Season 3, Episode 8: Sleepers
Firefighters battling a forest fire in British Columbia are showing symptoms of glanders and anthrax. Have disease-causing bacteria been placed in their path intentionally? NorBAC is called in to investigate. Back in the lab, David receives some mysterious text messages to his cell phone as well as a suspicious package. Genetic analysis reveals that the package contains what appears to be variola virus – smallpox! But who would send smallpox through the mail?
A ban on biological weapons
Shortly after the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, a number of letters containing spores of Bacillus anthracis were sent to unsuspecting individuals in the United States government and media personnel through the US mail. Twenty-two people got sick – five of whom died – as a result of inhaling the spores and developing anthrax.
As David and Carl discuss in this episode, the source of these anthrax spores remains unknown. But regardless of who was responsible, the events focused renewed attention on a centuries-old topic: biological weapons.
Biological warfare – the use of infectious agents as weapons of war, and so sometimes called “germ warfare” – has been practiced in one form or another for many centuries. In the Middle Ages, for example, corpses infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, were catapulted over the walls of enemy fortresses with the intention of infecting the soldiers and citizens inside the walls.
The use of biological weapons – as well as chemical weapons, like chlorine gas – was banned under the Geneva Protocol of 1925. Signed on 17 June 1925 by 37 nations, there are currently 134 States Parties to the Protocol. Yet, by the mid- twentieth century, despite being among the earliest signatories, Germany, Japan, Russia, UK, Canada, and the US had active research programs focusing on biological weapons. How could that be? The answer lies in the fact that only actual use was banned, not development.
Most national bioweapons programs were terminated by 1972 – though Russia’s remained active for about two more decades – when the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons by any nation was banned under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). As of June 2005, the BTWC had been signed by 171 nations, and ratified by 155; twenty-three nation states have not yet signed the Convention.
International humanitarian agreements, like the Geneva Protocol and BTWC can be powerful weapons – if you’ll forgive the pun – against the use of weapons of mass destruction, like bioweapons. By providing a platform for international consensus and shared responsibility, they have helped to create our present political world in which there are no known active, state-supported bioweaponry development programs.
Preparing for the worst
With these agreements in place and widely accepted by the international community, who’s going to use biological weapons in this day and age? As the 2001 anthrax attacks painfully illustrated, bioweapons are most likely to be used nowadays, not during military conflicts on a battlefield, but rather in acts of bioterrorism.
In the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), “Those of us who are in the public health arena generally feel strongly that it isn’t a question of whether we are going to have another bioterrorist attack, but when we are going to have a bioterrorist attack [emphasis added].”
It’s important to remember, as the NorBAC team mentioned in this episode, that one cannot assume that cases of anthrax or glanders infection are the result of bioterrorism. Unlike smallpox, the last natural case of which was seen in 1977, many bacteria and viruses that could be used to intentionally infect individuals or populations are found in nature: for example, anthrax, glanders, plague, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola.
Yet, with the exception of glanders, the infectious agents listed above have been classified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “Category A” agents, deemed to pose a particularly high risk to national security for a number of reasons: they can be easily disseminated or transmitted from person to person; they result in high mortality rates; they have the potential for major public health impact; they might cause public panic and social disruption; and they require special action for public health preparedness.
So what is preparedness? How can society prepare for the unthinkable? In fact, there is much that can be done to minimize the risk and/or impact of a bioterrorist attack. Approaches range from international political initiatives, to national public health activities, to funding and conducting research focused on “biodefense.”
As discussed above, international policies can be valuable in addressing issues like bioweapons that have potential global ramifications. For example, the global community has recently undertaken efforts to strengthen the BTWC. As David explains to Carl with respect to anthrax, it takes a lot of scientific “know-how” to effectively use infectious agents as weapons; in this spirit, BTWC meetings have included discussion of the potential content, promulgation and adoption of “codes of conduct” for scientists – like those who work in genetics, microbiology, and virology.
On a national level, public health preparedness initiatives include those aimed at ensuring timely reporting of unusual cases of infectious disease – for example, diseases not endemic to a particular region – planning for vaccine distribution, and having policies in place to allow for isolation and quarantine of suspected and confirmed cases, if necessary, to control the spread of diseases that are transmitted person to person.
National and international preparedness initiatives also include funding scientific research to better understand, treat and prevent infectious diseases, whether intentionally introduced or naturally occurring. Effective vaccines and antimicrobials can’t stop a bioterrorist attack, but they can certainly lessen the impact if one should occur.
Social science research can also play an important role in preparedness, by informing the development of policies around, for example, the allocation of scarce vaccines, the imposition of quarantine, and management of the social and economic impact of the fear and disruption that may arise if an attack were to take place. The Policy, Ethics, and Law (PEL) Core of the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infections (SERCEB) consortium at Duke University in North Carolina is one example of a group exploring the social science side of biodefense.
But can science be misused to further, rather than to combat, bioterrorism? Stay tuned for next week’s episode and Science & Society piece, in which we’ll explore that very question ...
More food for thought
Q: Why would a person, group or state want to use biological weapons in a conflict? What are the risks to the “defenders”, “attackers”, and “bystanders”?
Q: Dr. Fauci believes that another bioterror attack is inevitable. What do you think? Are the money and effort being put into biodefense and preparedness a worthwhile investment? Why or why not?
Want to read and learn more?
To read the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare (the Geneva Protocol of 1925), visit:
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/280
To read the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, visit the BTWC website at:
http://www.opbw.org
To learn more about bioterrorism and preparedness strategies, visit:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ep-mu/bioem_e.html
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/
