Averting Bioterrorism Begins with US Reforms.

• Author: Hammond, Edward
• Position: Biodevastation

The United States feels an imminent threat of biological or chemical terrorist attack. How do our own policies relate to the rise of this frightening situation? Why has our government been throwing away so many opportunities to work with other nations to control weapons of mass destruction?

In 1983, the US Army estimated that one thousand kilograms (2200 lbs.) of sarin nerve gas aerosolized over an urban area on a clear, calm night would kill 3,000-8,000 people, an attack in terms of human lives roughly proportionate to that on the World Trade Center. One tenth of the amount of anthrax spores--one hundred kilograms--distributed under similar conditions would be likely to result in the death of 1 to 3 million people, an unimaginable toll 200 to 600 times that in New York.

Once Upon a Time

There was a time when the US arguably could muster sufficient credibility to lead a campaign to eliminate chemical and biological weapons. In 1973, President Nixon renounced biological weapons and mostly dismembered the US bioweapons apparatus. It wasn't an altruistic move so much as a way to discourage poorer countries from developing offensive biological warfare capabilities that could rival nuclear weapons in killing power.

Not produced in large quantities for so long that many are actually leaking their deadly contents, old stocks of chemical weapons began to be incinerated at the end of the Cold War (the process continues today). Russian inspectors were even allowed to enter and examine US facilities that they thought might be producing biological weapons. The US ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, and was in talks with other nations to develop a UN system to verify global compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention.

The Present

There has always been a shadier side to the US renunciation of chemical and biological weapons. For example, Cuban accusations of biological attack with agricultural pests (unproven but stridently alleged and not without evidence), enemies convinced that the US maintains offensive biological weapons (incorrect as alleged, but some biodefense research walks a razor-thin line), and refusal to accept responsibility for the horrendous human and environmental effects of Agent Orange.

The fact that the US maintains what is far and away the largest biological weapons defense program in the world doesn't help either. Even the greatest experts disagree on which specific activities are offensive and which can be classified as defensive. The tendency among governments has been toward classifying all "research" (as opposed to weapons-building and testing) as the latter. The laxity of interpretation has given rise to potential misunderstandings and opened doors to would-be biological weapons developers. Genetic engineering has made matters worse, further blurring the line between offensive and defensive and giving rise to the technical possibility to create genetically-engineered superbugs and even entirely new classes of biological weapons. The billions recently authorized by Congress for homeland defense will swell this opaque military-scientific-corporate biotechnology bureaucracy and the instability it creates to even...