The CQ Researcher : Chemical and Biological Weapons

From the January 31, 1997 issue of The CQ Researcher, Volume 7, No. 4, p. 81-82.

Is it feasible to protect Americans from the threat of biological or chemical attack?

Because biological and chemical weapons are easy to produce and conceal, civilians have few defenses against potential attackers. All it took for the Aum Shinrikyo terrorists to turn the Tokyo subway system into a deadly gas chamber were holes poked in a few plastic bags of strategically placed sarin. Closer to home, the truck containing the bomb that devastated the World Trade Center in 1993 was later found to have contained sodium cyanide. Had the device containing the cyanide not malfunctioned, it would have released a cloud of deadly cyanide vapor into the skyscraper, causing many more casualties. [1]

Although biological and chemical weapons have been readily available for many years, there are few defenses in place to protect civilians against an attack. In 1995, an Ohio man, Larry Harris, a former member of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations, had no trouble ordering by mail three vials of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, from a laboratory supply house. However, a company employee became suspicious about the order and alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Harris was apprehended before he could carry out his alleged plan to make a biological weapon out of the material. But because there were no laws prohibiting the distribution of Yersinia pestis and other potentially lethal pathogens, Harris was released after serving a brief sentence for mail fraud for providing false information on the order form. [2]

“When we called in the authorities on the plague incident, CDC's response was that there was nothing they could do about it because Mr. Harris had done nothing illegal by having it in his possession or using it,” says Kaye Breen, a vice president of American Type Culture Collection, the Rockville, Md., firm that provided the pathogen. “All of our requirements to have detailed information in writing are voluntary.”

Later this year, however, tough, new regulations that were included in anti-terrorism legislation passed last April will go into effect, limiting the availability of many pathogens. The regulations impose penalties for the illegal possession and distribution of dangerous biological agents. But Breen says the new rules may do little to deter a terrorist or madman bent on conducting biological mayhem. “Even if you took all the 450 major [pathogen] culture collections around the world, they still collectively represent about 20 percent of the distribution of biologicals,” Breen says. “The bulk of it is from researcher to researcher, and anyway, every single one of these biologicals is available in nature. If you're a true terrorist, why go where you have to leave a paper trail?”

Given the limits of effective defense, some experts say important steps are being taken to protect civilians against biochemical attack. “We're working on it,” says Hughes of the National Center for Infectious Diseases. He offers as a model a detailed plan of action drawn up by various agencies to intervene quickly in case of an infectious-disease outbreak, whether by natural causes or as the result of a biological attack.

During last summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta, he says, “We set up a special infectious-disease surveillance system in which hospitals, emergency rooms and outpatient centers reported daily on disease encounters. The key to surveillance is the alert clinician or health- care worker who recognizes and reports.”

Biological attacks, unlike those using chemicals, can be indistinguishable from spontaneous outbreaks if no one claims responsibility for the act. “Otherwise, it is going to present exactly like any other infectious-disease epidemic,” Hughes says. “That's the reason we argue that we need, first and foremost, to strengthen surveillance and response capacity at the local, state, federal and even global levels so that these incidents can be detected early and a response can be rapidly mounted.”

The CDC has drawn up a strategy for dealing with outbreaks that follows these suggestions. But even Hughes acknowledges the limits of civilian defenses against bioterrorism. “Another aspect to this issue is the availability of agents to treat these things should they occur on large numbers of people,” he says. “You could easily overwhelm the health-care delivery system and exhaust available supplies of antibiotics or antisera that aren't used very often. They're adequate to deal with things that you could anticipate occurring in a natural setting.

[1] See Laurie Mylroie, “WTC Bombing - The Case of 'Secret' Cyanide,” The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 1996.

[2] See Robert Ruth, “Judge Who Nixed Deal in Plague Case May Step Down,” The Columbus Dispatch, Nov. 20, 1996.