Biological Weapons & Bioterrorism

Bioweapons & Bioterrorism 

Introduction •  Bioterrorism 

   Biological Attack • History    

   Real Life examples • Conclusion 

Introduction>>

Biological weapons are microorganisms like virus, bacteria, fungi, or other toxins that are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals or plants. 

Biological agents, like anthrax, botulinum toxin and plague can pose a difficult public health challenge causing large numbers of deaths in a short amount of time while being difficult to contain. Bioterrorism attacks could also result in an epidemic, for example if Ebola or Lassa viruses were used as the biological agents. 

Bioweapons is a subset of a larger class of weapons referred to as weapons of mass destruction, which also includes chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons. The use of biological agents is a serious problem, and the risk of using these agents in a bioterrorist attack is increasing. 

A biological attack by terrorists or a national power may seem more like a plot element in an action film than a realistic threat. And indeed, the possibility of such an attack may be very remote. Biological attacks, however, have occurred in the past, one as recently at 2001. Accordingly, a collection of U.S. government agencies are involved in planning responses to potential biological attacks.

Bioweapon threats could include the deliberate release by attackers of an agent that causes one or more of a variety of different diseases. Public health authorities have developed a system to prioritize biological agents according to their risk to national security. Category A agents are the highest priority, and these are disease agents that pose a risk to national security because they can be transmitted from person to person and/or result in high mortality, and/or have high potential to cause social disruption. These are anthrax, botulism (via botulinum toxin, which is not passable from person to person), plague, smallpox, tularemia, and a collection of viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, and Machupo. These disease agents exist in nature (with the exception of smallpox, which has been eradicated in the wild), but they could be manipulated to make them more dangerous.

Category B agents are moderately easy to disseminate and result in low mortality. These include brucellosis, glanders, Q fever, ricin toxin, typhus fever, and other agents. Category C agents include emerging disease agents that could be engineered for mass dissemination in the future, such as Nipah virus. (This is from the CDC lists all Category A, B, and C agents. Note that chemical weapons, such as those involving nonbiological substances such as chlorine gas, are not included.)

The use of effective vaccines would likely protect lives and limit disease spread in a bioweapons emergency. Licensed vaccines are currently available for a few threats, such as anthrax and smallpox, and research is underway to develop and produce vaccines for other threats, such as tularemia, Ebola virus, and Marburg virus. Many bioweapon disease threats, however, lack a corresponding vaccine, and for those that do, significant challenges exist to their successful use in an emergency situation.

What Is a Bioterror Threat?

The draft Model State Emergency Health Powers Act of 2001, which is a document designed to guide legislative bodies as they draft laws regarding public health emergencies, has defined bioterrorism as “the intentional use of any microorganism, virus, infectious substance, or biological product that may be engineered as a result of biotechnology, or any naturally occurring or bioengineered component of any such microorganism, virus, infectious substance, or biological product, to cause death, disease, or other biological malfunction in a human, an animal, a plant, or another living organism in order to influence the conduct of government or to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

Biological warfare and bioterrorism are often used interchangeably, but bioterrorism usually refers to acts committed by a sub-national entity, rather than a country.

How Likely Is a Biological Attack to Happen?

Expert opinions differ on the plausibility of a biological attack. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council stated in 2008 that bioterrorism is a more likely threat than nuclear terrorism. That same year, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell revealed that of all weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons were his personal greatest worry (McConnell, 2008).

Other defense experts and scientists insist that the possibility of any attack, especially a large-scale one, is small, given the immense challenges to cultivating, weaponizing, and deploying biological agents. For example, the technical difficulties in aerosolizing a disease agent and dispersing it accurately and widely while maintaining its virulence are immense. Regardless, most biosecurity experts acknowledge that the potential of an attack should not be ignored. Moreover, preparations for a biological attack will likely benefit the response to other kinds of public health emergencies.

History-

Bioweapons are not just a 21st century concern: humans have used infectious agents in conflicts for hundreds of years. Below are a few examples.

• In a 1336 attempt to infect besieged city dwellers, Mongol attackers in what is now the Ukraine used catapults to hurl the bodies of bubonic plague victims over the city walls of Caffa.
• Tunisian forces used plague-tainted clothing as a weapon in the 1785 siege of La Calle.

• British officers discussed plans to intentionally transmit smallpox to Native Americans during Pontiac’s Rebellion near Fort Pitt (present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in 1763. It is not clear whether they actually carried out these plans. But, whatever its source, smallpox did spread among Natives Americans in the area during and after that rebellion.
• The Japanese used plague as a biological weapon during the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s and 1940s. They filled bombs with plague-infected fleas and dropped them from airplanes onto two Chinese cities; they also used cholera and shigella as weapons in other attacks. An estimated 580,000 Chinese people died as a result of the Japanese bioweapons program (Martin et al., 2007).

Some of the recent examples are:

1》Bacillus Anthracis (Anthrax)- 

Bacillus anthracis bacteria, which causes anthrax, is one of the most deadly agents to be used as a biological weapon. It is classified by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Category A agent, posing a significant risk to national security. The gram-positive, rod-shaped anthrax spores are found naturally in soil, can be produced in a lab, and last for a long time in the environment.

Anthrax has been used as a bio-weapon for about a century mixed with powders, sprays, food and water. The invisible, infectious, odourless and tasteless spores make Anthrax a flexible bio-weapon. Letters containing powdered anthrax spores were intentionally mailed through the US postal system in 2001 affecting 22 people of which five died.

 2》Botulinum toxin-

Botulinum is relatively easy to produce and has extreme potency and lethality. It can be distributed via aerosol or by contamination of water and food supplies. A gram of Botulinum toxin can kill more than a million people if inhaled. A Japanese biological warfare group is known to have infected war prisoners with C botulinum toxins during the occupation of Manchuria.

Botulism is a serious muscle-paralysing disease caused by a nerve toxin produced by a bacterium called Clostridium botulinum. The bacteria are found naturally in forest soils, bottom sediments of lakes and streams and the intestinal tracts of some fish and animals.

 3》Variola major (Smallpox)-

Variola major virus causes Smallpox, a highly contagious and infectious disease that has no cure and can be only prevented by vaccination. Smallpox is believed to have been used as a biological weapon against Native Americans and again during the American Revolutionary War.

 4》Francisella tularensis (Tularemia)-

Extreme infectiousness, ease of dispersion, and ability to cause illness and death make Francisella tularensis bacterium a dangerous bio-weapon. People affected with Francisella tularensis experience symptoms including skin ulcer, fever, cough, vomiting and diarrhoea. Dr. Kenneth Alibek, a former scientist involved in the Soviet Union’s bio-weapons programme revealed the use of Tularensis by the Soviet Red Army against German troops in the battle of Stalingrad during World War II.

 5》Ebola Virus-

Ebola was first discovered in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is transmitted to humans from wild animals, causing an average case fatality rate of 50%.

Ebola as a bioweapon poses a great threat to humans because of its high case-fatality rate. It was allegedly produced as a biological weapon by the Soviet Union under a five-year plan implemented between 1986 and 1990, but evidence of it actually being used has not been found.

 6》Yersinia pestis (plague)-

Yersinia pestis bacterium, a CDC Category A organism causing pneumonic plague, can be created in a laboratory in high quantity for use as bioweapon.

Plague has been intentionally used as a weapon since the 14th century. The Japanese Army dropped plague-infected fleas over populated areas in China and Manchuria in World War II and Soviet scientists successfully produced large quantities of antibiotic-resistant plague organisms suitable for weapons during the 1980s.

              

 7》Marburg Virus-

Marburg virus of the filovirus family, which also includes the Ebola virus. Marburg virus is also a Category A bio-warfare agent identified by the CDC’s classification system and is hosted in African fruit bat. The virus can be isolated and produced as a biological weapon.

 8》Bunyavirus-

The Bunyaviridae family of viruses includes three viruses – Nairovirus, Phlebovirus and Hantavirus. Korean haemorrhagic fever caused by Hantavirus broke out during the Korean War when an estimated 3,000 American and Korean soldiers became infected with the disease, but evidence of its direct usage as a biological weapon has not been found.

             

 9》Aflatoxin-

Aflatoxins, a number of structurally associated harmful metabolites developed by certain strains of fungi, lead to cell or organ death, Cirrhosis liver disease resulting in liver failure and cancer.

The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1995 specified Iraq’s production and deployment of different munitions with Aflatoxin which were destroyed after the Gulf War.

Conclusion>>

A biological attack by terrorists or an unfriendly nation is a remote possibility that nevertheless demands public health emergency response planning. Several multi-agency simulations have exposed weaknesses in systems designed to respond to biological emergencies. These exercises have helped to focus planning efforts on the need for emergency plans to address the potential for a large bioweapons event to overwhelm medical capabilities, cause widespread illness and death, and lead to economic and social disruption. The successful deployment of vaccines, antibodies, and other medications in a bioweapon event will depend on a number factors, such as how many people the attack has the potential to harm, the stability of the transportation system in an emergency, the availability of viable vaccine and drugs, and the ability of the public health system to communicate with the public and get the vaccines and medications into the people who need them.

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