ASSESSING THE FUTURE TERRORIST THREAT

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE: With terrorist Osama bin Laden threatening new biological agents to be unleashed on the US, what are the relative chances of such agents causing massive death in the US?

We refer you to the US Army Medical Research Institute (USAMRI) of Infectious Diseases breakdown of the most likely effects of the most likely biological agents.

Most likely threats, according to the USAMRI: Pneumonic Plague, Smallpox and Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers. 

For an overview of biological weapons, we quote the website Strategypage.com:

"The world is a cornucopia of poisons.  Mankind is surrounded by other living creatures that produce chemical substances that can kill him.  Even the most innocent of decorative house plants --such as the colorful croton-- can be a deadly killer. Ricin, the poison produced by castor beans (used to make castor oil), is nearly one hundred times as deadly as cobra venom. Oleander can bring on death within a few short hours.  These are only a few."

Biological weapons, then, are really just the harnessing of nature for use in mass murder. 

They are in some ways as lethal as the chemical agents used during World War I.

The Latest on Anthrax:

Thirty-thousand people are or have been on antibiotics since late September after real or suspected exposure to anthrax.

A postal facility in Kansas City and another in Indiana appear to be the first cases of suspected anthrax outside the East Coast.

Private shipping companies are appealing to those shipping gifts this holiday season to be aware that packages need to be in brown paper wrapping. Duct tape, electrical, Scotch and masking tape are out and are likely to make postal companies wary following a month-long anthrax scare.

The favorite drug of many doctors to fight anthrax infection is Cipro, manufactured by Bayer. But other antibiotics will work effectively. The supply of Cipro has been quite limited, though Bayer has reportedly contracted with the US government to quickly increase production of the drug four-fold for immediate shipping.

ANTHRAX FACTS:

Five people have died of inhalation anthrax since September 21st.

A total of 20 people have been diagnosed with anthrax since the outbreak began in late September.

Anthrax spores have been found in the New York - New Jersey area at
      The New York Post
      ABC
      NBC
      CBS
      
In the Washington DC area at
      The Supreme Court
      The HHS-Voice of America building
      The House of Representatives
      The Senate
      the offsite mail handling office for the White House
      the northwest, northeast and southwest postal facilities 
      the Federal Reserve 
      
In Florida at
      the American Media Building in Boca Raton

When absorbed into cuts in the skin, anthrax is highly treatable with antibiotics. 

Anthrax is not contagious. 

Anthrax, at least in its "non-weaponized" form, is not an effective form of bio-terrorism. It has to be converted to spores suspended in the air, which is technically quite difficult; and it's not nearly as lethal as it's hyped up to be.

The term "weaponized," when applied to anthrax, is subject to definition. Most people consider anthrax and other possible biological weapons as "weaponized" when they are ground down to a pure form that can be dispersed upon people as a weapon.

Some scientists, both technical and political, consider anthrax "weaponized" when it's mutated to a form that is unresponsive to antibiotics and other medical treatment. 

Wool sorters inhale anthrax spores in small quantities of 150-700 spores per hour continually.  Only if they get a large dose does infection set in.

For anthrax to be used as a weapon, it must be converted to a  powder that can be inhaled into the lungs. Only the US and Russian militaries have done that successfully so far. Iraq has always used anthrax in liquid form, which is ineffective.

Anthrax is a livestock pathogen. There are anthrax spores in the ground in rural areas, where they can survive for twenty years. The spores normally have no effect on humans, because a few anthrax spores can't cause infection. The spores fly freely from the ground; extremely rarely does a person inhale enough spores to be killed.

Anthrax is a "gram positive" bacterium, the cell walls of which are harmless, unlike "gram negative" bacteria, which attack tissue. Anthrax can only attack tissue by producing a special toxin excreted by the spore. One spore -- or even hundreds -- doesn't produce enough of that toxin to begin infection.

Studies indicate that about ten thousand anthrax spores must be inhaled at once to start an infection. Anthrax attacks vulnerable tissue; in humans, that means the lungs. It can also invade the human body through cuts or my be ingested in undercooked meat, but absent large concentrations of anthrax (such as in bioterrorism) that seldom occurs.

For anthrax to invade human tissue enough to cause disease, the spores must be made aerosol: it must be refined to extremely fine, very dry powder that can float in the air. 

To create a powder, the spores must be washed several times in an array of very large and expensive centrifuges, then must be dried very carefully. To provide the machinery and technical expertise to produce anthrax powder in aerosol form requires hundreds of millions of dollars. 

And the dry powder does not mist in the air like, say, mole spores. Dried anthrax falls to the ground and disseminates, much like finely ground sugar, so that even if a human knelt to the ground and sniffed, he or she wouldn't be likely to get a lethal dose.

It's unlikely that crop dusting planes could be used to disseminate anthrax over any kind of wide area, since mixing the anthrax with water or other liquid would cause great clumping, which renders the spores ineffective in infecting humans and causes the clumps to drop to the ground -- and would clog crop dusting machinery in the process. 

Foggers wouldn't be an effective way to spread anthrax, since the spores would clump in any liquid, causing problems similar to those in crop dusting.

And even under the most ideal conditions, scientists say -- even in an enclosed gymnasium filled with 100 people, perhaps, spraying the spores around the gym -- only a handful of people would inhale the amount needed to kill.

The University of Texas has been working on a vaccine that can treat inhaled anthrax after exposure. Researchers there say they're just weeks away from perfecting such a vaccine. 

A "weaponized" version of anthrax has not appeared outside laboratories in the United States and Russia, both of whom back in the 1950s and '60s perfected versions of the spore that are resistant to antibiotics. "Resistant" doesn't mean an effective vaccine or antibiotic can't be found to attack "weaponized" anthrax. 

Should a "weaponized" version of anthrax appear among the general population, it's origin would be known, since only those two nations are sitting on a well-protected stockpile of the spores.                      

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-- Mike Shiloh from various sources

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