| "In recent
meetings with national and local hospital authorities,
current capabilities of the medial system in the US to
deal with sudden surges in demand such as might follow
release of a biological weapon were explored. Such a
release would result in an epidemic that would stress
the system not unlike the way it would be stressed by a
pandemic of severe influenza. From these meetings, it is
evident that the elasticity of the nation's bed supply
has been significantly reduced as drives for financial
efficiency and the increasing use of out-patient
procedures have sharply reduced the numbers of beds in
all hostpitals... Few have either the resources or
motivation to prepare to respond to the challenges posed
by mass casualties due to any cause."
(International
Symposium on Respitory Viral Infections )
- 03 Dec 2000
" A bioterrorist
event presents an entirely different scenario, one that
is alien to civil authorities. Epidemics of serious
diseases such as are anticipated are wholly unknown to
American cities. Unlike an explosive or chemical event,
the bioweapons release would be silent and almost
certainly undetected. The aerosol cloud would be
invisible, odorless and tasteless. It would behave much
like a gas in penetrating interior areas. No one would
know until days or weeks later that anyone had been
infected."
(Testimony
Delivered to the Committee on Labor, Health and Human
Services ) - 16 Mar
1999
“We are ill-prepared
to deal with a terrorist attack that employs biological
weapons. In countering civilian terrorism, the focus has
almost wholly been on chemical and explosive weapons. A
chemical release or a major explosion is far more
manageable than the biological challenges posed by
smallpox or anthrax… The specter of biological weapons
use is an ugly one, every bit as grim and foreboding as
that of a nuclear winter.”
(Taken
from “Bioterrorism as a Public Health Threat”,
Emerging Infectious Diseases ) - 01
Sep 1998
"How widely and
quickly should… vaccine be used? Were vaccine to be
limited strictly to close contacts of confirmed cases,
comparatively few doses would be needed. However, the
realities of dealing with even a small epidemic would
almost certainly preclude such a cautious, measured
vaccination effort. Vaccine researves would rapidly
disappear, and there is, at present, not manufacturing
capacity to produce additional vaccine. If an emergency
effort were made to produce new stocks of smallpox
vaccine, many months to a year or more would be
required."
(Emerging
Infectious Diseases, "Bioterrorism as a Public
Health Threat" ) - 01
Jul 1998
"In the longer
term, we need to be as prepared to detect, diagnose,
characterize epidemiologically, and respond
appropriately to biological weapons use as to the threat
of new and reemerging infections. In fact, the needs are
convergent. We need at international, state, and local
levels a greater capacity for surveillance; a far better
network of laboratories and better diagnostic
instruments; and a more adequate cadre of trained
epidemiologists, clinicians, and researchers."
(Emerging
Infectious Diseases, "Bioterrorism as a Public
Health Threat" ) - 01
Jul 1998
"Specialists in
infectious diseases thus constitute the front line of
defense. The rapidity with which they and emergency room
personnel reach a proper diagnosis and the speed with
which they apply preventive and therapeutic measures
could spell the difference between thousands and perhaps
tens of thousands of casualties. Indeed, the survival of
physicians and health-care staff caring for the patients
may be at stake. However, today few have ever seen so
much as a single case of smallpox, plague, or anthrax,
or, for that matter, would recall the characteristics of
such cases."
(Emerging
Infectious Diseases, "Bioterrorism as a Public
Health Threat" ) - 01
Jul 1998
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W A S H I N G T
O N, March 19 — Should the last known
samples of the smallpox virus be destroyed? Should the killer microbes be
preserved for medical research? Or, should the vials of virus be locked
away in case a future enemy develops it into a biological weapon?
Those are the questions at the heart of a
scientific and national-security debate that’s reached the highest
levels of the U.S. government. Officials are concerned that, 20 years
after smallpox was eradicated, the virus could resurface as a weapon of
terror.
“One does not wish to think in terms of having
that virus return,” says epidemiologist Donald A. Henderson, chief of
the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian BioDefense Studies. “I think it
would be an absolute catastrophe.”
Officials are most concerned that Russia has
secretly stored samples of the deadly virus, possibly for use as a
biological weapon.
Nearly two years ago, the World Health
Organization recommended incinerating all known stocks of smallpox virus,
which were supposed to be collected and consolidated in two places: a
remote Russian biological warfare lab in Siberia known as “Vector,”
and in a highly-secure storage facility at the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
But, says Henderson, officials have since learned
that at least two other centers in Russia have the smallpox virus.
“So the question is now, do we still proceed
ahead to request that all stocks of virus be destroyed or not?”
Experts
Weigh Pros and Cons
Incineration of the remaining stocks of smallpox virus is scheduled for
June 30. The plan is supposed to undergo a final review at a meeting in
May of the 190 members of the WHO’s World Health Assembly in Geneva.
At an executive committee meeting last January,
U.S. representatives said they planned to vote for the virus’
incineration. The Russians opposed destroying their stocks of smallpox.
Amy Smithson, director of the chemical and
biological weapons project at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington,
has no doubts about what the U.S. should do: Maintain its small stock of
live virus.
“If you know anything about Soviet military
strategy, when they do anything, they do it big,” she told ABCNEWS.com.
“There is a strong possibility that they produced huge amounts of
smallpox vaccine.”
Destroy
the Virus Stockpile
Henderson is one of a chorus of scientists who believes the known virus
stocks in Russia and the United States should be incinerated.
“The issue is,” Henderson told ABCNEWS, “if
you do destroy it in the known laboratories and you ask all countries to
put the pressure on, are you in some way going to minimize the risk of
smallpox virus being used as a bio-terrorist weapon? And there are some of
us, and I am one of them, who feel that this would be beneficial. That way
we could minimize the risk of having smallpox used again or let it be
loose again” by destroying the known stocks.
Is it really possible to verify if the Russians
actually destroyed their virus? Quoting former President Ronald Reagan,
Amy Smithson says, “trust, then verify.” Henderson says that trust is
easier than verification, since with biological weapons, it’s “very,
very difficult to know whether they are there.”
Still, Henderson does not believe the United
States should retain any samples of the virus. He says we don’t need it
for research purposes and “it is of no consequence to national security,
unless we wanted to contemplate using the virus itself as a bio-weapon. I
do not think we would do that.” 
Investigative reporter Howard L. Rosenberg is a producer for ABCNEWS’
20/20, an author and writer for numerous newspapers and magazines.
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History
of Smallpox
The smallpox virus
can be spread from person to person. Once infected, a victim
usually suffers a fever and rash that begins as small bumps and
grows into pus-filled scabs.
After a global vaccination program that
lasted nearly two decades, smallpox was officially declared
eradicated in 1980. The last known case of the disease,
characterized by disfiguring facial pustules was recorded in Great
Britain in 1978.
Ironically, it is because smallpox no
longer exists around the world that it is such a potentially
lethal biological weapon. Unlike its viral cousins, chickenpox or
cowpox, smallpox is lethal to upwards of 25-30 percent of those
infected. In an unexposed population — which is now the world
— it could spread like deadly wildfire.
Smallpox has long been recognized as a
particularly potent biological weapon. The Spanish Conquistadores,
spread smallpox among native tribes in what is now Mexico and
Central America, wiping out entire civilizations.
And what if the Russians or some other
rogue nation developed a vaccine-resistant, genetically-engineered
version of the smallpox virus? Medical experts agree that such a
strain could be sequenced for its genetic make-up, and a vaccine
developed to counter it. Smallpox vaccine can be produced without
live smallpox virus.
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