2004
The two documented uses of biological weapons this year were the arrest in January of a terrorist cell in France which was dedicated to producing and dispensing botulism and ricin toxins, and the sending in February of a letter containing ricin to the US Senate.
Natural outbreaks this year involving Category I agents included:
- Outbreaks of Anthrax which occurred in Georgia, India, Indonesia, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.
- Outbreak of Yersinia pestis in China.
- Outbreak of Ebola in the Sudan.
- Outbreak of Tularemia on Martha’s Vineyard.
Progress was made this year in developing the following countermeasures:
- Drugs – development of new drugs continued for the treatment of anthrax.
- Vaccines – development continued on new vaccines against anthrax, ricin, smallpox, viral hemorrhagic fevers and yersinia pestis.
- Diagnostics – development continued on new diagnostic tests for anthrax and botulinum toxin.
Several recurring themes were identified throughout this year’s biodefense news stories:
- The chronic underfunding of the US public health system, in spite of clear evidence of the dangers of this. This underfunding leads to a lack of readiness in state public health departments as documented in reports by the Government Accounting Office and The Trust for America’s Health and the Centers for Disease Control in February, The Department of Defense in March, the Agency for Research and Quality in May, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials in June, and the Trust for America’s Health again in December.
- The controversy over the safety of the US military’s current anthrax vaccine and whether it should be administered to US military personnel.
- The looming threat of the emergence of new infectious diseases, as evidenced by the monkeypox outbreak. Emerging infectious diseases, which have shaped the course of humanity and caused incalculable suffering and death, will continue to confront society in unpredictable ways as long as humans and microbes co-exist.
- Preventing research which can lead to the development of new genetically engineered virulent infectious diseases is impossible.
- The looming threat from unemployed Russian bioweaponeers who may be selling their services to the highest bidders.
- The concern about safety voiced by individuals who are going to have biodefense laboratories built in their neighborhoods, best evidenced by the residents of Boston’s South End.
- The controversy over whether biodefense research should be conducted in secrecy or in the open, and how to balance the openness of scientific research with the potential dangerous uses it can be put to, as articulated by the National Academies Press.
- Project Bioshield is a good start, but not a panacea, towards the development of biodefense countermeasures by pharmaceutical corporations.
- The operational deployment, refinement and integration of automated disease surveillance programs:
- BioSense, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is designed to pick up signals of potential health emergencies as close to the onset as possible by focusing on symptoms and searching for unusual patterns or clusters.
- National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with more than a dozen states participating. The system focuses on diagnosed health conditions that are reported to local and state public health agencies. Sophisticated analytical tools are built in, making it possible to examine disease trends by county, city or ZIP code.
- BioWatch, run by the Department of Homeland Security, is a network of air sensors in 31 cities that are sniffing for toxic substances. They suck in air, and the air is monitored based on a type of diagnostic technology known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.
- Guardian, run by the Department of Defense, similar to BioWatch.
- Essence, run by the Department of Defense, daily culls data from the electronic health records of military personnel, evaluating them for signs of possible outbreaks.
- Global Public Health Intelligence Network, run by the Public Health Agency of Canada, monitors global media sources (such as news wires and web sites), then gathers and disseminates relevant information on such topics as disease outbreaks, infectious diseases, contaminated food and water, bio-terrorism and exposure to chemical and radio-nuclear agents, and natural disasters. It works with a number of languages including Arabic, English, French, Russian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Spanish.
- The importance of simulations – aka biodefense wargames – in learning how to respond to a biological warfare attack – such as Global Mercury, Topoff 2, and Dark Winter.
- The question of whether doing biodefense research is more hassle than it is worth, in terms of obtaining the necessary security clearances. Many scientists are beginning to think so. Witness the seriousness of the US government in prosecuting an expert on plague who caused a bioterrorism scare in January 2003 when he reported plague bacteria missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University.
- The question of whether too much is being invested in biodefense research, to the detriment of research in cancer, etc.
- The vulnerability of the US food supply to agroterrorism, and the initial steps being taken to protect the US food supply.
Finally???
The mysterious story of the year was the continued inability of the US to identify the individual(s) responsible for the ricin attacks of 2004 as well as the individual(s) responsible for the anthrax attacks of September 2001, coupled to the legal jousting between the US government and “person of interest” Steven Hatfill.
The most surprising story of the year was the absence of evidence that Iraq possessed biological weapons at the time of the US invasion in March 2003.
The most sobering story of the year was the difficulty of decontaminating old biological warfare testing grounds as well as the buildings involved in the 2001 anthrax attacks, which shows how difficult and costly it is to clean up after a biological attack.
The most chilling story of the year is whether Russia, as it closes itself off to West, is reconstituting its bioweapons program.
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