WASHINGTON,
Aug. 22 (UPI) -- The technology to manufacture biological weapons
of mass destruction is now widely available through open literature
and the United States is totally unprepared to cope with a bio-terrorist
attack, according to one of the United States' leading experts
on germ warfare.
Speaking
in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Dr. Tara O'Toole, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins University
Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, said, "100 grams
of anthrax properly dispersed downwind over Washington, D.C.,
for example, could kill between 150,000 and three million people
in the surrounding areas.
"This
would produce fear and panic all over the country as millions
rush to doctors' offices to be checked out."
Ten grams
of anthrax is the equivalent of one ton of chemical nerve agents,
Dr. O'Toole explained.
Most frightening
of all, Dr. O'Toole said "is the ever faster pace of technological
advance, which has made the know-how for creating, manufacturing
and dispersing these agents of mass destruction widely available
through open literature."
The National
Academy of Sciences recently published a research paper that was
a roadmap for the manufacture of a virulent strain of the 'flu.
Today, she said, the 1918 'flu that killed some 25 million in
Europe in four months and infected 25 percent of the U.S. population
-- with almost 700,000 deaths -- can easily be replicated and
produced. AIDS in Africa is a glimpse of the horror that may lie
ahead.
In addition
to Russian stores of former Soviet bio-weapons of mass destruction,
there are "a dozen countries, including all states named
by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, that have developed
bio-warfare capability," according to Dr. O'Tara.
"These
weapons of mass destruction are potentially a way around U.S.
military power," she said. "They could, for example,
destroy overseas bases during a U.S. forward deployment"
such as Kosovo in 1999.
"This
is the age of big biology, of unbelievable breakthroughs in the
search for medical miracles," Dr. O'Toole explained, "but
this goes hand in hand with the tools to make ever more virulent
weapons."
No U.S. city
has the capacity for a mass casualty situation, she said. Johns
Hopkins, for example, only has five isolation wards for infectious
diseases. Out of 5,000 hospitals in the United States, 30 percent
are losing money. A thousand hospitals have closed in recent years
as they went broke.
"Emergency
rooms are also losing money" strained as they are by poor
people without medical insurance. Most ERs resort to just-in-time
staffing procedures, she said, "and very few nurses are hospital
employees.
In the case
of an epidemic, security staffs and cafeteria employees would
take off in droves, just as was the case in 1994 during the plague
outbreak in Surat, India. The U.S. Public Health system is woefully
understaffed, under-funded and not part of an integrated system.
There are no beepers or computers or even fax machines in many
places. Public Health-wise we are simply not wired."
Dr. O'Toole
also said that a recent exercise in Denver, codenamed "TOPOFF,"
postulated the release of bubonic plague in a bio-terrorist attack.
"It
was called off after four days from sheer exhaustion of the participants
and the epidemic was still expanding," she said. "One
must contain an epidemic from the very beginning or it is quickly
out of control through mass travel to the rest of the country
and the world. How does one restrict travel in such a crisis and
impose curfews? Voluntarily or with guns?"
Dr. O'Toole
concluded by saying there is an urgent need of some $3 billion
a year over 10 years for research and development in bio defense.
These funds would be designed to produce more definitive rapid
diagnostics of an epidemic (smallpox incubation period is 14 days
during which time one person infects 15 others); microchips that
could decipher the problem immediately; better and more vaccines;
an immune response with an all-purpose way to limit our vulnerability;
hospital training and an electronically linked hospital system
(to eliminate the now autonomous and competitive system between
hospitals); incentives for getting hospitals involved.
The U.S.
Public Health system, she said, "must identify critical capacities
to detect, track and contain." This would have to include
a new triage ethic because in biological attack "the sickest
don't get handled first. They are left to die."
Additional
points made by Dr. Tara O'Toole:
* Bio-war
can push nations beyond the point of recovery.
* A bio-weapons
attack is not likely to stay "local"; it will spread
very quickly.
* Bio-weapons
are strategic population destroying weapons which sets them apart
from other weapons of mass destruction.
* It is not
easy to hide a nuclear reactor, but very easy to hide a fermenter.
* There is
no clear line between civilian and military targets.
* Genetic
engineered pathogens may well confuse diagnosis making it very
difficult for doctors to respond in time.
* Most American
doctors would not be able to recognize smallpox or anthrax.
* Pharmaceutical
companies do not possess surge capabilities in case of an incident;
they are entirely geared to just on time deliveries.
*These days
one can play Lego with the DNA of a bug and make it more virulent
and resistant to antibiotics.
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