>From http://www.jya.com/btn031198.txt The New York Times, March 11, 1998, p. A21. Smallpox Vaccine Urged to Fight Terrorist Attacks By Lawrence K. Altman Atlanta, March 10--In a major turnaround, the scientist who led the campaign that eradicated smallpox and eliminated the need for vaccination worldwide now says the United States should resume making the vaccine to deal with the threat of biological warfare. The scientist, Dr. Donald A. Henderson, a former deputy White House science adviser and dean emeritus of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, spoke at an international meeting on new and emerging diseases here today. The United States is ill-prepared to confront a terrorist attack using biological weapons, and health officials need more money to prepare against such attacks, Dr. Henderson and other experts in infectious diseases said at the meeting, which was partly sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The speakers said their new concern reflected the Iraqi buildup of biological weapons, terrorism attacks in Japan, and a breakdown in security at Russia's advanced bioweapons center in Koltsovo near Novosibirsk. Doctors, health departments and the Federal Government were urged to develop clear plans to diagnose and treat victims of such attacks because very few doctors have ever seen cases of anthrax and smallpox, which are prime candidates for use in biological attacks. In 1980, the World Health Organization, a Geneva-based agency of the United Nations, certified the worldwide eradication of smallpox, a viral disease that had killed one in four victims. Smallpox vaccinations stopped, and now much of the world's population has little, if any, immunity against smallpox. The United States had stopped routine smallpox vaccination of civilians earlier, in 1972. About 15 million doses of the remaining vaccine were kept at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and smaller amounts in a few other countries. Dr. Henderson said in an interview that the United States stores should be increased by 20 million doses and speculated that the cost would be about $2 a dose. But Dr. Henderson stressed that the vaccine would be injected only if the bioterrorism threat materialized. Dr. Henderson also said that if more vaccine were ever needed, manufacturers should have capacity to produce it within several weeks, not the months it would now take. Smallpox vaccine was traditionally prepared in cows. But Dr. Henderson held out hope that an experimental vaccine prepared in test tubes might be used and that studies might find effective anti-viral drugs against smallpox, a disease that could not be treated. Dr. James Hughes, an official at the disease-control centers, said Dr. Henderson had asked "a good question." The initial victims of an attack with biological weapons would probably be buried before the correct diagnosis was made, the speakers said. Health officials should also designate where victims would be taken and how many isolation centers need to be set aside for their care in a bioterrorism attack, they said. The speakers also pointed to scientific ignorance about how to decontaminate areas where biological agents had been dispersed and when, if ever, it would be safe for residents to return to their apartments and homes and workers to their offices. Dr. Marcelle Layton of the New York City Health Department said that despite steps the city had taken in recent years, it was not ready for an attack. The Mayor's Advisory Task Force will soon conduct a larger drill than the one it held two weeks ago against an imagined release of anthrax bacteria. Despite such efforts, she said she was uncertain whether it was possible to be effectively prepared for such attacks. Dr. Michael Skeels of the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory recalled that the disease-control centers withheld for 12 years a report of the first bioterrorism attack in this country until it allowed publication in 1997. The attack involved 751 cases of salmonella infection among the 10,500 residents of The Dalles, Ore. after followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had deliberately contaminated restaurant salad bars. Initially, Dr. Skeels said, health officials did not consider the possibility of terrorism, and he advised others not to be so naive in the future. In providing a wake-up call, speakers said it was more prudent to prepare for what many hoped was the remote possibility of bioterrorism attacks than to continue to ignore the idea. Dr. David Franz of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., expressed a wider view in saying that "a prepared society acts as a deterrent to use of biological weapons." Earlier, Donna E. Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, told the meeting that her department had begun coordinating with other Federal and military agencies to insure proper training "to address the growing threat of potential bioterrorism" that could create the next worldwide epidemic. In welcoming the Secretary's efforts, several experts who spoke only on condition that their names not be used, said these steps should have come long ago. Scientific knowledge about biological attacks is limited because so few have occurred. In 1970, a rare natural outbreak caused by airborne transmission of smallpox virus occurred when a German electrician returned from Pakistan. He infected 19 people in several floors of the hospital, including visitor who had spent less than 1 minutes in the hospital and did not visit the patient. In 1972 in Yugoslavia, a pilgrim brought back smallpox from Iraq, infected 11 others, and they, in turn, infected 138 more people. The outbreak led to the emergency vaccination of 20 million people in less than two weeks. Also, 10,000 people who had contact with the infected patients were isolated for two weeks. Other countries closed their borders with Yugoslavia. [End] ---------- The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 1998, p. A22 A Biological Weapons Threat Worse Than Saddam By Joseph D. Douglass, Jr. What's most unfortunate about the continuing conflict with Iraq is that it diverts Western attention away from the broader problem of chemical and biological weapons world-wide -- and especially in Russia. In the long run, the Russian threat is far worse than the Iraqi one. While it's true that the current leadership in Moscow does not display Saddam's brutality, the Russian leadership could change overnight. Adding more arms-control treaties, such as the new Chemical Weapons Convention, won't solve the problem. Existing treaties are being flagrantly violated. Antiproliferation efforts are also futile, since all that is needed to build chemical or biological weapons is the knowledge in someone's head. The one remedy that does have promise is sunlight: The best way to discourage proliferation of these horrible weapons is to focus public attention on what is happening. But such information seldom gets aired in public. Indeed, over the years Washington officials have often covered up Moscow's efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons, fearful that public disclosure would undermine arms-control efforts. 52 Biological Agents This pattern has continued despite the end of the Cold War. Consider: Two weeks ago, ABC News's "PrimeTime Live" aired an interview with Kanatjan Alibekov, a Russian defector who had been a deputy director of Biopreparat, a massive Soviet (now Russian) biological warfare development program. Biopreparat employed more than 25,000 engineers, technicians and scientists developing biological agents, in blatant violation of arms-control treaties Moscow had signed. Mr. Alibekov told ABC the facility had developed 52 biological agents before he left in 1992 and had ballistic missile warheads loaded with plague, anthrax and smallpox intended for delivery against American cities. The program continued, notwithstanding evident instructions from President Boris Yeltsin to shut it down. Mr. Alibekov said he had written a long report for the CIA about this program. So why was that report not printed and distributed to every member of Congress and every U.S. newspaper? The CIA cannot be trying to hide it from the Russian government, which is well aware of what Mr. Alibekov knew. Such secrecy has typified the U.S. approach for three decades. In 1969 the CIA prepared a study on Soviet activities in developing chemical and biological weapons. According to Herb Meyer, former deputy director of the National Intelligence Council, the report was "removed" at the direction of then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, presumably so it would not interfere with arms-control efforts. In 1976, officials of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency questioned a top National Security Council official about new intelligence on Soviet violations of the 1972 agreements on chemical and biological weapons. The NSC official discounted the alleged violations and advised they be ignored, on the grounds that chemical and biological weapons had no strategic value that would warrant such violations. That same year, Luba Markish, a Soviet emigre, testified to Congress on the Soviets' use of students as unwitting guinea pigs in testing chemical and biological weapons. Emigre David Azbel confirmed her testimony and said the research was focused "on poison gases that act on the brain and the nervous system." In 1980 Soviet dissident Mark Popovskiy testified on the objectives of biological warfare programs headed by a top molecular biologist named Yuri Ovchinnikov. "If we bring to the Central Committee vaccines, nobody will pay attention," Popovskiy quoted Ovchinnikov as saying, "but if we bring a virus, oh, then this will be recognized by all as a great victory." No one ever pursued the matter, to my knowledge. In 1981 one of the authors of the suppressed 1969 CIA report gave a copy to Herb Meyer and suggested he read it. He did, and was so alarmed he took it in to CIA Director William Casey, who immediately went over to the White House to tell President Reagan about it. Nothing more happened. Members of the Army's intelligence unit, however, were gathering considerable information about the Soviet chemical and biological weapons program, and they took it upon themselves to brief appropriately cleared people. But after giving numerous such briefings, they were suddenly ordered to stop by the head of Army intelligence. In 1984 The Wall Street Journal editorial page published an impressive series of articles entitled "Beyond Yellow Rain" on biological weapons use in Indochina. Author William Kucewicz's findings echoed those of Army intelligence. From Washington there was no serious reaction. A few years later, top Pentagon scientists said there was no cause for concern. Significant Soviet developments, they insisted, were more than a decade away. But in 1989, when Vladimir Pasechnik the first defector from the Biopreparat program, emerged, intelligence specialists were horrified. The Soviet effort was more than 10 times as large as even the most pessimistic of them had estimated. The Bush administration's response was to keep the whole thing quiet and send a complaint through diplomatic channels. In 1992, when Mr. Alibekov confirmed what Mr. Pasechnik had said, the response was to negotiate with the Russian government. The objective may have been to avoid upsetting the chemical and biological arms control efforts President Bush had championed. This year's "PrimeTime Live" interview with Mr. Alibekov was important, but it left much out. There was no hint of overall Soviet development objectives, no discussion of the technology or of Soviet efforts to use genetic engineering. This may have been how they developed a new type of anthrax, reportedly resistant to U.S. vaccines. There have also been reports of their splicing the gene responsible for the toxic component in cobra venom into common organisms, making it easy to disseminate. We have also learned that the Russians have developed a weapon based on the Ebola virus. Other defectors have stated that experimental biological and chemical agents were tested on U.S. and South Vietnamese military bases during the Vietnam War. The experiments were so successful that the Soviets ended them prematurely, fearing that the Americans would learn what was happening. Other tests were run against U.S. military bases in Okinawa and in Europe, according to a Soviet defector. U.S. officials have tended to think, and arms-control negotiations have tended to focus on, lethal weapons and battlefield applications. But most of the Soviet, and now Russian, development efforts concerned other applications of chemical and biological weapons. Special institutes concentrated on the development of chemical and biological agents for assassinations. One objective was to mimic the effects of natural diseases; another was to render a person ineffective without killing him. The idea was that a disabled person would make bad decisions, which was better than killing him and having him replaced. A variety of such agents were intended for very focused military use -- special nonlethal agents for use against pilots, tank drivers, command posts and field commanders. The Soviets had a major effort to determine which U.S. airplane crashes in Vietnam were the result of their chemical agents. The Russians have stressed highly potent agents that required only trace quantities to have effect, agents and delivery techniques that would make highly selective attacks possible, and, in the case of biological agents, ones that could spread like the flu or plague and ones that the enemy would not know how to treat. There were special chemical agents for use against cities, agents that would work quickly, unlike plague or smallpox. Unwanted Stepchild U.S. defense planning for chemical and biological weapons has been the unwanted stepchild of the U.S. national security apparatus since 1969. Intelligence has generally been poor, since key officials did not want to find a threat that might breathe new life into U.S. offensive programs. The subject was also a no-no because it would embarrass the Russians and interfere with arms-control efforts. ABC News performed an important service in calling attention to the seriousness of the Russian chemical and biological threat. Now it's time for other news organizations -- especially investigative journalists in Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet republics -- to start digging into other aspects of the problem. There is plenty more left to be discovered and no end of leads to follow. Mr. Douglass is co-author of "America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Warfare" (Lexington Books, 1987). --------- The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 1998, pp. B1, B9. A Peek Inside a Giant Germ Warehouse By Rochelle Sharpe Rockville, Md. -- They keep anthrax bacteria in the basement of a faded red-brick building here. It isn't far from the yellow-fever virus, the botulism bacteria and some of the hundreds of organisms that cause the common cold. In fact, there are samples of 85,000 different fungi, viruses, cells, genes and bacteria here at the American Type Culture Collection, by far the largest of the 450 repositories of biological materials scattered around the globe. For most scientists, the ATCC is a household name, a biological department store that sells and stores specimens critical for research. Besides mailing cultures to laboratories around the world for a nominal fee, the nonprofit organization functions as a giant safety-deposit box for big corporations, universities and government labs that need to store substances securely -- and secretly. Founded in 1925 the ATCC is also the largest official warehouse for biological materials that scientists are trying to get patented. But outside the world of test tubes and petri dishes, the culture collection is known primarily for the 0.002% of its inventory that can be turned into deadly weapons, exactly the sort of biological agents that the U.S. government wants to keep out of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's hands. The ATCC legally shipped 10 vials of anthrax, botulism and other deadly substances to Iraqi scientists in the 1980s -- when the U.S. and Iraq were on much friendlier terms -- all with the Commerce Department's approval. In 1995, it mailed three vials of bubonic plague organisms to Larry Wayne Harris, the reputed white supremacist arrested last month for conspiring to possess the deadly anthrax bacteria. (Those charges were dropped after investigators determined the substance was a harmless anthrax vaccine. How Mr. Harris obtained the vaccine isn't clear; the ATCC says it didn't ship it to him.) In the 1995 case, a suspicious ATCC technician contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta days after shipping the plague organisms to Mr. Harris. Investigators discovered that Mr. Harris, a trained microbiologist had falsely claimed he owned the laboratory that had asked for the plague specimens. In that case, Mr. Harris pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and was sentenced to 18 months' probation. The incident prompted Congress to regulate -- for the first time -- the shipment of about 40 lethal infectious agents, including the Ebola, Lassa fever and Marburg viruses. Now, the ATCC can legally mail these deadly microbes only to labs that have registered with the U.S. government, paid it an annual fee of as much as $16,000, and agreed to follow quality-control procedures for safe storage and disposal. Under the 1996 antiterrorism legislation that established these regulations, the CDC was charged with assuring compliance. It will soon begin inspecting laboratories that take delivery of lethal microbes. Only a minuscule fraction -- or 0.03% of the 135,000 vials ATCC ships annually -- are lethal agents, says Raymond Cypess, its chief executive officer. The facility tracks every shipment it makes, of both lethal and harmless microbes. But some scientists doubt the new regulations can effectively deter terrorists. Seth Carus, an expert on biological warfare and visiting fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., describes the regulations as "a paperwork drill." For would-be terrorists, he says "it's a hurdle, but not a big hurdle." Moreover, the ATCC is hardly the only place in the world to obtain scary microbes. Of the 27 U.S. labs that experimented and published scientific papers on the bubonic-plague bacteria between 1993 and 1995, only four obtained their material from the ATCC, Dr. Cypess says, citing its search of scientific literature. In all, 54 culture collections in 25 countries, including Iran, stockpile the deadly anthrax microbe, according to a directory published by the World Federation of Culture Collections. Since 1994, the ATCC has mailed only five packages of lethal anthrax bacteria, all to U.S. research institutes studying the disease, which is common in livestock. Inside the ATCC's three-building complex, on a major thoroughfare in a commercial area of Rockville, potential terrorists would have a hard time finding deadly microbes, even if they could circumvent the various locks and alarm systems. Most of the 1.1 million vials of material are kept in massive stainless-steel vats filled with liquid nitrogen, some of which are chained and padlocked shut. Each vat contains racks of as many as 50,000 vials of frozen cells and microbes. Each tube is marked with a tiny numerical code that only a handful of ATCC employees can decipher. Even if a vial of material were stolen, it would be harmless unless someone had the exact equipment and materials needed to activate it from its inert, frozen state. Still, the ATCC's planned move later this month to Prince William County, Va. concerned a few officials there enough to prompt them to conduct safety investigations of their own. The county sheriff and a state legislator were worried that the company would become a magnet for terrorists. Neither, however, has pursued any active opposition to the relocation, which is being supervised by the CDC and other federal and local agencies. The ATCC is by far the largest culture collection in the world, shipping a greater quantity and variety of material than any other. Its closest competitor mails fewer than 10,000 vials annually, Dr. Cypess says. About 30% of the 135,000 vials the ATCC ships annually go to foreign countries. Among the most frequently requested materials are human kidney cells which can be used in a wide variety of research efforts. But 80% of the microbes remain in storage for decades before being requested. Such was the case with Thermus aquaticus, a microbe that had lingered at the facility for about 20 years before Nobel Prize-winning chemist Kary Mullis paid $31 for a specimen in the mid-1980s. With it he invented the process of DNA fingerprinting -- a patent worth millions of dollars. When scientists discover new biological agents, they donate specimens to the ATCC, Dr. Cypess says. In turn, the ATCC usually charges other researchers a fee ranging from $20 to $264 for samples. The ATCC also stores proprietary materials for food and pharmaceuticals concerns, for example, that are looking for the next product breakthrough. [Box] The American Type Culture Collection stores a smorgasbord of biological material for industrial and scientific uses. A sampling: Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast for making beer) Aspergillus oryzae (fungus for making soy sauce) Hybridoma 23 (cells used to produce antibodies that detect breast cancer) Hybridoma 703D4 (cells used to produce antibodies that detect lung cancer) Bacillus anthracis (bacteria for research on anthrax) Coccidioides immitis (fungus for research on coccidioidomycosis, a lung disease) [End]
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