The "devastating" threat of bioweapons
"Rx Against Terror"
[February] was a necessary firebell. With the threat of
bioterrorism, the unthinkable has become plausible. Former Dean
Donald Henderson and the Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense
Studies are to be commended for their foresight in spearheading
public education and proposing biodefense strategies in a think
tank environment.
In the long term, it is apparent that the strategic application
of bioweapons is both more likely and devastating than
bioterrorism alone. This concern extends far beyond Iraq's
upstart bioarsenal and its shell-game strategy to confound U.N.
inspectors. I refer readers to Ken Alibek's account in
Biohazard (Random House, 1999). Dr. Alibek, a witness
before the Biodefense Center, is the 1992 defector and
ex-director of the Soviet Biological Weapons Program who
identified offensive bioweapons research, production, and testing
facilities within what is present-day Russia and other former
Soviet republics. Preparations included genetically engineered
(bacterial and viral) pathogens and protocols for weaponizing
these deadly agents into warhead components. Soviet scientists
found that viral pathogens make excellent bioweapons: They store
well in the inert state, require few viral particles to infect,
are not susceptible to antibiotics, and can be readily packaged
in a warhead and delivered as an aerosol. Ironically, Soviet
reconnaissance in the late 1980s found evidence of hemorrhagic
fever outbreaks in northeastern China, ominously near a large
"fermenting plant" (ibid). Suspect pathogens included the highly
infectious viral agents of Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa fevers.
Given: (1) dissolution of the Soviet Union and its scientific
infrastructure; (2) aggressive foreign acquisition, by espionage
or purchase, of U.S. ballistic missile technology, should we not
infer that bioweapons technology constitutes a potential warhead
for would-be superpowers as well as rogue states? Bioweapons
could be deployed as a "poor nation's neutron bomb": Civilian
populations or troop concentrations would be decimated by
extensive morbidity/mortality while physical infrastructure
remained intact.
Development of strategic biodefensive public health responses and
clinical countermeasures is not in our long-term national
research budgets. As future geopolitical events catch up with the
facts, however, we will be compelled to implement the most
feasible of these proposals. I can empathize with Dr. Henderson's
lament: "I never thought smallpox would return. Ever. I resent
it." His successful smallpox eradication program (1966-1980)
assumed prima facie that it was everyone's desire to eliminate
clinical manifestation of the most virulent pathogens. We can no
longer afford to make that assumption.
Garry M. Marley, PhD (MSc '78)
gmarley@gateway.net
Setting the record straight
In the Letters section of our June issue, the letter titled "A
look back at Hopkins postdocs" was contributed by Kenneth Zeiler,
MD, professor emeritus of medicine and of physiology--not
Kenneth Jeiler, as we mistakenly printed. And in "more insight on
millennial matters," contributed by Franklin M. Wright '59, the
founding of Rome should have read 753 B.C. We apologize to both
letter writers for our mistakes. Wright took the typo in stride
and actually wrote to correct one small error in his original
letter: The Anglo-Saxon king who presided over the Council of
Whitby was Oswy of Northumbria. --SD
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