Science and Technology to Counter Terrorism Proceedings of an Indo-U.S. Workshop (2007) / Chapter Skim
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14 Twentieth-Century Legacy: The Challenge of Biological Threats to Twenty-First Century Bio-Medical Science and Society
14 Twentieth-Century Legacy: The Challenge of Biological Threats to Twenty-First Century Bio-Medical Science and Society
Pages 121-132
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From page 121... ...
It also discusses biodefense, a practical philosophy for moving forward, and the directions in which the United States is going and what some people in the United States are doing. Bioterrorism is fortunately an area where science and technology could have enormous positive impact and in which research on biodefense will also provide significant benefits for society at large in the realm of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases for which we are currently ill-prepared.
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From page 122... ...
The United States had a very large offensive biological weapons program, which it unilaterally abandoned in 1969, in the lead-up to the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. The Soviet Union had a truly enormous offensive biological weapons program.61 Now there are about a dozen countries that have been assessed as having, or are suspected of having, offensive biological weapons programs; without discussing details, suffice it to say that these programs and the people with the skills to run them do exist.
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From page 123... ...
Bush, taking Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Edward Shevardnadze to task, we addressed this problem, and were partly successful, in that at least the civilian side of the Soviet program was ‘dismantled.' Alas, what remains of their program, or should I say the ‘core' still lies within the confines of its origins in the Russian military establishments because of inspections impasses into which we were 123
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From page 124... ...
In psychological terms, infectious diseases have an enormous impact. This is especially true in the highly developed, so-called sophisticated societies of the West that regard themselves as largely invulnerable to infectious diseases.
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If we look closely at historical record, there have been approximately 200 incidents involving toxic biological materials in the last 100 years. Most of them were minor attempts at disruption.
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From page 126... ...
Suffice it to say that, since much of the crucial evidence remains sub judice, the perpetrators of this incident produced dry particulate agent with good enough aerosol characteristics to cause illness and death despite the poor dissemination method. The overall effect was widespread contamination of the environment wherever the agent was released or leaked from the letters.
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From page 127... ...
After the anthrax letter incidents, decontamination of the postal sorting office and the U.S. Senate office building alone cost an estimated $72 million, and this may be a conservative figure.
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From page 128... ...
public changed completely. In events involving infectious diseases, preparation and prevention are key to managing outbreaks.
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From page 129... ...
Public health care systems were built to protect us from infectious diseases in an era when people feared infectious diseases. Today, people do not fear infectious diseases, unless a resistant organism affects them or a relative, or if AIDS is an issue.
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From page 130... ...
Project BioSense, or biomedical data collection and fusion to detect pattern anomalies in human disease occurrence; (3) Project BioShield, which places more emphasis in the public health domain and covers the accelerated research, development, and procurement of medical countermeasures.
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The question of new and reemerging infectious diseases is now recognized as a rising global issue as well as a security threat. Infectious disease accounts for 25 percent of the deaths that occur annually worldwide.
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From page 132... ...
The defense systems that are proposed at the moment will not give us 100 percent protection, but then again no defensive system is 100 percent effective. Unlike most other costly defensive or weapons programs, preparedness for bioterrorism will pay dividends everyday because it increases our ability to combat the growing hazards of "ordinary" infectious disease.
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