The Coming Bioterror Threat

Last Christmas, fire officials responding to a report that deadly anthrax spores had been planted in a Palm Desert department store herded shoppers into a parking lot, ordered them to remove their clothes and then hosed them down with a bleach solution. For the 200 shoppers, it was humiliating and frightening. The threat turned out to be a hoax, as were a dozen anthrax scares since then in California.

In hindsight, it’s easy to accuse officials of going overboard. But what if the shoppers actually had been exposed to anthrax? Clearly, efficient procedures for detecting potentially deadly pathogens and for dealing with potential victims need to be developed.

Doomsayers like former CIA Director John Deutch say that biological weapons now expose the United States to a threat greater than “at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.” But biological warfare experts like Harvard’s Richard Falkenrath say that’s no more true than recent novels like Richard Preston’s “The Cobra Event,” wherein terrorists attack Manhattan with a mixture of smallpox and cold viruses.

There have been only two serious uses of biological weapons this century, the first when Japan tested deadly bacteria on Chinese prisoners in World War II and the second in 1995 when the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo tried to disperse anthrax spores. In that attack, no one was killed, though the cult did later kill 12 people with nerve gas--a chemical, not biological, weapon.

While it’s unclear that terrorists have the skills to actually use biological weapons to cause mass destruction, the Clinton administration is right to propose that Congress set aside money in the fiscal 2000 budget to thwart such a possibility. Especially worthwhile would be funds earmarked to help states and cities acquire lab equipment and training to rapidly diagnose genuine disease outbreaks and to detect hoaxes without having to shut down businesses and put possible victims through an ordeal.

Iraq is known to possess anthrax, obtained at least in part originally from a U.S. private biological repository in Maryland in the 1980s. The treaty governing biological weapons, the Biological Weapons Convention, is toothless, lacking any provisions to monitor, catch or punish companies or individuals that stockpile bioweapons. Negotiations are underway to strengthen the treaty, but European delegates complain that the United States is balking at provisions for surprise inspections and criminal prosecution of scientists and managers who violate the treaty.

The Clinton administration is balking not in an attempt to cover up a biological weapons program (the United States has not had one since the 1960s) but to protect domestic chemical companies worried that foreign inspectors would steal trade secrets. But this fear is irrational, for the inspection method the Europeans are proposing, “managed access,” is carefully designed to protect proprietary information.

At the annual convention of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science last month in Anaheim, biotechnologist Craig Venter announced his discovery of a viable genetic blueprint for a complete organism. This could lead to great medical discoveries. It could also be used to develop deadly, highly targeted “superbug” weapons.

Bioterrorists will one day, if they don’t already, pose a genuine peril. Potential targets, from cities to large companies, must become much more sophisticated in fighting them and in separating empty threats from real danger.