathogen is new, or very rare, or only endemic in poor countries (where it is not worth manufacturing a test because they can not afford to use it) you may never find an answer.

If what I have written is true then the key to preventing Major (or Engineered attacks) is to keep the terrorists from getting hold of any of the really dangerous bugs in the first place, so shutting down as many of the new biolabs that are working with these pathogens as possible is the first step. I still think they are a far greater danger as a source of release by accident, mental instability in a lab worker or natural catastrophe – fire, flood, hurricane, tornado and earthquake. (I am glad the Sichuan quake has been burying nuclear-labs not bio-labs).

If you want a low cost bio-terror attack send a bunch of XDR-TB sufferers on a group holiday to Disneyland.

When considering the epidemiology of infectious disease there are a few terms that are useful
CAR (Clinical Attack Rate) The proportion of those exposed that become clinically ill.
CFR (Case Fatality Rate) The proportion of those clinically ill that die.
Ro (The Reproductive Number) This is the number of people one ill person infects.

If the Ro is less than 1 then the infection will die out, if greater than one you have an epidemic – the higher the number the faster the spread. Each disease has a typical Ro but it is not fixed (the same disease would have a higher Ro in a city than a sparsely populated region).

If you multiply CAR by CFR by population you get total fatalities. For the 1918 flu pandemic CAR was ~30%, CFR was ~2.5%, Ro was ~2.
Ebola & H5N1 have a CFR of > 60%.

[Jedburgh]

The Ottawa Citizen, 12 Jul 08: Terrorism is Hard

Review of the book Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear

.......an interesting discussion of the Aum Shinrikyo "doomsday" cult in Japan. Here was an organization that had an extraordinary amount of money at its disposal, several well-equipped labs and as many as 100 highly-trained scientists, working full-time, dedicated exclusively to the task of figuring out how to inflict mass casualties upon the Japanese population, in an attempt to provoke an apocalyptic war.

Nevertheless, over the course of 17 different attacks, using a range of biological and chemical weapons, they never managed to kill more than a few dozen people. The most "successful" was the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway, which killed 12 people and severely injured another 42.

Many people found this attack terrifying, yet for Gardner, it was also strangely reassuring. After all, it would be difficult to imagine circumstances more propitious for the success of a terrorist plot: "A fanatical cult with a burning desire to inflict mass slaughter has heaps of money, international connections, excellent equipment and laboratories, scientists trained at top-flight universities, and years of near-total freedom to pursue its operations." Yet they came nowhere near accomplishing their ends.

All of this goes to show that even terrorists who get their hands on biological or chemical weapons (or nuclear material, for that matter), are still a long way away from being able to hurt large numbers of people. Yet in August of 2006, 44 per cent of Americans told Gallup that they were "very" or "somewhat" worried that they, or someone in their family, would be a victim of a terrorist attack. This is a phenomenal overestimation of the actual risk.....

[AdamG]

NEW DELHI – U.S. officials fear lax security at Indian laboratories could make the facilities targets for terrorists seeking biological weapons to launch attacks across the globe, according to comments in a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable made public Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101217/...lsZWFrc3VzZg--

See also

http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/webs...ioweapons.html

Preventing and Deterring Biological Attacks: Priorities that Should Emerge From the WMD Commission Report pdf

December 19, 2008
Summary

The Center for Biosecurity strongly agrees with the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Commission report “World at Risk” that the threat of bioterrorism is urgent, growing, and requires decisive action. Recommendations such as enhancing the nation’s capabilities for a rapid response to prevent biological attacks from inflicting mass casualties, and engaging the international community to counter biosecurity risks are valuable measures that could make an appreciable difference to national security.

The Commission also highlights the importance of laboratory oversight and securing dangerous pathogens. Laboratory security is indeed critical and has increased greatly since the anthrax letters were mailed in 2001. However, there are inherent limitations to our ability to secure dangerous pathogens given their ready availability outside of laboratories in the U.S. and around the world. There is also a real danger that draconian or costly security measures will prevent scientists from working on treatments or vaccines that the country needs to treat emerging infectious diseases or to respond to a bioterrorism attack.