U.S. Response:  Budget Will Fund State and Local Defense Measures

U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to announce details today about the first stage of his proposed homeland security budget, which would provide funding for local police, fire and rescue departments for anti-terrorism efforts (see GSN, Jan. 22).

“Police officers, firefighters and emergency medical teams are America’s front line soldiers in the event of a terrorist attack,” said a White House fact sheet on the budget.

The $3.5 billion in funding would be split among plans to provide state and local first-responders with a variety of equipment and training, including:

*         $2 billion for protective clothing, chemical and biological agent detection systems and communications equipment;

*         $1.1 billion for training on how to handle chemical and biological threats;

*         $245 million for training and evaluation of emergency response systems; and

*         $105 million to aid state and local governments in creating terrorism response plans.

The federal funding will continue annually, said Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge before the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Wednesday.

“This is a major investment,” Ridge said.  “We want to empower cities and states to build upon their first response capability, then we want to help you sustain it in the future” (Reuters/New York Times, Jan. 24).

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U.S. Response:  United States is “Pro-American,” Not “Unilateralist,” Bolton Says

By Greg Seigle

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States is not taking a unilateral approach in dismissing various arms control treaties, as many in the international community have alleged, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said today.

Instead, the United States is doing what comes naturally to many countries — protecting its self-interests, Bolton said during a Conference on Disarmament meeting in Geneva (see GSN, Jan 23).

The United States is individually reviewing all of its numerous treaty commitments and is considering how to meet the new threats posed by terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Bolton told representatives from the 66 nations involved with the CD.

“It has become fashionable to characterize my country as ‘unilateralist’ and against all arms control agreements,” Bolton said in a prepared speech.  “In fact, trying to characterize our policy as ‘unilateralist’ or ‘multilateralist’ is a futile exercise.  Our policy is, quite simply, pro-American, as you would expect.”

The Bush administration seeks to enforce existing treaties as well as devise new treaties and other arrangements that address the emerging threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, Bolton said.  The U.S. stance is that each treaty is different and must be handled individually, he added.

“That’s not true,” an official at the Russian embassy in Washington told Global Security Newswire this morning.  “Everything is interconnected.  If you take one component of the system [of treaties] there is a good chance the whole system will collapse.”

During the CD meetings in Geneva envoys from a host of countries, including Russia and China, have criticized U.S. efforts to reexamine existing agreements.  On Wednesday, Russian representative Leonid Skotnikov complained that the Bush administration is wrong for trying to scrap the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

In November, U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin held meetings that essentially put the ABM Treaty on hold while the United States pursues the development of national missile defenses.  The leaders also agreed to lower their nuclear arsenals, which now hover around 6,000 warheads, to between 1,700 and 2,200, with Russia probably going even lower (see GSN, Nov. 14, 2001).

On Wednesday, U.N. Undersecretary General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala scolded Bush and Putin for what he called “paperless” agreements (see GSN, Jan. 23).  Dhanapala and other diplomats have also criticized the United States for opposing the creation of a protocol to monitor compliance with the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2001).

“The arms control community, both the international and the U.S. community, has been on a Cold War autopilot for years,” said David Smith, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and president of Global Horizons, a defense consultant group.  “The Bush administration wants to turn that switch off.”

The United States, Bolton said today, is determined to enforce existing treaties and arrange new agreements that address “today’s threats to peace and stability, not yesterday’s.”  The Bush administration plans to honor treaties “and to insist that other nations live up to them as well,” he said.

In recent remarks Bolton has said improving compliance is the key to strengthening existing treaties.  For the BWC, for example, U.S. officials fear outside inspections may actually aid biological weapon development in other countries, so Bolton and other top U.S. officials have been pushing for each country to police their own programs.  Countries that violate treaties will be discovered — and should be harshly penalized by the international community, he said.

A Word of Caution

Today he warned countries that violate arms control agreements.

“You should not be smug in the assumption that your [weapons of mass destruction] program will never be uncovered and exposed to the international community,” Bolton said. “I caution those who think they can pursue [such programs] without detection … The United States and its allies will prove you wrong.”

Bolton also cautioned that countries that pursue weapons of mass destruction should not aid terrorists groups in any way, even if they simply turn “a blind eye to terrorist camps” within their borders.

“Nations that assist terror are playing a dangerous game,” Bolton said.  “We will not be complacent to the threat of any kind of attack on the United States, especially from weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical, biological, nuclear, or from missiles.”

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Iraq:  Remove WMD Threat, Strategists Say

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein poses a serious threat to U.S. security and the United States must act decisively and quickly to remove him from power, policy experts Robert Kagan and William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2001).

“It is almost impossible to imagine any outcome for the world both plausible and worse than the disease of Saddam with weapons of mass destruction,” wrote Kagan, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Kristol, the magazine’s editor.  They argued that the threat Hussein poses is worse than the potential consequences of overthrowing him.

The threat posed by Iraq is “enormous” and grows daily, the authors wrote.  To allow Hussein to remain in control would allow other regimes involved in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to expand. 

Containment and deterrence concepts no longer apply because Hussein could secretly provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

“How in the world do we deter that?” the authors wrote.  Hussein has a history of assisting terrorist organizations, including Abu Nidal (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2001).  Reports from defectors and former U.N. weapons inspectors confirm that a terrorist training camp exists in Iraq (see GSN, Nov. 8, 2001). 

Iraq’s WMD Capability

Although U.S. leaders disagree on how to deal with Iraq (see GSN, Dec. 19, 2001), no one debates the basic facts of Iraq’s capabilities, Kagan and Kristol wrote.  Iraq has the ability to build nuclear bombs in the near future, according to U.N. weapons inspectors and Western intelligence sources (see GSN, Dec. 19, 2001).  German intelligence services estimated in December 2000 that Iraq would have three nuclear bombs by 2005 — an estimate the authors called “optimistic.”

Iraq has chemical and biological weapons programs in addition to programs to develop nuclear weapons, the authors wrote (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2001).  U.N. inspectors estimated in 1998 that Iraq controlled 41 sites where it could produce VX nerve agent in a few weeks and enough material to produce over 200 tons of VX, which could kill at least hundreds of thousands of people.  U.S. officials have said that Iraq built factories which the United States suspected were used to produce chemical and biological weapons. 

Iraq also has the equipment and technology to produce 350 liters of anthrax per week, according to the Federation of American Scientists.  The country produced 8,500 liters of anthrax in the five years before Desert Storm.

“We can only imagine how much anthrax Saddam Hussein may have at his disposal today,” the authors wrote (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001). 

U.S. Must Act Fast and Strong

Any U.S. military action against Iraq would have to “succeed quickly,” Kagan and Kristol wrote.  Hussein could attack a neighbor, probably Israel, with chemical or biological weapons once an attack on Iraq began, so U.S. and allied forces would have to “move with lightning speed” to capture launch sites in Iraq (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2001).

U.S. forces could not possibly locate every missile, however, so an attack would have to be fast and hard enough to make Iraqi military leaders believe Hussein’s regime was ending.

“An Iraqi commander may think twice before making himself an accomplice to Saddam’s genocidal plans” by firing a missile carrying weapons of mass destruction, if the commander believes the United States would defeat Hussein, the authors said.

The United States could not apply the same military approach that worked in Afghanistan, such as airstrikes, limited ground troops and reliance on local opposition groups, to attack Iraq.  Significant U.S. ground troops would probably be necessary, the authors wrote.

Attacking Iraq with cooperation and support from allies would be ideal, but the United States must be willing to act unilaterally if necessary, they said (Kagan/Kristol, Weekly Standard, Jan. 21).

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United States I:  Analysts Question Justification for Warhead Retention

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Former Clinton administration officials Tuesday questioned the Bush administration’s justification for its plan to retain some 2,000 deployed nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal and potentially thousands more in reserve.  Click here to read the transcript of their remarks, given at an Arms Control Association panel in Washington.

Earlier this month the Pentagon released the U.S. plan — which was developed during a congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review — describing new policies on nuclear weapons numbers and strategy (see GSN, Jan. 10).

In the report Bush administration officials called for reductions of deployed U.S. warheads from 6,000 warheads today to 1,700-2,200 warheads over the next 10 years.  An unspecified number of deactivated warheads would not be destroyed, but retained as a hedge for possible future redeployment.

Hedge Alleged Against Russia, China

The primary justification that the NPR plan provided for the targeted warhead levels was the possibility that some unanticipated threat might emerge in the coming decades that would require them.

The report said Russia no longer is considered a strategic threat, citing a “new relationship” with Moscow (see GSN, Jan. 10).  However, Rose Gottemoeller, a former senior U.S. Energy Department official now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, challenged the administration’s assertion that a possibly resurgent Russia is not the motive for retaining warheads.

“A hedge continues to need to be maintained against Russia,” she said.  “To my mind, this emphasis — although it's not stated in the written briefing materials of the nuclear posture review as they were released to the public — ... is very present in the way that the nuclear posture review has been briefed, both Russia and China being noted as the continuing possible resurgent threats and peer competitors of the future,” she said.

That position, she said, “profoundly undermines” U.S. President George W. Bush’s efforts to establish a unique relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and could result in lost opportunities for the administration.  Russia has called for sharp U.S. warhead cuts and opposed the plan to keep an unspecified number of warheads in reserve.

Morton Halperin, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow and former senior State Department and National Security Council official, also cited Russia’s potential resurgence.

“The nuclear posture of the United States has always been and continues to be based on that fear,” he said.

“I know no one who believes that the U.K. or France or Iraq or China could launch a surprise nuclear attack at the United States which would take out a large part of our nuclear force .… I guess it’s logical to say it must be from Russia, unless they know something about outer space which the rest of us don’t know,” Halperin said.

Russia — the only country with a stockpile of weapons comparable to that of the United States — has historically served as the justification for a large U.S. nuclear arsenal.  The U.S. intelligence community, however has projected Russian capabilities will diminish to less than 2,000 warheads by 2015 unless Moscow significantly increases funding for its strategic forces.

Search for Utility

Halperin argued that an alternative factor was at work:  parochial interests within the Pentagon opposed to curtailing the size of U.S. nuclear forces, capabilities and importance.  The main driver is not particular countries, he said, but “the desire to find some utility for nuclear weapons, and that the threats are invented to deal with that, rather than the reverse.”

Even if the Pentagon was preserving a hedge against a resurgent Russia, he said, the United States would still have a much different nuclear posture, with fewer weapons and a lower level of alert for launching them.  For defense against an emerging Russian or Chinese threat, possibly 900 warheads would be needed, he said, arguing there is no need for a capacity to target the enemy’s civilian infrastructure (see GSN, Jan. 2).

The review ultimately satisfied a range of constituencies, said Nolan.

“I do think that it was a decision that Bush had to make, to go below 2,000 for the first time rhetorically to 1,700-2,200,” she said.  “Frankly, I think that these large reserve numbers that we're seeing now was part of the compromise that had to be crafted in order to enable [Bush] to make that rhetorical announcement.”

The NPR, she said, in the end “satisfied most constituencies … except for the people in this room.”

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Pakistan:  Musharraf Rejects No-First-Use Policy

Pakistan will not adopt a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons, such as India’s, President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday during an interview with NBC TV. Pakistan would, however seek to denuclearize South Asia and sign a no-war agreement with India, he said (see GSN, Jan. 23).

Regarding the no-first-use policy, Musharraf said, “Why should we … accept what they [India] say?  Why don’t they accept what we are saying?”

“We want to denuclearize South Asia,” he said.  “We want to sign a no-war pact with them.  Isn’t that better?  I think the world community should insist on that.  Pakistan is offering a much bigger deal” (The Hindu, Jan. 24).

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U.S-Russia:  HEU Negotiations to Resume Next Week

Talks are expected to resume next week over pricing terms for the U.S.-Russian deal to purchase uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons, ITAR-Tass reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 22).

The ongoing dispute centers on the price to be paid by the U.S. Enrichment Corp. for the Russian uranium.  USEC has said it hopes to negotiate a 15 percent cost reduction, but Russia has refused to accept the new terms.  As a result, USEC has refused to place new orders for uranium under the old pricing agreement.

USEC spokesman Charles Yulish said he is sure the two sides will be able to reach an agreement over the continuation of the “Megatons to Megawatts” deal.  The commercial terms of the deal have yet to receive required U.S.-Russian approval, but little time will be needed to do this because both countries are interested in seeing the deal continued, Yulish said (Ivan Lebedev, ITAR-Tass, Jan. 23).

A senior Russian Atomic Energy Ministry official said Russia will not reduce the price, the Russian news agency Interfax reported Tuesday. 

“If [the negotiations] lead to nothing, the Americans will buy the uranium at the old price,” the official said (Interfax, Jan. 22, in FBIS-SOV, Jan. 22).

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United States II:  DOE and South Carolina Agree to Transport Plutonium

The U.S. Energy Department has reached an agreement with South Carolina to begin transporting 14 tons of weapon-grade plutonium from the Rocky Flats site in Colorado to the Savannah River site in South Carolina, according to the Associated Press.

The plutonium is to be converted into mixed oxide fuel for use in commercial power plants (see GSN, Jan. 23).  The agreement came after months of opposition from South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges (see GSN, Dec. 6, 2001).

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the shipments from the former Colorado nuclear weapons production site to South Carolina would begin soon (Robert Gehrke, Associated Press, Jan. 23).  The Rocky Mountain News, however, reported that Hodges had not fully agreed to the plan.

“The governor has said the devil is in the details … He believes this is a big step in the right direction,” said Cortney Owings, Hodges’s spokeswoman.

Abraham told U.S. Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) about the plan to begin the shipments Tuesday.

“It is good news.  It’s great news,” Allard said.  He added that Abraham has committed to closing the Rocky Flats plant by Dec. 15, 2006 (Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News, Jan. 23).

U.S. Reaffirms Cooperation with Russia for Plutonium Disposal

Abraham said yesterday that the United States plans to continue cooperation with Russia to dispose of 34 tons of weapon-grade plutonium each, following an agreement the two countries signed in September 2000.  Abraham announced the U.S. decision to convert the U.S. plutonium into mixed oxide fuel rather than mix some of it with radioactive materials and bury it.  The United States also plans to provide financial assistance to Russia to help dispose of Russian plutonium (Ivan Lebedev, ITAR-Tass, Jan. 24).

Opposition to Converting Plutonium

By choosing to convert the plutonium rather than immobilize it, “the Bush administration has summarily rejected the cheapest, safest and most secure option,” said Nuclear Control Institute Executive Director Tom Clements.  The decision will face legal and economic challenges and will pose safety and security risks, according to the Nuclear Control Institute. 

Another potential problem would be lack of funds to convert Russian plutonium. 

“The United States cannot proceed with its MOX program until Russia does so, and we have no idea when or if that will ever be possible,” Clements said.  “Russia’s plutonium disposition program is going nowhere … Western governments have proven unwilling to foot the bill,” he said (Nuclear Control Institute release, Jan. 23).

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United States III:  Oak Ridge Facility Will Dismantle Warheads

Nuclear warheads removed from Minuteman II ICBMs will be dismantled at the U.S. Energy Department’s Oak Ridge facility in Tennessee, Scripps-Howard News Service reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 10).

The W56 warhead dismantlement is the first major nuclear weapons dismantlement operation at Oak Ridge’s Y-12 National Security Complex in several years, said a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman.  Primarily, the Y-12 complex is responsible for dismantling the same warhead components — the second stage of a warhead — that were originally produced at Oak Ridge.

An authorizing agreement on the dismantlement plan said there is “reasonable assurance” that the warhead components can be dismantled at the Y-12 complex “without endangering the health and safety of the public, the workers or the environment” (Frank Munger, Scripps-Howard News Service, Jan. 23).

An agreement signed last week between the Energy Department and BWXT Y-12, Y-12’s managing contractor, said the complex has been working for four years to prepare for the warhead dismantlement operation, according to the Associated Press.

“What we found, a lot of these systems in the plant weren’t working to the standards we thought they should work to,” said BWXT Y-12 President John Mitchell.  “So the result was, it took us a very long time” (Associated Press, Jan. 23).

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Myanmar:  Russia Considers Draft Plan for Building Reactor in Myanmar

Russia is expected soon to approve formally the project to build a nuclear research reactor in Myanmar, ITAR-Tass news agency reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 22).

“It is expected that in the first quarter of this year the government will give its approval,” said a Russian Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman. 

A ministry spokesman refused to confirm reports that Myanmar specialists have received training in Russia.

“Such information is totally unfounded when the main documents on this project are not ready,” he said (ITAR-Tass, Jan. 22 in FBIS-SOV, Jan. 23).

Russia could begin the nuclear reactor project in Myanmar in three or four years, a Russian official said.  According to Interfax news agency, the project was estimated to bring in $100 million for Russia (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 23).  Reuters reported earlier, however, that Myanmar would have to pay $5 million plus maintenance costs for the reactor (CNN, Jan. 22).

International Concern

Officials have said the nuclear reactor would serve scientific research and energy needs.  Several countries have expressed concern, however.  The United States yesterday said Myanmar must abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, Jan. 23) while pursuing the reactor project (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 23).

“We would expect Russia and Burma to ensure international safety standards are met,” said a U.S. spokesman yesterday (U.S. State Department release, Jan. 23).

The United States also asked Russia for more details about the functions of the reactors and its safety level, said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher (Andrei Suzhansky, ITAR-Tass, Jan. 24).

The United States, Europe and China said that Myanmar is not following advice from the International Atomic Energy Agency on establishing guidelines for nuclear plant safety, according to the BBC.  An independent regulatory body is necessary to enforce standards to prevent radioactive leaks, the European Commission said.

Russia, the country that would build the reactor, also has a poor safety record, said a BBC science correspondent, noting that Russia had to shut down three nuclear reactors this week due to malfunctions (BBC, Jan. 24).

Russian authorities are investigating malfunctions at the Novovoronezh plant in southern Russia and the nuclear power plant near St. Petersburg.  Authorities fixed a problem after a reactor at the Kursk plant in western Russia shut down Saturday due to a malfunction (Chicago Tribune, Jan. 23).

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Smallpox:  U.S. Army Derives Controversial Primate Host, Possible Bio-Defense Breakthrough

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. military scientists have devised a way to fatally infect a primate with smallpox, possibly offering a vital breakthrough for testing new vaccines and anti-viral drugs for defense against a terrorist smallpox attack.

The technique is controversial, however, because it provides a justification for continued testing using the highly contagious and deadly disease, which many would like to see fully eradicated.

Skeptics also question its usefulness in simulating the conditions under which a smallpox vaccine for humans would be tested. The primates were subjected to an extraordinarily high concentration of a potent strain of the variola virus. The dose, much higher than would result from a biological weapons attack, was needed to kill the monkeys, but the monkeys died too quickly to mirror the progression of the disease in humans.

“My feeling is actually we’ve achieved what they said was unachievable,” said Peter Jahrling, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. “We’ve achieved a lethal disease course when they said it was not possible.”

He nevertheless acknowledged the model is a work in process, and added, “the folks who were a little bit upset with us for achieving the unachievable are now gleefully rubbing their hands and saying, well, what the hell good is that, [the dosage] is hardly a realistic disease course and are seeking to discredit the model.”

Jahrling said his testing data was received with skepticism by D.A. Henderson, who heads the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Public Health Preparedness.  Henderson, revered for directing the World Health Organization campaign that eliminated smallpox worldwide in the 1970s, now heads the Bush administration’s biological defense efforts.

The military scientists hope to return soon to the maximum containment laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the only place in the country where the live virus can be tested — to try a lower concentration with the hope it will yield a more protracted disease course.

“We can certainly moderate that disease course over time,” Jahrling said.

The military scientists hope to refine their technique and soon publish their results in a peer-reviewed article in the magazine Science.

Time Was Running Out

The discovery may have helped buy the military some time against pressures to eliminate the U.S. variola stocks.

A World Health Organization ad hoc committee, which included Jahrling, voted to allow such testing of the live virus, but only through the end of this year, when it said the world’s final remaining smallpox stocks should be destroyed.

Research on safer vaccines that would require access to the virus was not warranted, it concluded. Committee members cited difficulties in finding a primate host for efficacy testing.

In a major reversal, however, the WHO committee said earlier this month the United States and Russia should continue to keep their smallpox specimens for use in developing new vaccines and antiviral drugs (see GSN, Jan. 18).

In the wake of the fall anthrax attacks, the Bush administration already had unilaterally announced it would indefinitely retain variola stocks (see GSN, Nov. 16, 2001).

New Vaccines Preferred

The lack of a proven primate host has posed a significant obstacle to efforts to test and develop improved smallpox vaccines and anti-viral drugs.

The only vaccine currently certified by the Food and Drug Administration for use is called Wyeth Dryvax. It was proven effective in the successful 1960s and 1970s global effort to rid the deadly virus from the human population worldwide.

Dryvax also was found, though, to have caused serious side effects in a significant percentage of the millions vaccinated and particularly in those with suppressed immune systems. Massive administration of the vaccine to the U.S. population, either for preventive or responsive purposes, could kill many dozens of people and cause larger numbers of encephalitis, experts have said. A U.S. company was contracted for $428 million in November to increase U.S. vaccine stores to cover the entire population (see GSN, Nov. 29, 2001).

There are so far no anti-viral agents proven effective in treating smallpox, and development of them is considered a costly, time-consuming project.

U.S. and foreign laboratories have developed some promising safer vaccines. An army vaccine has passed safety and immunogenicity testing.

Before they can be used, however, they must meet FDA standards for efficacy — contained in a draft rule — meaning they would need to be tested on some animal, preferably as close as possible to humans, and preferably against the actual virus rather than a cousin.

A separate disease, monkeypox, did cause a similar disease to human smallpox in monkeys, and the Dryvax and new U.S. military vaccines proved effective against it. The monkeypox tests, though, are considered less satisfactory for meeting FDA standards.

Proven Host Unavailable

The smallpox disease has only been found in humans. Some scientists have believed it impossible to fatally infect other vertebrates, but primates could be temporarily infected by it.

Jahrling and colleagues previously sought a way to create a successful primate host, but attempts to fatally aerosolize — the probable form of a terrorist attack — primates with the virus were unsuccessful until last year.

Exposing the monkeys to the highest aerosolized doses they could muster (100 million infectious particles per cubic centimeter), all they could produce was a very modest infection, some fever, a few pustules, and “a headache, I presume, since they didn’t tell us,” Jahrling said. All recovered.

With the WHO-prescribed time running out for further studies, Jahrling says he and his colleagues decided, “Let’s throw everything we’ve got at it.”

A Too-Rapid Death

Doing so, they developed data last fall showing they could give cynomolgus macaques fatal smallpox by subjecting them to both aerosolized and intravenous doses, concentrated at 1 billion particles per unit, of a potent strain.

“What we did is we reasoned we could put in tenfold higher a dose if we gave it by an intravenous route as well as the aerosol,” he said. They also decided to use a strain of the virus used in the Russian weapons program called “India 1.”

The result, was a “very rapid and fulminant disease with almost all of the animals dying very acutely between four and seven days after exposure,” said Jahrling.   Fourteen of the 16 monkeys tested died, and “the other two wished they had,” Jahrling said.

The concentration also worked when it was just injected, but, again, the animals died too quickly to simulate the usual expected human progression of smallpox.

In the natural course of the disease, the virus first sits in the mucus of the respiratory tract and incubates for about 12 days.  A vaccine, if not previously administered, is best given in the first four days.  If not successfully vaccinated, the person may eventually become extremely sick as the virus enters the blood stream and organs.  An estimated 30 percent or more people exposed to smallpox die of the disease.

“What we think we’ve done is sort of eclipsed that first phase and gone directly to the second phase.  So we’ve given them an artificial veremia,” Jahrling said.

With the lower concentration producing no fatalities, there is a concern a middle ground will be hard to find.  Jahrling is optimistic he can get there.

Concentrations, Progressions Unrealistic?

Still, that will not answer criticism that the concentrations necessary for fatalities are somewhere on the order of 1 million times higher than what would be found in an outbreak.

“It seems to me that the huge dose required may subtract from its usefulness,” said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ chemical and biological arms control program, and who opposes continued live variola research.

The high doses required to kill the monkeys may overwhelm a vaccine that might work against a more realistic concentration, she said.

Another potential difficulty, she said, is using the model to test the efficacy of a vaccine given soon after exposure in preventing a small number of viruses from replicating toward a full-blown infection.

“If the number of viruses gets too large in the short time you have from getting the vaccine and making the antibodies, you can’t cope with the quantity,” she said. “Once the individual is really sick, it’s too late.”

Jahrling acknowledged that weakness in the current model, but said it would nevertheless be useful in testing the vaccine as a preventive measure — administered before exposure, he said.  “For that, this animal model is just fine.”

Jahrling also stressed the primate model’s utility in treating the virus with drugs.

“The important thing is to get a systemic infection that you can then demonstrate treatment efficacy against.  I can point out a lot of animal model systems that are not very faithful to the human disease,” he said.

Some Opposition

Some critics suspect the army simply wants to keep the smallpox around indefinitely, and the military’s research is part of an attempt to do that, Jahrling said.

Taking it one step further, a Jan. 12 article by an Indian official in the British Medical Journal made the unsupported claim the United States intends to develop new offensive biological weapons, which were officially abandoned when the United States signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

Kalyan Banerjee, a member of the WHO's ad hoc committee on orthopoxviruses who dissented on the WHO’s recent recommendation to retain smallpox stocks, charged it would be used by the U.S. military to develop smallpox as a weapon.

Jahrling said the criticism is “completely unjustified.”

His research, he said, could be used instead to eventually eliminate the need for using smallpox in vaccine testing.

“What I’m frankly hoping is over time we can develop enough parallels and bridges over smallpox in monkeys and monkeypox in monkeys that the Food and Drug Administration will accept monkeypox in monkeys as a surrogate and we can get out of the smallpox business,” he said.

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Anthrax:  Researchers Map Third Toxin

New research into the structure of the anthrax bacterium might help in developing more effective treatments against bioterrorism, the Associated Press reported today.  Meanwhile, federal authorities began to investigate missing pathogen samples from the U.S. Army bioresearch facility, according to reports (see GSN, Jan. 22).

Researchers at the University of Chicago and the Boston Biomedical Research Institute have mapped out the structure of the third of three key anthrax toxins, according to the AP (see GSN, Oct. 24).  The toxin, called the edema factor, causes an adrenaline overload that results in swelling and fluid buildup in the body.  Cells affected by the edema factor become hyperactive and ultimately die after losing the ability to control their environment, the AP reported.

The toxin “causes an adrenaline increase that mimics the response to outside stimuli, like running away from a fire,” said Wei-Jen Tang, head of the University of Chicago team.  “But in this case, you keep running and running.”

The edema factor research is published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.  While researchers had already known of the existence of three anthrax toxins, they had only mapped the structure of two of the toxins until now, the AP reported.  The first toxin cuts open cell walls while the second kills off the host’s immune cells.  The third enhances the total effect.

Anthrax “would be a relatively harmless soil-dwelling bacterium,” if not for the three toxins, said Robert Liddington of the Burnham Institute.

The edema factor research is expected to help researchers come up with better treatments, according to the AP.

“When you start talking about what actually goes on in an infected human or animal host, the complexities are just mind-boggling,” said R. John Collier of Harvard Medical School.  “It’s excellent research that really fills a major void in our understanding of this toxic system” (William McCall, Associated Press/Boston Globe, Jan. 24).

Because the three toxins work together to wreak havoc on the body, however, treatments that only counter the edema factor may not be effective, experts said. 

“It’s still only guess work as to what’s the best target,” Liddington said.  He added the best treatment might be one that disrupts the toxins as they work together.  “There’s still a big hole in our knowledge from that point of view,” however, Liddington said (Tom Clarke, Nature, Jan. 24).

“Amerithrax” Investigation Developments

Federal investigators are looking into reports of missing samples of anthrax and other deadly pathogens at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., an army spokeswoman said Tuesday.

“We just have to have a policy here to let the FBI handle these questions,” Ray said. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

The General Accounting Office is also examining the army’s investigation of the missing pathogen samples, according to the Hartford Courant.  The GAO hopes the army’s 1992 report into the missing USAMRIID pathogens might detail how the U.S. military investigates security lapses, said GAO auditor Carolyn Feis Korman.  She added that USAMRIID would be one of several government research facilities that would be investigated.

The GAO became involved after six U.S. congressmen requested an investigation into security measures at laboratories that work with biological agents such as anthrax, the Courant reported.

“Because of lax security in some labs, research materials are potentially accessible to individuals or groups intent on harming U.S. interests and citizens through the creation and application of weapons of mass destruction,” the congressmen wrote in their investigation request to the GAO (Dolan/Altimari, Hartford Courant, Jan. 23). 

Federal officials yesterday doubled the reward in the anthrax case to $2.5 million and said they would soon mail fliers to central New Jersey residents, especially those around Trenton, in an attempt to drum up more leads in the case (see GSN, Jan. 23).  Trenton has become a focus of investigators because it is where four of the anthrax-tainted letters were postmarked.

The fliers include an image of the handwriting taken from the envelopes of the anthrax-tainted letters and an FBI profile of the type of person believed to be responsible for the attacks, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Investigators will initially mail 500,000 copies.

“Look at your neighbor and see if he fits this profile,” said Kevin Burke, postal inspector for northern New Jersey (Megan Garvey, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24).

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China:  U.S. Imposes Penalties on Three Chinese Entities

By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire

The United States last week imposed penalties on two Chinese firms and one individual, charging that they each provided chemical or biological weapon technology to Iran.

According to a U.S. State Department official, the technology consisted of items controlled by the Australia Group, an international export control regime designed to curb trade in materials that can be used to make chemical and biological weapons.

The penalties, triggered by the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2001, prohibit the Chinese entities during the next two years from purchasing any goods on the U.S. munitions list or any goods regulated by the Export Administration Act.

The Chinese firms are Liyang Chemical Equipment and the China Machinery and Electric Equipment Import and Export Company.  The individual was identified as Q.C. Chen, and the U.S. announcement provided no affiliation.

This was not the first time Chen has been penalized, the State Department official said.  Chen and six other Chinese entities were penalized in May 1997 for knowingly contributing to Iran’s chemical weapon program.  Those measures remain in effect and prohibit U.S. firms from conducting business with the named people and firms.

According to U.S. intelligence assessments, China has had an extensive relationship with Iran, providing it with nuclear, chemical weapon and missile technology.  The United States has imposed penalties on Chinese firms several times in response to Chinese exports of such technology.

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Russia:  Officials to Seek More U.S. Aid for CW Disposal

Russian officials yesterday said they would travel to the United States on Sunday to seek increased funding to dispose of chemical weapons (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2001).

“We have things to take to the U.S.A. and to tell our Western partners,” said Sergey Kiriyenko, head of the Russian commission for destroying chemical weapons.  “We have carried out our commitments ahead of time,” he said, speaking of powder charge and phosgene destruction (see GSN, Dec. 4, 2001).

The main issue Kiriyenko plans to discuss is the assignment of $600 million in promised U.S. aid, he said (see GSN, Jan. 2).  He added that the construction of a disposal plant in Gornyy is on schedule but construction of a storage facility in Shchuchye has been stalled due to a lack of U.S. funds.

“We cannot put off the construction any further,” Kiriyenko said (Interfax/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Jan. 23).

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