And these are truly loathsome instruments of war and terror. Anthrax, for instance, takes three excruciating days to destroy the membranes of the lungs and intestines. Botulinum toxin annihilates by slow asphyxiation, as the cells of the victim's breathing muscles die from within. (4)
Even though all countries should have destroyed all their biological weapons after the 1972 treaty banned them the Soviet Union and Iraq developed biological weapons in defiance of the treaty, proving they are easy to hide. Also other countries (including the USA) still have biological stockpiles to respond to “in kind” if they are attacked by another country. The US this year has blocked an agreement on the ways to monitor compliance. (8)
In Australia a research team trying to make a mouse contraception vaccine for pest control accidentally created a modified version of mousepox. Mousepox normally causes only mild symptoms in the type of mice used in the study, but when the researchers added IL-4, interleukin, a molecule that occurs naturally in the body, they created a virus that kills every one of its victims, by wiping out part of the immune system. Scientists say that ‘It would be safe to assume that if some idiot did put human IL-4 was placed into human smallpox they’d increase the lethality of it quite dramatically.’( Jackson, 2001).(1) To make matters worse the virus also seems to be resistant to a vaccine used on the mice.
Experts say it remains very difficult to transform a deadly virus or bacterium into a weapon that can be effectively dispersed. A bomb carrying a biological agent could likely destroy the germ as it explodes. Dispersing the agents with aerosols is challenging because biomaterials are often wet and can clog sprayers. The Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released the nerve gas sarin in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing 12 people, repeatedly tried to produce and disseminate agents, including anthrax, but failed each time.
Some experts think suicide terrorists could resort to spreading smallpox by infecting themselves and then wandering and breathing among large groups of people. (5) But in that scenario, large numbers of people still might not be affected since infection rates vary among people and because people infected by the virus are highly infectious only seven to 10 days following the outbreak of a rash.
Biological weapons have the potential to cause mass destruction, and it is this potential that causes the fear. As we can see in the world today it only causes a few letters with Anthrax in them to cause a whole nation and even global to fear of this new threat. However the actual number of deaths from this new threat is very small (under 10) and ‘neither the particular strain or the physical form of anthrax being used is particularly sophisticated, say scientists’ (New Scientist, 2001(2)) and so vaccines are available for use. However the only way we will definitely know if biological weapons are an agent of mass destruction if they are ever used to their full potential.
Bibliography
1. D. Mackenzie, 2001, Trial of Terror, New Scientist, 2314, 27 Oct. 2001
2. R. Nowak, 2001, Disaster in the Making, New Scientist, 2273
3. , Biological Warfare Threat Analysis
4. , Facing An Ill Wind
5. , Biological Weapons Convention
6. M. Bailey and K. Hurst, 1995, Biology Core, Collins Educational
7. Brachman PS, Friedlander AM. Anthrax. In: Plotkin SA, Orenstein WA, ed. Vaccines, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1999
8. , The Invisible Weapons, Jan 15 2001
