Smallpox I:  CDC Using Some Guesswork, Official Says

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decision Monday not to vaccinate the entire U.S. population against smallpox relied on some difficult assumptions, a senior U.S. official and other experts told Global Security Newswire.

Some of the agency’s premises are that the risk of a smallpox attack involving significant casualties is low and that the nation’s public health officials would be able to promptly identify and contain an attack and treat the victims.

The CDC said the risks from side effects in mass vaccination are not warranted, given the low probability of an attack (see GSN, Nov. 27). It recommended instead a strategy of containing an outbreak, using rapid surveillance and vaccination of suspected victims, but D. A. Henderson, director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Public Health Preparedness, acknowledged the difficulty in making such assumptions.

“In doing a cost-benefit analysis, we’re looking at a very difficult problem, because we’re looking at on one side a probability of events which we really can’t quantify:  the likelihood of a disease occurring, smallpox being reintroduced,” he said. “You can’t really come up with a quantitative measurement of cost-benefit, it’s got to be a kind of best guess based on what we know.”

The CDC concluded that the risks from a mass vaccination—which would cause severe side effects in a small, but significant, percentage of the population—outweighed the probability of a smallpox attack. Most experts agree. They cite the limited availability of the virus worldwide since a World Health Organization-led effort successfully eradicated it from nature in the late 1970s.

Weighing the Probability of an Attack

There are only two known sites that still have the smallpox-causing variola virus: the CDC in Atlanta and a Russian facility in Novosibirsk. Other countries, however, also are suspected of having the virus, although there is no hard evidence (see related GSN story, today).

A smallpox attack might also be unlikely because of the difficulty in using the virus as a weapon, Henderson said.

“It really has to take a bit of attention, in terms of keeping it cool and in some sort of condition,” he said. “Trying to dry it out and make it a powder is much more complicated than with anthrax. You put it all together, there are much more barriers there than with anthrax.

“The best we can do is say—and I think there’s a general feeling—that it’s an unlikely event, and I think fairly unlikely,” he said, adding, “but it’s not zero…and were it to be released, you’re faced with some very serious problems unlike any other disease I can think of.”

Anticipating the Severity of an Attack

Another unknowable factor is the severity of any future outbreak. While a small outbreak might be easily contained, a large-scale outbreak, perhaps surfacing in numerous cities, could overwhelm the system, experts say.

Last summer in a tabletop exercise named “Dark Winter,” multiple releases of the virus in several cities overwhelmed the public health system and produced 3 million fictional victims and 1 million deaths. Dark Winter participants, which included former government officials, identified problems such as insufficient vaccine and an unprepared surveillance, response and public health infrastructure.

A successful response could “depend upon how many are in the initial outbreak. It could be one [victim], it could be 10, it could be more,” said Amy Smithson, a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

Jonathan Tucker, a chemical and biological weapons analyst at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and author of a recently published book on smallpox, questioned whether the nation’s infrastructure would be able to handle a severe attack.

“One assumption that this plan relies on is a very good disease surveillance capability, so that you could detect an outbreak at an early stage so that it doesn’t spread very far,” he said.

“I think [the CDC] plan makes sense if we strengthen our public health system appreciably. I think if we had an outbreak of smallpox today under present circumstances, we might not be able to detect it early enough to contain it readily.”

Calls for Mass Vaccination

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States and subsequent mailings of anthrax, there have been some calls for a mass smallpox vaccination of the U.S. public.

The Bush administration is contracting to procure from a private company enough vaccine for every U.S. citizen, bringing the U.S. stockpile of vaccine doses to 286 million. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced Tuesday a $428 million contract to produce 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine by the end of 2002 (see GSN, Nov. 29).

Some lawmakers have pressured the administration to mass-vaccinate.  Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in a hearing this month, called the administration’s stated time frame for procuring the doses “inadequate” and indicated he favored preventive vaccination.

“My judgment would be to have my four granddaughters vaccinated. It's one in a million that they're going to have an adverse reaction,” he said.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, also at the hearing, seemed to agree.

“What you say makes very good sense, Senator. And as a matter of fact, myself personally, my own children, I would take the risk of getting them vaccinated, if we were given the choice of having it.”

Even experts who oppose vaccinating the population as a preventive measure seem to agree that having nearly 300 million doses on hand would be a good precaution. Were a massive outbreak to occur, they say, the vaccine could effectively prevent the disease if provided to large numbers of people up to three days after they have been exposed to the virus.

“This new contract gives us the insurance that we will have more than enough vaccine for any outbreak that might occur,” Thompson said in a statement Wednesday.

Improved Surveillance Needed

To make the CDC’s containment strategy work, the nation’s public health system needs strong surveillance and rapid response capabilities, according to the experts.  That is going to require some improvements, Tucker said. “There are a lot of gaps in the system. For one thing, our surveillance systems are not that good.”

“Our physicians have for quite some time not had as a basic requirement of their medical training an intensive dose of infectious disease recognition and treatment,” said Smithson. “Only infectious disease specialists have had that type of training, and even those specialists often have not encountered those more exotic diseases,” she said.

The CDC’s plan announced Monday calls for such education, and a range of other infrastructure improvements, including preparing local health care providers across the country to rapidly administer large numbers of vaccinations.

CDC bioterrorism preparedness expert Lisa Rotz said Monday that the agency currently could deliver vaccine anywhere in the country in a matter of hours. The CDC also is preparing materials for mass distribution to help physicians better identify the disease.

“This material is just now getting out there,” said Henderson.

Asked when all the reforms might be implemented, Rotz said the CDC’s plan was released “so state and local health officials can start thinking through these issues from their local perspective and how they would start implementing the control measures very rapidly.”

She said, “Obviously, certain parts of the plan would take longer to implement.”

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Threat Assessment: Countries May Bioengineer Weapons

By Greg Seigle

Global Security Newswire

Iraq and Iran are believed to be developing genetically altered biological weapons that could resist vaccines or antibiotics, thereby making them much more deadly, a wide range of intelligence sources told Global Security Newswire in recent interviews.

Baghdad and Tehran might not only possess mutant strains of anthrax or smallpox, they may already have the ability to weaponize and deliver such devastatingly lethal bioagents, according to lawmakers, Pentagon officials, U.N. inspectors, scientists, analysts and a former CIA director.

“It’s a 50-50 possibility that Iraq and Iran have genetically modified biological weapons and may have some of the potential to weaponize them today to be used as weapons of mass destruction,” U.S. representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said yesterday.

“I would expect it,” said microbiologist Gary Long, a government consultant who was in the last group of U.N. Special Commission inspectors to leave Iraq in 1998. “It would prudent for us to assume that they are developing these types of awful weapons.”

“It’s the perfect weapon,” said Ken Alibek, the former Soviet scientist who headed the Soviet civilian biological warfare agency, Biopreparat, a gigantic, once-secret organization whose experimentations since 1973 created dozens of new harmful and antidote-resistant organisms. “For now, we have no treatment whatsoever for genetically modified weapons.”

While officials at the White House, CIA, State Department and the newly created Office of Homeland Security refused to comment on grounds that the topic is classified, Undersecretary of State John Bolton last week publicly accused Iraq, Iran and four other countries of pursuing biological weapons (see GSN Nov. 20).

Former Soviet Support?

Biological weapons are banned by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention although several countries are thought to have violated the treaty to develop them, including Russia, which according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists also has worrisome stockpiles of genetically modified agents.

Most officials and analysts believe that any large-scale advanced biological weapons programs in Iraq, Iran or elsewhere—particularly those that manufacture altered organisms—would be spearheaded by Russian scientists who are disgruntled or simply lured away by hefty salaries. Such programs could also be aided by wayward scientists from many other countries, they add.

According to Alibek, a Kazakh native who defected to the United States in 1992, there are 1,000 to 2,000 former Soviet scientists who know how to make deadly biological agents. Of these, “hundreds” have the “ultimate knowledge”—the ability to not only to grow biological organisms but also to effectively dry, mill, weaponize, deliver and disperse them over wide areas. Out of these hundreds, 100 to 200 know how to create genetically modified life forms resistant to vaccines or antibiotics, he said.

Asked where these potentially dangerous scientists are now, Alibek said, “I don’t know.  It would not surprise me if some were in Baghdad or somewhere else other than Russia.”

Focus on Iraq

During a blunt speech in Geneva during a treaty conference Nov. 19, Bolton singled out Iraq as the main biological weapons threat.

Although Bolton stopped short of accusing Iraq of developing genetically altered biological diseases that could be used as devastating weapons, the State Department official who wrote the speech told GSN that “it’s a concern” and that “if they have [such] a program and we know where it is, we’re going to get it.”

U.S. analysts say the United States is actively seeking and collecting evidence on Iraqi biological weapons programs—including those that splice the gene of one bacteria into that of another, creating a new and potentially unstoppable plague—so that President George W. Bush could justify toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The administration is also probing Iran and other nations for such evidence but none with the vigor it is apparently investigating Iraq, which was caught with biological weapons by UNSCOM inspectors throughout the 1990s, analysts note.

One reason White House officials are so concerned about Iraq is that its government openly applauded the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in New York and Washington, analysts add. There has been much speculation that Saddam Hussein had a hand in either the hijackings of the four commercial jetliners or the mailings of anthrax across the United States that so far have infected 18 people and killed five.

Because the creation of genetically modified weapons is so difficult—even with knowledgeable scientists, the right equipment and sizeable funding, such a task is very painstaking—analysts believe only countries with sizeable infrastructures can accomplish this. Besides Russia, Iraq is believed to have the largest and most comprehensive biological weapons facilities, according to intelligence estimates.

Iraq is a prime suspect for developing genetically altered biological weapons not only because it attempted to hide its biological weapons arsenal from UNSCOM inspectors—investigators found some stockpiles and believe there are many more—but because Saddam Hussein has shown a willingness to use such weapons. In the late 1980s Iraqi forces gassed Kurdish villagers in Iraq with chemical weapons, probably Sarin.

According to UNSCOM inspectors and former CIA Director James Woolsey, Iraq protected its biological sites with more zest than its nuclear facilities—a strong indicator that they have something to hide.

 “Even while we were there, under the most intrusive inspections, Iraq continued working on their biological weapons programs,” said Tom O’Brien, an immunologist who was a senior UNSCOM scientist. “They’re very good at hiding and deceiving.”

Why Alter Biological Weapons?

Many analysts dismiss the possibility of Iraq, Iran or other nations splicing the genes of biological agents that could be used as weapons.

Smallpox, anthrax and other diseases are deadly enough without being modified, so a country with limited resources and funds would not want to endure the time, expense and uncertainty of trying alter these agents, said several analysts, including those who also think it is plausible Iraq has done so anyway.

“Why would you want to go through all that trouble? I don’t think they’d bother,” said William Patrick III, the former head of the U.S. biological weapons program until 1969, when then-President Richard Nixon announced the United States would end its offensive biological weapons program and destroy its stockpiles.

While smallpox itself is believed to kill 30 percent of the people it infects, it could be rendered ineffective if dispersed among populations that are vaccinated, many officials said.

Currently only small numbers of the U.S. military are vaccinated against smallpox, but plans are underway to include troops in the nationwide vaccination efforts being readied by health officials.

If U.S. troops are sent to fight in the Persian Gulf region, it is likely that deploying soldiers would receive vaccinations in order to prevent mass-casualty biological attacks by Iraq or, less likely, Iran, Pentagon officials said.

Analysts observe that it is for this particular reason that Baghdad and Tehran are believed to be genetically modifying biological agents—so they can overcome any defenses U.S. troops may possess.

“If you’re practicing bioterrorism, [genetically altered agents] may not be considered more dangerous because people are not vaccinated and they would die anyway,” said Long, the former UNSCOM inspector. “But if you’re going to use it against an army that’s vaccinated then yes, it may give you a little more bang for your buck.”

Number of Altered Biological Weapons Could be Infinite

The possibilities of mutant life forms that could be used as weapons are technically endless, although through decades of experiments the Soviet Union and Russia focused on just a handful, according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists. Many genetically altered agents turn out to be less harmful than intended, but others have proven to be extremely lethal, they said.

Perhaps the most lethal genetically modified biological agent is “blackpox,” a cross between smallpox and the Ebola virus, Alibek said.

Alibek said blackpox would combine the two most dangerous aspects of Ebola and smallpox—it would have the contagiousness of the latter and produce the severe internal hemorrhaging of Ebola.

“The only purpose of this is to kill,” Alibek remarked.

Alibek said Russia has worked on several other genetically modified bugs, including the mixture of smallpox with the Venezuelan equine encephalitis, known as “Veepox.” Like blackpox this strain would most likely be able to overcome any known vaccines or antibiotics. And Veepox, according to Alibek, would only cost “a few million dollars.”

Russia has also developed modified versions of anthrax, including the so-called Obolensk anthrax, a strain said to be resistant to known vaccines and antidotes. In December 1997, Russian scientists openly published the recipes and methods for making Obolensk anthrax in the British journal Vaccine.

Analysts note that it would be naive to believe that scientists in countries such as Iraq and Iran have not copied these procedures.

Are There Responses to New Weapons?

Pentagon officials refused recent requests for interviews on this subject, but in March, a top military medical official said his office has been working feverishly to learn about genetically modified agents so that they can learn how to defeat them.

 “When it comes to genetically modified agents, there’s almost nothing we can do to protect ourselves until we know what it is—and by then it’s probably going to be too late, at least for the people that have already been infected,” said Army Col. Bob Thompson, the program manager for the Defense Department’s Office of Health Affairs. “This stuff scares the hell out of us.”

D. A. Henderson, the newly-appointed director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Public Health Preparedness, has spent a few decades studying how to eradicate diseases for a variety of U.S. and U.N. agencies.  He said there is a chance that the current vaccine might turn out to be effective against genetically altered life forms.

“It protects against a whole range of biological agents. It provides a very broad base of immunity.” Henderson said. “We’re not exactly sure what it is about this [vaccine] that makes it work, but it works.”

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Smallpox II:  Iraq, Iran May Have Strains, Says Official

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

Iran and Iraq may have gained access to and isolated a particularly virulent strain of the smallpox virus in the early 1970s, a senior Bush administration official told Global Security Newswire this week.

It remains unclear, however, whether they or other parties took the material and used it to develop biological weapons, the official and other experts said.

The two alleged sponsors of international terrorism may have acquired the virus during a major outbreak from 1970 to 1972. It began in Afghanistan and swept into Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yugoslavia, causing thousands of people to contract the disease before it was eradicated. The WHO detailed the outbreak in a 1988 report, Smallpox and its Eradication, co-authored by D. A. Henderson.

“I know very well the Institut Pasteur in Tehran, a very good institute, certainly isolated a lot of strains of the virus,” according to Henderson, now the director of the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Public Health Preparedness. “They did [it], I believe, also in Iraq. It wasn’t that they didn’t have access to the virus,” he said.

Henderson was in a good position to know. He directed the World Health Organization's successful global smallpox eradication campaign from 1966 to 1977.  The disease was declared eradicated from nature in 1979, although the United States and Russia keep official repositories of the virus and other countries are suspected of having kept unofficial, secret samples.

The United States lists Iran and Iraq, as well as Syria, North Korea and Libya as sponsors of international terrorism.  U.S. health officials, however, have said they believe a terrorist attack using smallpox in the United States is a slim possibility and that a mass vaccination of the U.S. population is not prudent at this time (see GSN, Nov. 27).

“I think there’s a general feeling that it’s an unlikely event, and I think it’s fairly unlikely,” said Henderson, also citing difficulties in deploying the virus (see related GSN story, today).

Questions About Possession Persist

Aside from Henderson’s comments, U.S. officials have said little publicly about which countries might have smallpox in addition to Russia and the United States.

In 1998, a classified U.S. intelligence assessment of the smallpox threat summarized many anecdotal reports of stocks of the smallpox virus, including circumstantial information suggesting that Russia, North Korea and Iraq may have retained clandestine stocks of the virus for military use.  Details of the report eventually were leaked to the press.

“Even there the evidence was circumstantial,” said Jonathan Tucker, a Monterey Institute for Strategic Studies bioterrorism expert. “I don’t think there’s classified intelligence that is clear-cut on this. It’s just a possibility based on circumstantial evidence.”

Additional leaks and rumors have suggested China, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Yugoslavia may have a weaponized form of the virus also, according to Tucker’s recently published book, Scourge, The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.

Seth Carus, a senior U.S. National Defense University researcher, told a congressional committee last year that “states that may want to prosecute wars against us, including places like North Korea, perhaps Iraq, perhaps Iran, may have smallpox.”

A Deterrence Factor

The prospect of an overwhelming retaliation would be a strong disincentive for a nation using, or sharing with nonstate terrorists, smallpox viruses that could be used against the United States, said Cheryl Loeb, also an analyst at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Should an attack occur, the United States could “trace it back, and if we did trace it back, and considering the reaction we’ve seen in Afghanistan, consider the reaction you’d see for a weapon of mass destruction.  It would be incredible,” Loeb said.

The United States and the WHO, however, may not have all known types of the smallpox virus on record.

“There have been efforts underway for a number of years to sequence a number of strains, but they’re by no means comprehensive,” said Tucker.

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Anthrax:  Anti-Abortion Militant May be Behind Hoaxes

The FBI yesterday identified fugitive and anti-abortionist Clayton Lee Waagner as the primary suspect in a wave of anthrax hoaxes sent to abortion clinics earlier this month (see GSN, Nov. 9).  Meanwhile, investigators are retracing the paths of anthrax samples sent to researchers for clues to the origin of the recent anthrax attacks.

Waagner was linked to the anthrax hoaxes by matching his fingerprints to one taken from a hoax letter, an FBI official said.  Waagner allegedly told fellow anti-abortion activist Neal Horsely that he had sent the letters, the Washington Post reported.  Horsely, who runs a Web site called the Nuremberg Files that lists abortion providers, said that Waagner made the admission when he took Horsely hostage in his own home last Friday (Eggen/Slevin, Washington Post, Nov. 30).

Waagner, a self-proclaimed anti-abortionist, escaped in February from federal custody where he had been convicted on federal charges related to weapons violations and stolen cars.

“The Department of Justice considers Waagner’s threats and all anthrax hoaxes to be serious violations of federal law,” said U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (Megan Garvey, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30).

Investigation Continues

Efforts to examine the anthrax spores in a letter mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) showed the need for investigators to come up with an intricate plan to open the tainted letter mailed to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the Washington Post reported yesterday.

As scientists placed the spores from the Daschle letter on microscope slides, the spores floated off the surface, the Post reported.  When the scientists tried to weigh the spores, again they became airborne due to tiny drafts and table vibrations.  Finally, scientists doused the spores in liquid chemicals and coated others in paraffin wax before examining them.

Investigators examining the Leahy letter have come up with a detailed plan for opening the letter and maximizing recoverable evidence (see GSN, Nov. 29).  Over the last few days, they have conducted test openings on a “body-double” envelope wrapped in tape like the Leahy letter, the Post reported.

“The U.S. Army and the FBI … know the sample is precious,” said Maj. Gen. John Parker, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command Center.  “They want to make every study count toward the end of linking the sample to the perpetrator.”

The Leahy letter is particularly valuable because other anthrax samples have been virtually exhausted.  Some of the anthrax in the Daschle letter was lost when it was opened by an aide, and the rest has been used by scientists.  The letter to the New York Post got wet before it was opened, turning the contents into an unworkable mass resembling “Purina Dog Chow,” according to U.S. Army scientists.  As for the letter to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, very few spores remained after opening the letter, according to the U.S. Army (Rick Weiss, Washington Post, Nov. 29).

Investigators examining how the culprit might have acquired a sample of the Ames strain of anthrax have found that the distribution of the strain is much more limited than previously thought, according to government documents.  It may even be limited to about a dozen labs, an anthrax researcher said.

The FBI’s investigation has moved “way beyond” the short list of laboratories that received samples of the Ames strain, FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said yesterday.  The short list was used as a guide for investigators to trace any possible movements of the strain, according to a government official.

Since the 1980s, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) has sent samples of the Ames anthrax strain to U.S., Canadian and British researchers, according to the Washington Post.  The list of facilities includes the University of New Mexico, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and Porton Down in Britain, which in turn sent Ames anthrax to two other U.S. universities in Arizona and Louisiana, the Post reported.

The U.S. military sent out the Ames anthrax strain to “legitimate workers in the field” under strict controls, said USAMRIID senior research scientist Col. Arthur Friedlander.  “This is not a cavalier thing that one does,” Friedlander said.  “When anyone isolates strains, they are shared through the scientific community.  That’s how research gets done.  It follows a long tradition of collaboration with people that we are familiar with.”

The small number of laboratories known to have possessed the Ames strain should make it easier for investigators to narrow down who might be responsible, Friedlander said.  “The world of anthrax researchers is quite small.  There isn’t a large group of people working with fully virulent strains,” he said.  “Obviously, if there were 1,000 labs it would be a different order of magnitude than if there were only a handful” (Fainaru/Warrick, Washington Post, Nov. 30).

Washington Christmas Cards to be Delivered on Time

Washington mail service is returning to normal, even though thousands of letters held in the anthrax-tainted Brentwood Road postal facility are just now getting to their destinations, a U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman said this week.

The Brentwood facility is still closed, but Washington mail is being sorted at suburban mail centers, according to the Washington Post.  The letters stuck inside Brentwood when it was closed have been sent to Lima, Ohio, for sanitizing.

“Most of that mail is being wrapped in a small bag with a note that explains why it is postmarked in October but only being delivered now, said Postal Service spokeswoman Deborah Yackley.  “Some of it won’t be bagged and marked, but all of it will be sanitized… Our goal with this batch of mail is safety rather than speed” (Neely Tucker, Washington Post, Nov. 30).

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Smallpox III:  Vaccine Plan Could Cost Double

The plan to administer a smallpox vaccine would cost more than twice as much as the recently negotiated cost of $500 million to purchase the vaccine (see GSN, Nov. 29), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jeffrey Koplan said in a U.S. Senate hearing yesterday.

The CDC would need about $3 billion to fully prepare for a biological warfare attack, Koplan said.  Other public health agencies added that they would need more money than the $1.5 billion Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson requested for bioterrorism prevention and response.  The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is launching several research projects that could cost up to $200 million, which the Bush administration did not include in its budget, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci said.

“The administration is trying to do this on the cheap,” said Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).  “The White House is not recognizing what really needs to be done, so we’re going to have to do the job.”

Several senators have proposed other bioterrorism spending plans.  Harkin and Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have proposed spending $4 billion, according to the Washington Post.  Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) have a similar plan that would spend $3.2 billion.

The remarks of Koplan and Fauci were “wish lists” and Thompson remained committed to his original budget request, said HHS spokesman William Pierce. When asked if his projects could be delayed, Koplan said, “We’re facing risks now” (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, Nov. 30).

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BWC:  Move to Establish Reporting System, Expert Says

The United States made a sensible recommendation that parties to the Biological Weapons Convention develop ways to investigate and report infectious disease outbreaks and support the World Health Organization (see GSN, Nov. 29), but it should not wait for an international agreement before acting, said Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in the National Review this week.

The WHO has advocated for some time that countries monitor the outbreak of infectious diseases, but member states have only agreed to monitor and report on yellow fever, plague and cholera, Sokolski said, adding that most of the reporting focused on confirmed outbreaks rather than information that could help prevent epidemics.  Monitoring and reporting is too important to wait for international agreements, so the United States should begin implementing measures unilaterally and with partner countries.

After the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the United States authorized expanding the Rapid Syndrome Validation Project (R.S.V.P.) from New Mexico to other states.  The system uses computers and the Internet to allow doctors to report certain symptoms quickly and easily to public health officials.  The cost for establishing 10,000 reporting stations internationally would cost about $20 million, according to Alan Zelicoff of Sandia Laboratory, who developed the system. The United States should immediately begin establishing such stations in partner countries, Sokolski said (Henry Sokolski, National Review, Nov. 29).

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Smallpox:  United States Orders Vaccine

The U.S. government has awarded a $428 million contract to produce 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine to be delivered by the end of 2002, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced yesterday. The vaccine will be produced by a joint venture of Acambis and Baxter International.

“By signing this contract, we have created a stockpile of security against the smallpox virus,” Thompson said.

The contract is a scaled-down version of earlier U.S. plans to buy the vaccine (see GSN, Oct. 23), the New York Times reported.  According to earlier reports, Thompson had allotted up to $509 million to create a stockpile of up to 300 million doses of vaccine (see GSN, Nov. 28).

The new plan will provide 209 million new doses of vaccine—the 155 million in the contract plus 54 million already ordered from Acambis (see GSN, Oct. 3). Also on hand are 15 million vaccine doses left over from the 1970s, which the National Institutes of Health hopes to dilute to 77 million doses, according to the Times.  That would make a total of 286 million doses of vaccine, enough for the entire country, the Times reported (Stolberg/Petersen, New York Times, Nov. 29).

Office of Public Health Preparedness Director D.A. Henderson said the vaccine deal was not a response to any immediate threat of a smallpox attack, the Washington Post reported today.  “Obtaining the vaccine represents an important insurance policy,” Henderson said.  (Connolly/Gillis, Washington Post, Nov. 29).

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Anthrax:  Letter to Chile Might Not Have Anthrax

Preliminary positive tests for anthrax in a letter mailed from the United States to Chile (see GSN, Nov. 27) might be the result of laboratory contamination, health officials said yesterday.  Meanwhile, investigators finalized plans on the best way to open the anthrax-tainted letter sent to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) as the investigation into the recent U.S. anthrax incidents continued.

The Chilean scientists who tested the suspicious letter received by a Santiago physician grew only a few colonies of anthrax bacteria from the material collected from the letter, said Mitchell Cohen, director of the Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“If you were dealing with large concentrations of organisms, you would expect to get your [culture] plate covered with microorganisms,” Cohen said.  The light growth found in the Chilean tests, however, “is more consistent with contamination from a laboratory source” (Mark Schoofs, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 29). 

The Chilean lab contained anthrax on its premises, which may have contaminated the sample before it was sent to a CDC-affiliated Miami laboratory that later confirmed the anthrax, according to the Associated Press.

The anthrax found in the Chilean letter does not match the strains found in the U.S. anthrax cases, the CDC said yesterday.  “This strain does not match the strain associated with the contaminated mail in the United States and therefore does not appear to be linked to the situation in the United States,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner (Laura Meckler, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Nov. 29).

To date, the CDC has not confirmed any anthrax incidents outside the United States.  There have been false positives in several countries, including Kenya (see GSN, Oct. 26) and Pakistan (see GSN, Nov. 13).

Robo-Detective to Investigate

Investigators will use a small robot to open the anthrax-tainted letter mailed to Sen. Leahy (see GSN, Nov. 27), a law enforcement official said yesterday.  The robot will be used as part of plan designed to minimize the loss of anthrax spores and DNA evidence from the envelope, officials said.  Testing on the letter could begin today, according to USA Today.

The robot is expected to help create a controlled environment for opening the letter, which is highly toxic, authorities said.  The letter holds enough anthrax to kill more than 100,000 people, Leahy said Sunday (Kevin Johnson, USA Today, Nov. 29). 

Whoever is responsible for the anthrax incidents could have easily produced the tainted letters using relatively simple laboratories and self-protection measures, microbiologists said last week.

Project Bacchus, a 1999 Defense Department study, showed that a domestic team with biological training could produce two pounds of mock-aerosolized anthrax for about $1.6 million.  The team was able to gather, in one year, fermenters, grinders and other laboratory equipment needed to produce anthrax.

Terrorists could produce anthrax or other biological warfare agents in their basement or garage if they were unconcerned about infecting themselves or people around them, according to experts.  Public health officials would be unaware until those near the secret lab started to become ill, said Lee Thompson of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. 

“There is no doubt, if you were vaccinated or didn’t care about your life, you could acquire and produce a spore product if you had the correct shopping list and recipe,” said Craig Smith of the Infectious Disease Society of America.  “Remember around the world, many of these dual-use items are totally unregulated” (Dan Vergano, USA Today, Nov. 29).

Capitol Police Bolstered

The House of Representatives yesterday passed an anti-terrorism bill that includes measures to enhance the Capitol Police, the Washington Post reported today. 

“Our uncertain times have presented enormous, unforeseen challenges for the police,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.).  “Now more than ever we need to provide them with all the needed tools and resources to maximize their potential as an elite law enforcement agency.”

The new measures include hiring up to 151 new officers, a new secure command center and a new training academy close to Washington.  The House approved emergency anti-terrorism funding that would add more than $100 million to the Capitol Police budget, according to House aides.  The police could also deploy up to 72 agents in a new chemical and biological response unit, according to the Post.

“The job of the Capitol Police has changed radically since Sept. 11,” said a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “These measures will help them face a whole array of new challenges in protecting the Capitol and the people who work and visit here.” (Spencer Hsu, Washington Post, Nov. 29).

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Anthrax:  Letter to Chile Mailed from New York

An anthrax-tainted letter delivered to a pediatrician in Chile was mailed from New York, even though it had a Zurich postmark (see GSN, Nov. 27), officials said yesterday.  Meanwhile, the investigation and cleanup efforts for the recent U.S. anthrax incidents continued.

The letter to Chile was mailed from the New York office of Swiss Post International, a subsidiary of the Swiss Post Office, said Swiss Post International Director Michael Knorr.  Swiss Post employees were being tested for anthrax and the company planned to test its facilities for anthrax, Knorr said

A Miami laboratory affiliated with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the letter positive for anthrax.  One senior CDC researcher said, however, “it will be important to confirm that.”  If the sample taken from the letter were indeed anthrax, the CDC would want to confirm that it was not the result of laboratory contamination, a common problem in testing microbes, the researcher said (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 28).

Investigation Developments

Researchers at the Institute of Genomic Research have decoded the genome of two anthrax microbes, which could aid investigators in determining who is responsible for the anthrax incidents, the New York Times reported today.

“It’s not inconceivable that at some point we could make an association between a molecular fingerprint” and the origin of the anthrax, said Institute of Genomic Research Director Claire Fraser.

The two microbes decoded are both from the Ames strain.  One came from a laboratory sample, while the other came from the anthrax found in Florida cases, according to the Times. The new information could allow investigators to make more accurate connections between known strains and the anthrax used in the various incidents.  Also investigators could make a database that would allow them to pinpoint minute differences in the Ames strains that have been sent to laboratories worldwide, the Times reported.

The institute expects to release the decoded genomes to the public within a month, Fraser said.  If the FBI asked for the research to remain secret, however, “we’d have to consider that,” she said. 

The decoding of the anthrax genome “may help the investigation,” said Southern Research Institute Vice President David Franz.  He added, however, “it’s not going to be a smoking gun” (William Broad, New York Times, Nov. 28).

A new team of FBI agents is to review the two most recent anthrax cases, the deaths of Kathy Nguyen (see GSN, Oct. 31) and Ottilie Lundgren (see GSN, Nov. 21), a Justice Department official said.  The team, known as a “red team,” will review forensic protocols and evidence processing at the two crime scenes, according to the Times.

After spending weeks investigating the two cases, the FBI is considering “whether our forensics is good enough,” the official said (McGee/Schmidt, New York Times, Nov. 28).

Senate Offices to be Cleaned

The anthrax-contaminated Hart Senate Office Building will finally be cleaned (see GSN, Nov. 7), according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The process will use chlorine dioxide gas pumped into the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the site of the heaviest contamination.  After 12 hours, Daschle’s office will be “scrubbed” clean by a chemical that breaks down the chlorine dioxide, according to the EPA.

Throughout the rest of the Hart building, cleanup crews will spray disinfectant foam on walls and other surfaces and use vacuum cleaners with special fine-grained filters to remove spores from surfaces.  “We’ve never used these on this scale before,” said EPA scientist Bethany Grohs.

The Hart building could reopen within four weeks, officials said.  That estimate, however, is imprecise, according to Grohs.  “We know what we have to do, but we can’t give a time frame, because if we go back and test and get positive results, we will have to go through the process again,” she said.  “All of the feedback from the senators have been: ‘Take your time, because we want our staff to be safe’” (Davis/Squitieri, USA Today, Nov. 28).

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Smallpox:  U.S. Examines Cost of More Vaccine

U.S. health officials have requested price quotes on the cost of up to 500 million doses of the smallpox vaccine, twice the number that was originally reported, USA Today reported today.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson previously said the government wanted to purchase 250 million doses of the smallpox vaccine, which would be enough to vaccinate the entire U.S. population (see GSN, Oct. 23).  Requests for proposals sent to pharmaceutical companies included an “options” clause that asked for price information on an additional 250 million doses, according to government documents.

The clause would allow the government to purchase the additional doses of vaccine.  Thompson asked the U.S. Congress to appropriate $509 million to purchase the vaccine.  That amount, however, may not even cover the cost of the initial 250 million doses, which range from $2 to $8 a dose, according to USA Today (see GSN, Nov. 7).

If the United States were to purchase the additional vaccine, it would probably do so over several years to replenish expired and used doses and provide other nations with vaccine supplies, said sources close to the vaccine negotiations (Julie Appleby, USA Today, Nov. 28).

The United States is expected to announce this week who will be awarded the vaccine contract, according to Reuters (see GSN, Nov. 19).  The finalists are Merck, GlaxoSmithKline and a joint bid from Acambis and Baxter International (Reuters, Nov. 28).

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Uzbekistan:  U.S. Personnel Arrive at Former Testing Site

A small team of U.S. personnel has arrived on Vozrozhdeniya Island, a former Soviet biological weapons testing site in the Aral Sea off the coast of Uzbekistan (see GSN, Nov. 15), the Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press reported today.

The U.S. team of military personnel and germ warfare specialists are on the island as part of a U.S.-Uzbek deal reached at the end of October to help decontaminate the island (see GSN, Oct. 23).  The United States is also providing the Uzbek Defense Ministry with $6 million to aid in the cleanup, according to the Digest.

The island was used by the Soviet Union for biological weapons research from 1949 to 1992, the Digest reported.  Uzbek scientists said that it would not be difficult for experts to determine, based on the abandoned research center and equipment, the basic course of research the Soviets conducted and how much expertise they acquired on Vozrozhdeniya  (Ivan Muravyov, Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, Nov. 28). 

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BWC:  Proposals Gathered at Review Conference

After the first week of the Fifth Review Conference to the Biological Weapons Convention (see GSN, Nov. 27), a complete set of proposals had been compiled Monday by the Committee of the Whole, said committee Chairman Markku Reimaa.

The set of proposals had been sent around to all the conference delegates so every delegation knew what had been proposed and what basis there was to find a common ground, Reimaa said.  “We should have a chance to write down a common message from Geneva in good time before the deadline of Dec. 7.”

During the conference, a new emphasis had been placed on follow-up implementation mechanisms, said Conference President Tibor Toth.  Concrete proposals were made regarding annual meetings of treaty parties.  There were also proposals to establish preparations for such meetings and an idea to set up a scientific advisory panel on biotechnology developments. 

Questions were raised dealing with assistance, such as providing aid in the event of a biological weapons attack or natural outbreak of disease.  There were also proposals to create an oversight mechanism on genetic manipulation, as well as a code of conduct.

Differences between delegations were downplayed because of the high volume of proposals, but would probably resurface near the end of the conference, Toth said, adding that the conference would eventually have to focus on key unresolved issues. 

One of those issues is whether to have an all-encompassing approach, as described by the draft verification protocol, or freestanding solutions, something the United States favors.  A third option would be a combination of the two, which has not been excluded by many countries, according to Toth.

The final declaration of the Conference would be politically, but not legally, binding, Toth said.  Some proposals, however, could be used to develop legally binding instruments at a later stage.  Toth said, however, “I do not expect that we are making a new legally binding document in the next 10 days still available to the conference” (U.N. release, Nov. 28).

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Smallpox:  CDC Recommends Against Mass Vaccination

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

Containment—not mass vaccination—should be the U.S. strategy for dealing with the prospect of a terrorist attack using the deadly, rapidly spreading variola virus that causes smallpox, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.

In an updated plan and guidelines for a national response to a smallpox attack (see GSN, Nov. 9), the federal health agency recommended using a “ring vaccination” strategy, which involves isolating, vaccinating, and closely monitoring people suspected of contracting the disease as well as those with whom they may have come in close contact.

Laboratory workers handling the virus, incident responders, law enforcement authorities, and health care providers working with diseased patients would also be vaccinated.

“Vaccinating and monitoring a ‘ring’ of people around each case and contact will help to protect those at the greatest risk for contracting the disease as well as form a buffer of immune individuals to prevent the spread of the disease,” the CDC wrote in an executive summary of the guidelines.

The recommendation comes as the United States is beginning to procure and stockpile enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate every man, woman and child in the country. That rush effort could be completed in six months.

Risks and Benefits

“The [containment] strategy would be more desirable than an indiscriminant mass vaccination campaign,” the CDC wrote, offering several reasons for that conclusion.

It said adverse side effects from the vaccine “would be expected to be higher” than the potential for casualties caused by an outbreak because the vaccinations might pose hazards to people with weakened immune systems, such as those with HIV or AIDS (see GSN, Nov. 21). Children under one year of age, adolescents and people with eczema, leukemia or lymphoma are also at risk.

“The risks vs. benefits of vaccination ratio would be higher in such a campaign because of the inevitable vaccination of people with high risk of adverse events and a low risk of smallpox,” the CDC wrote, although it noted there is not enough information showing risks to people with HIV.

Risks would vary from a prolonged fever in children to potentially fatal encephalitis. One death and hundreds of cases with serious side effects could occur for every million people vaccinated, according to the CDC and other researchers.

Some serious side effects could require treatment with a medicine called Vaccinna Immune Globulin (VIG), but there currently is not enough stored VIG to treat everyone that would experience serious side effects in a mass vaccination.

Additionally, large numbers of health care workers would be needed to administer a mass vaccination program and treat its related side effects, the agency said.

A Journal of the American Medical Association working group similarly concluded in 1999 that mass vaccination was not practical at that time in light of the limited quantities of vaccine and VIG in store. The group noted that if more vaccine was available, “preventive vaccination of some portion of the population will have to weigh the relative risk of vaccination complications against the threat of contracting smallpox.”  Click here to read the JAMA report.

Quarantine

According to the CDC plan, federal and state health officials jointly would be responsible for determining who would be included in a vaccination ring. Local law enforcement, fire and health-care personnel who do not come in direct contact with infected patients might also be vaccinated.

Smallpox is most commonly transmitted by internal contact with an infected person’s body fluids, usually from close, face-to-face contact, and less commonly through the air. Symptoms usually begin 12 to 14 days after exposure, starting with a two- to three-day high fever, malaise, and prostration with severe headache and backache, followed by a rash and lesions that may spread across the body.

Patients should be kept in specially ventilated rooms, health care workers would wear protective clothing that is specially laundered, and the patient’s condition should be closely monitored. Administering the vaccine in the first days after initial exposure to the virus can reduce symptoms and prevent the disease, according to the CDC.

However, the JAMA group was not optimistic about treatment. “At this time, the best that can be offered to the patient infected with smallpox is supportive therapy plus antibiotics as indicated for treatment of occasional secondary bacterial infections.

“No antiviral substances have yet proved effective for the treatment of smallpox, and the working group is not aware of any reports that suggest any antiviral product is therapeutic,” it said.

The overall mortality rate for smallpox is approximately 30 percent, according to the CDC.

The CDC plan calls for personnel dedicated to several activities, including surveillance, diagnosis and communication for potential outbreaks; education about the disease; rapid identification and vaccination of priority groups; surveillance, education, isolation and care of patients; investigation of outbreak source and risks to populations; and public communications.

Already Operational

The plan is already operational, according to the agency.

The CDC said much of its guidelines are derived from those used in the successful global effort that eliminated the disease in 1979. Smallpox, which has plagued mankind for thousands of years, was eradicated in 1979 through a massive worldwide vaccination and containment strategy.

There has been concern, however, that stores of the agent may secretly reside in laboratories abroad, and perhaps was obtained by terrorists, although the probability is considered low.

Routine vaccination was discontinued for the disease in the United States in the early 1970s and scientists believe protection from those vaccinations may have significantly diminished over time.

Production of the Dryvax vaccine, the only licensed in the United States, produced by Wyeth Laboratories of Marietta, Penn., was discontinued in 1980.

The Bush administration has requested $643 million for fiscal year 2002 to stretch the current stockpile of smallpox vaccine by diluting it and $509 million to speed up production of a total of 300 million additional doses, but some reports have suggested more money will be needed (see GSN, Nov. 7).

Click here for executive summary of CDC guidelines.

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Anthrax:  Tainted Letters are Focus of Investigation

Investigators have recently focused on two anthrax-tainted letters, one mailed to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and one mailed to a pediatrician in Chile, for clues into the U.S. anthrax incidents.

A Miami laboratory affiliated with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday confirmed the presence of anthrax spores in a letter mailed to a pediatrician in Santiago, Chile (see GSN, Nov. 26).  The laboratory “is part of the CDC Laboratory Response Network, and we assume their conclusion is correct,” said CDC spokeswoman Lisa Swenarski (Nicholas Wade, New York Times News Service/Chicago Tribune, Nov. 27).

Some characteristics of the letter to Chile do not match those of anthrax-tainted letters mailed to U.S. addresses, said Antonio Banfi, the pediatrician who received the letter.  The envelope had a return address from a medical publishing house that often sends him materials, Banfi said.  A plastic window showed the typed, instead of handwritten, address. 

The letter looked suspicious because it had a Zurich postmark, even though the return address was in Orlando, Fla., Banfi said.  There is no evidence that the letter had actually been mailed from Orlando, an FBI official said.  It could have received a Zurich postmark if Swiss Post International, a subsidiary of the Swiss Post office, processed the letter, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Swiss Post International has offices in New York City and Los Angeles.

U.S. investigators have not yet examined the Chile letter, although they have received a photograph of the envelope, the Journal reported.  “We want to get our hands on this thing and see if it matches up” with the other tainted letters, said Dan Mihalko, U.S. Postal Inspection Service inspector in charge of congressional and public affairs.  “Are there envelopes in Switzerland somebody stole or envelopes that were stolen in Florida?” Mihalko asked.  “There are just too many questions here” (De Cordoba/Schoofs, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27).

Leahy Letter to be Carefully Examined

Law enforcement officials said yesterday they have designed an intricate plan to maximize the amount of evidence recovered when they open the anthrax-tainted letter mailed to Leahy (see GSN, Nov. 19).  “Even anthrax experts have no experience doing this,” an investigator said.  “We’re writing the book on this one as we go along.”

The anthrax inside the sealed letter will be handled live, instead of being decontaminated before it is removed, officials said.  FBI agents and U.S. Army scientists will conduct tests on the letter in a sealed laboratory, according to the New York Times.  FBI forensic scientists have written guidelines for opening the letter, removing the anthrax spores and reporting results.  Several test letters are to be opened first to perfect the techniques, the Times reported.

The FBI will probably not open the letter until at least Thursday, an official said.  The opening has been delayed since the letter was first discovered more than a week ago because of concerns over losing or damaging evidence.  When the envelope was put into an evidence bag, a tiny plume of spores drifted off the surface, the official said.  “We don’t want to lose a single spore of anthrax,” a government investigator said.  “Every spore is critical” (David Johnston, New York Times, Nov. 27).   

More Connecticut Tests Come Back Negative

Several dozen more tests conducted on samples taken from areas near the home of Ottilie Lundgren, who died from inhalation anthrax (see GSN, Nov. 21), have all come back negative, the Connecticut Department of Health said yesterday. The samples were taken from places Lundgren was known to visit during the last weeks of her life, including the Oxford Town Hall and Library and Lundgren’s bank, according to the New York Times. (New York Times, Nov. 27).

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BWC:  Ad Hoc Group’s Future in Doubt

The future of the Ad Hoc Group (AHG) to continue negotiating a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention was debated at the end of the first week of the Fifth Review Conference Friday.

Although the United States said it opposed the continuation of the AHG in any form (see GSN, Nov. 21), many other countries said that the AHG’s mandate remained in force and the strengthening of the treaty needed to take place in a multilateral setting.  Non-Aligned Movement countries were the most supportive of the AHG finishing work on the protocol, according to the Acronym Institute, a nongovernmental organization monitoring the conference. 

“It is clear that arriving at a consensus Final Document will be a big challenge,” (see GSN, Nov. 26) the Institute wrote in a release.

Non-Aligned Movement countries that supported the continuation of the AHG included China, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Pakistan, among others.  Although these countries six months ago resisted efforts to advance the AHG process, now they appeared to be the most eager to continue talks, according to the Institute.  Iran said it “still insisted on the validity of the [AHG’s] mandate” and announced its “readiness for continuing negotiation in a multilateral framework.”

China said it was disappointed that the “protocol that had great hope of conclusion” was now being subjected to a “threat of being scrapped.”  China, however, was “glad to note that an overwhelming majority of states parties still stand for maintaining the existing mechanism and mandate of the [AHG].”

Members of the European Union said they considered it “essential” that the AHG mandate remained in force.  The EU, however, stopped short of saying that the AHG should be reconvened.

The Rio Group, made up of Central and South American countries, said it hoped that the conference would “reiterate” the AHG’s mandate so negotiations on the protocol could be completed.  Only a multilateral format would provide “true reinforcement of the Convention,” the Group said (Acronym Institute release, Nov. 26).

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U.S Response:  Should Science Be More Regulated?

Government officials are making and debating proposals to limit scientific research—especially in biological sciences—in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the U.S. anthrax incidents, the New York Times reported today.  “The world as a whole has not fully absorbed how powerful biotechnology is getting,” said John Steinbruner, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies.  “This is a real watershed.”

Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Biotechnology Industry Organization surveyed its members to determine what technology they had that could be used to produce biological weapons.  In addition, the BIO issued an alert to be aware of any unusual orders.  Out of 400 companies, about 30 said they had received some suspicious inquiries, said BIO President Carl Feldbaum.

Already the federal government has proposed some regulatory measures.  President George W. Bush has called for an international code of ethical conduct for biological scientists, according to the Times, and the recent anti-terrorism law makes it easier to prosecute people possessing biological warfare agents with the intent to use them as weapons.  Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) have proposed legislation that would require all laboratories that handle weapon-usable germs to register with the government.

Some scientists, however, are concerned that that the recent proposals would do more to deter legitimate research than terrorism.  “Before we enact legislation requiring people to padlock their strain collections and classify their DNA sequences we should ask the question about who we are trying to keep the information from,” said Stanford University biophysics professor Steve Block.  “What we’ll probably wind up restricting is legitimate science without in any serious way restricting the ability to use this as a bioweapon.”

The new rules are already causing some laboratories to stop working with pathogens that could be used as a biological weapons, said Ronald Atlas, president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology.  “Some researchers now are afraid to be anywhere near an anthrax culture,” Atlas said.

Regulation or Censorship?

Scientists are also concerned that some experiments might not be conducted or the results published, according to the Times.  “That’s a whole new concept we’ve not faced before,” Atlas said.  “Basic information, from publishing of genomes to doing experiments, has not been subject to banning before.”

For example, scientists are worried by the fact that complete genome sequences for many pathogens are available to the public, the Times reported.  While terrorists could use the sequences to improve biological weapons, researchers could also use the sequences to develop treatments or cures.  “Some people argue that publishing each genome is like publishing the blueprint to the atomic bomb,” said Celera Genomics President Craig Venter.  “But it’s also the blueprint for a deterrent and the blueprint for a cure.”

Venter has been involved in this debate before, according to the Times.  He worked on a project to make artificial microbes that was eventually halted.  “We were going to make a synthetic, harmless microorganism to study biology and evolution,” Venter said.  “It became clear to me that if I developed those techniques that would be publishing the blueprint to make a synthetic pathogen.”

Many scientists are opposed to censoring research, the Times reported.   The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Cozzarelli said that “it would have to be an extraordinary case” before he would refuse to publish an article on the grounds that the information could be used by terrorists.

Biological scientists do agree, however, that more awareness is needed about what could be done with their work.  “The biomedical community must play its proper part in the generation of a true web of deterrence,” the Institute of Genomic Research Director Claire Fraser and Malcolm Dando, of the University of Bradford in Britain, wrote in Natural Genetics.  “To do anything less is to accept that the events of [Sept. 11] could be repeated on an even larger scale through the misuse of the science and technology we generate for peaceful purposes” (Andrew Pollack, New York Times, Nov. 27).

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Anthrax:  Chilean Letter Tests Positive

A letter in Chile tested positive for anthrax Thursday, making it the first confirmed tainted letter outside the United States.  Meanwhile, no clues have yet been found in the investigation into the latest death from inhalation anthrax (see GSN, Nov. 21), according to various reports.

A letter sent from Switzerland to a pediatrician in Santiago, Chile, tested positive for anthrax spores, Chilean and U.S. officials said Thursday.  While the letter was postmarked in Zurich, its return address was from Florida, according to officials.  The pediatrician and 12 others that were nearby when the envelope was opened tested negative for anthrax but were put on preventive treatment, the Chilean Health Ministry said (Associated Press/Washington Post, Nov. 23).

No Clues Yet in Connecticut

Anthrax testing conducted in a number of locations in Connecticut have all come back negative, according to officials.  Tests on more than 90 samples at two postal centers near the home of Ottilie Lundgren, who died last week from inhalation anthrax, all came back negative, Governor John Rowland said Friday.  “You can probably rule out the mail coming from either Seymour or Wallingford [the two postal facilities], because those tests have proved negative,” Rowland said. “But again, this is not a perfect science, and perhaps there’s other venues that need to be investigated” (Paul Zielbauer, New York Times, Nov. 23).

Tests on 10 soil samples taken from around Lundgren’s home and a neighborhood restaurant also came back negative, according to the Washington Post.  This weakened a theory that Lundgren might have been infected with anthrax naturally, such as from the buried remains of dead cows, the Post reported. 

Investigators nevertheless remained optimistic that they would find the cause of Lundgren’s anthrax infection because she rarely left home alone, said Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Joxel Garcia.  Investigators should be able to track Lundgren’s movements and extensively test anything she came into contact with, even Halloween trick-or-treaters, Garcia said (Dale Russakoff, Washington Post, Nov. 26).

Officials are treating Lundgren’s death as a crime, even though the source of the anthrax is unknown.  “There’s no question that this is a homicide,” Rowland said.  “Clearly, I don’t think that a 94-year-old resident of Oxford was a target, but there’s got to be some kind of accidental discharge of anthrax.”

Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said testing has shown that the anthrax that killed Lundgren was the same strain that was used in other recent anthrax incidents.  It was unknown yet whether Lundgren’s death was the end of the series of incidents, or the beginning of a new wave, officials said.

FBI and CDC officials said that no possible source of exposure was being ruled out.  “We’ll look at every possible cause of exposure,” said CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan.  “We’ve made a list of every possible route that we can think of, of how anthrax might have been acquired by a 94-year-old woman who lives largely at home, and things that enter the home are certainly a prime suspect, and given recent history, mail is one of them” (Paul Zielbauer, New York Times, Nov. 22).

Investigators Attempt to Track Anthrax

Knowing who had access to the Ames strain of anthrax might give clues as to who has been responsible for the recent U.S. anthrax incidents, according to investigators.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) has been one of the main distributors of the strain to researchers around the world.  While it was once thought that the Ames strain was accessible to thousand of scientists, it’s now believed that it traveled among a small number of labs, the Associated Press reported. It may be impossible, however, to know the precise number of scientists who had access to the Ames strain, since differences between anthrax strains are often small and labeling of strains was haphazard until the advent of genetic mapping, experts said. 

It is fairly easy to get anthrax cultures from USAMRIID, said Martin Hugh-Jones, an anthrax expert at Louisiana State University.  “They kept the stuff there, and if you need a culture, you called up Art,” Hugh-Jones said. “Art” is USAMRIID senior research scientist Col. Arthur Friedlander (Associated Press, Nov. 26).

Iraqi biological warfare scientists also attempted to obtain the Ames strain, according to experts.  In 1998, Iraqi scientists sent an order to the British biodefense institute at Porton Down for samples of the Ames strain, as well as two other anthrax strains, according to the Washington Post.  The order was turned down, however, because British scientists believed that strains were to be used in developing biological weapons, the Post reported.

So far, no proof has been found that Iraq was able to obtain the Ames strain of anthrax from another supplier, U.S. officials and former U.N. weapons inspectors said.  Iraq’s efforts to do so, however, could mean that Iraq could have connections to the recent U.S. anthrax incidents, according to the Post. 

“We know that Iraq was very keen on obtaining that specific strain as well as others, and they were contacting many countries of the world,” said Richard Spertzel, former head of the U.N. biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq.  “The effort with which they [pursued] Porton Down would suggest that if they thought someone else had it, they would press for it.  But we simply don’t know” (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, Nov. 25).

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BWC:  Work Begins on Final Declaration

Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention have begun discussing the treaty article-by-article and working to organize articles and ideas for a final declaration at the Fifth Review Conference, Hungarian Ambassador and conference President Tibor Toth said last week.  He added that the Drafting Committee planned to take over drafting the final declaration in the middle of this week.

Many states have expressed regret at the failure to agree on a verification protocol to the convention, Toth said. Some states pushed for a legally binding document based on a multilateral framework.  The United States, which had earlier rejected the draft protocol, had proposed alternative measures to strengthen the convention (see GSN, Nov. 21).  States were considering the U.S. proposals, but many continued to disagree on appropriate methods and measures to enforce the convention, Toth said.

Toth emphasized the need for treaty parties to reconfirm their support for the convention and go beyond rhetoric to implementation.  U.S. struggles to respond to recent anthrax incidents (see GSN, today) showed the importance of states working together to combat threats posed by biological weapons, Toth said, adding that states could create international response teams that could be dispatched within 24 hours.  States should cooperate to provide the necessary medicines and vaccines (see GSN, Nov. 14) to respond to biological warfare, he said.

Several speakers at the conference suggested that treaty parties meet more frequently to respond to rapid developments, Toth said, but meetings between the review conferences every five years had often failed to increase implementation.

The conference, which opened in Geneva on Nov. 19, is scheduled to conclude Dec. 7 (U.N. release, Nov. 22).

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NGO Response: Nuclear Threat Initiative Gives Priority to BW

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, founded by media figure Ted Turner and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, has decided to increase its efforts to fight biological terrorism and germ warfare, according to yesterday’s New York Times. The foundation plans to spend about one-third of its estimated $50 million in annual grants on anti-bioterrorism and biological weapon programs. The NTI board approved almost $5 million in initial grants in October.

The foundation, which opened in January 2001, already had programs dedicated to countering biological and chemical weapons threats.  Foundation directors decided to shift more priority to combating biological weapon threats after the recent deaths in the United States of five people from anthrax, foundation executives said last week. 

“Reducing the threat of biological weapons has always been our primary mission, but the events of Sept. 11 have led to new opportunities to address preparedness and consequence management,” said Margaret Hamburg, head of the foundation's biological programs.

The largest program planned so far to combat bioterrorism includes $2.4 million to help employ former Soviet biological weapon scientists in peaceful activities, which would supplement similar U.S. programs.  The planned programs include working with former Soviet scientists to develop a brucellosis vaccine, financing a study of how Russia's Vector laboratory—where Soviet scientists once developed biological weapons—could convert into a vaccine production facility, establishing partnerships between U.S. drug companies and former Soviet scientists, supporting dialogue between U.S. and Russian scientists and helping the World Health Organization establish a fund to assist rapid medical response to suspicious disease outbreaks.  Foundation representatives also said NTI had provided $650,000 in grants to help the U.S. drug industry develop standards to prevent misuse of biotechnology and would provide $400,000 to help the National Academy of Sciences draft such standards (Judith Miller, New York Times, Nov. 25).

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]

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