FEATURE ARTICLE
The Growing Threat of Biological Weapons
The terrorist threat is very real, and it's about to get worse. Scientists should concern themselves before it's too late
Steven Block
The Smallpox Wildcard
All of which brings us to smallpox, the b??te noire of
bioweapons. Smallpox is a frequently lethal, highly contagious
disease caused by the variola major virus. By the end of the second
millennium, it had killed, crippled, blinded or disfigured one-tenth
of all humankind who ever lived. In one of the greatest achievements
of the 20th century, smallpox was finally eliminated after a
decade-long, worldwide health campaign, which was launched in 1967
under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), under the
direction of Donald A. Henderson (now the director of the Center for
Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University). The last
recorded case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977, and the
disease was officially declared eradicated in 1980.
Although there is no cure for smallpox, it can be prevented with a
vaccine derived from the vaccinia virus. The U.S. Public Health
Service recommends re-vaccination every 10 years, but since routine
vaccination of the U.S. population ended nearly 25 years ago, few
Americans retain immunity today. The current stocks of the vaccine
are negligible. Fortunately, there has been some recent action to
correct this state of affairs. As of last September, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have contracted for
a 40-million-dose stockpile of the vaccine. The first batches of the
vaccine are slated to be ready by 2004. However, some public-health
scientists have questioned whether such a "small"
stockpile is adequate. In the event of a simultaneous terrorist
attack on several major cities, hundreds of millions of doses might
be required to prevent the disease from spreading.
Whether terrorists could get access to the smallpox virus is still
an open question. At the end of the heroic WHO campaign frozen
stocks of the variola virus were maintained in trust by two
organizations: the CDC and Vector, the Russian State
Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo,
Novosibirsk, Russia. These stocks were originally scheduled to be
destroyed on December 31, 1993, but this date has been repeatedly
postponed as politicians and health officials debate the wisdom of
retaining or destroying the remaining virus, given the growing
bioweapons threat. For now, the decision has been deferred by the
WHO until 2002. A concern shared by many is whether the Russian
stocks are securely held. Ken Alibek has reported that Biopreparat
secretly prepared smallpox-based bioweapons up until at least 1992,
leading one to wonder how much viable smallpox virus might exist
outside the official Koltsovo depository. If any weaponized material
or viral stocks found their way to terrorist organizations, the
consequences could be disastrous. Simply put, smallpox represents a
direct threat to the entire world.
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