Bioterrorism

Biological warfare programs and convention on biological weapons

The United States' biological warfare programme began during WWII. But, it came to a halt in 1969, when President Nixon reviewed the program, decided it was wrong, and ordered the destruction of all weapons. Part of the decision was due to the availability in nuclear defense, which, it was thought, made it unnecessary to develop biological weapons since it would make it possible for other countries to develop them as well.

Planning and reacting to a bioterrorist attack

Until recently in the United States of America, most biological defense strategies have been geared to protecting soldiers on the battlefield rather than ordinary people in cities. Financial cutbacks have limited the tracking of disease outbreaks. Some like food poisoning due to E. Coli or Salmonella could be natural or deliberate.

In Europe, disease surveillance is beginning to be organised on the continent-wide scale needed to track a biological emergency. In addition of monitoring sick people, it is thought interesting to track whether a disease is due to natural outbreaks or deliberate attack. For example, a natural variety of anthrax occur in South Africa.

Researchers are experimenting with devices to detect the existence of a threat

• tiny electronic chips that would contain living nerve cells to warn of the presence of bacterial toxins (identification of broad range toxins)
• fibre-optic tube lined with antibodies coupled to light-emitting molecules (identification of specific pathogens, such as anthrax, botulin, ricin)

Plants as sensors

Very recently, public research has been approved to set up some genetically modified plants that could, in an immediate future, being made profitable to alert the population and the authorities in the event of chemical or biological attack. These new plants specifically modified would change color in contact with certain chemical elements, or biological agents, likely to be used at the time of possible terrorist attacks. The plants - opportunely placed in public places - would lose their green color quickly, thus setting off the alarm.

Arguments given to justify this option is that people are used to plants much more than to chemical sensors and the use in public places would not worry the population. Another argument is that these gmos sentinels could be deployed on vast geographical areas and their system of detection could be introduced into the evergreen trees and the algae of the watery zones, making it possible the satellites to supervise and perceive any change of color due to an hostile agent.

Reaction involves

• setting up local emergency rooms and offices to immediately deal with the outcome in case of an attack
• instruction and training for local communities
• protective clothing for military personnel
• tracking down of people buying materials involved in biological warfare

Consequently, some suggest that it would be interesting to look for ways of developing vaccines quickly enough for them to be created, mass-produced and distributed after an attack. This could involve progress in DNA sequencing so that an unknown pathogen's genes could be known very quickly. The resulting sequences could help in the development of an instant DNA vaccine.

Another major issue with vaccines is that they often have side-effects which are sometimes lethal, and hence a massive innoculation program may result in deaths and illness which would be unnecessary if no biowarfare attack occurs. This issue has a particular with the smallpox and anthrax vaccines.

Making the vaccine is not the totality of the solution. It is rather easy to order soldiers to take the vaccine, but immunizing the population is not, in particular with a vaccine making people sick, with all the controversies already going around vaccination.

For these reasons, some feel that researchers should concentrate on ways to treat victims of biological weapons. For example, Ebola kills people by inducing a widespread inflammatory reaction (similar to toxic shock syndrome). This could be fought by a new and very powerful anti-inflammatory drug.