Bioterror Ghost Stories

Noah at DefenseTech.org points out this Technology Review article on "The Knowledge" - a repeat of the many stories on how terrorists are going to take biotech knowledge and unleash it upon the unsuspecting public, causing mass casualty cases.

There is growing scientific consensus that biotechnology -- especially, the technology to synthesize ever larger DNA sequences -- has advanced to the point that terrorists and rogue states could engineer dangerous novel pathogens.

In February, a report by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council of the National Academies entitled "Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences" argued, "In the future, genetic engineering and other technologies may lead to the development of pathogenic organisms with unique, unpredictable characteristics." Pondering the possibility of these recombinant pathogens, the authors note, "It is not at all unreasonable to anticipate that [these] biological threats will be increasingly sought after...and used for warfare, terrorism, and criminal purposes, and by increasingly less sophisticated and resourced individuals, groups, or nations." The report concludes, "Sooner or later, it is reasonable to expect the appearance of "bio-hackers.'"

Bullshit. This is the prime example of why you shouldn't let scientists evaluate issues of terrorism or military combat just because the weapon's lethality derives from the hard sciences. As Milton Leitenberg pointed out in his writings (see previous post), it's much harder for a terrorist group to develop, produce, and disseminate a BW agent, even if they're well-funded and actively seeking the capability. If you look at the record, over a thirty year period (1975-2005) there have been two successful BW terrorist incidents - one in 1984 when 751 people got sick from samonella poisoning in Oregon (and take a guess at the annual US rate of samonella poisoning today - much higher) and 2001 with the anthrax incident - 5 dead, 17 infected but lived. What have all the terrorists been doing over this thirty years, when all the equipment and knowledge has been out there?

Aum Shinrikyo had unlimited funds and time to get equipment through front companies - they had good facilities, four years of uninterrupted work using grad students in the hard sciences, and access to Soviet technology and assistance. They failed to produce bot tox or anthrax, they couldn't get Q fever or Ebola, and they couldn't do genetic engineering. Al Qaeda - uninterrupted time of years in Afghanistan, access to equipment and technical assistance through Pakistan, money was no object, they were certainly interested - and they couldn't make anthrax or bot tox. If these two terrorist groups couldn't make BW agents, then there's obviously a flaw with the article's claim that "it's not a question of if..."

Fortunately, Technology Review had the good sense to offer a rebuttal to the usual "sky is falling" cry about bioterrorism - see here.

To predict accurately the effects of bioweapons, data are needed on the amount of agent required to infect a person, the percentage of people who survive an infection (which depends on the health of the population), the transmission rate if the agent is contagious, the ability to aerosolize and disperse an agent effectively (which depends, in turn, on climatic conditions), the environmental stability of an agent, the population density, and the abilities of the public-health system, including when an attack is detected and whether prophylactics, vaccines, or antidotes exist and, if so, in what quantities.

For any one pathogen -- even one familiar to us, like smallpox and anthrax -- not all of these variables are known, and therefore quantitative predictions are not possible with a high degree of certainty. In the words of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in a 2002 report, "these factors produce an irreducible uncertainty of several orders of magnitude in the number of people who will be infected in an open-air release."
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While a state-sponsored program might have the means to do that work, terrorist groups probably don't. With so much uncertainty surrounding the outcome of a bioweapons attack, it does not make sense to plan extensive biodefense programs when more-certain threats, particularly those involving nuclear weapons, require attention.

Bottom line - BW agents are dangerous, but terrorist groups haven't been successful in developing an effective mass casualty weapon. They might use toxins and industrial chemicals in attacks, but those cases are going to result in small casualties, the same kind one might get from explosives or conventional firearms. So let's stop the doomsday predictions, shall we?

Comments

[CKR]

There's a difference in how scientists and terrorists view the world.

When a group of us at my place of work started thinking about terrorism in the 1970s, it took some time to get out of our "scientist" mindset.

That mindset partakes of the academic competition to prove that I'm smarter than you. So a scientist first confronted with the idea of bioterrorism asking her/himself how she/he'd plan an attack tends to focus on one or a few characteristics that are most familiar, and to work them up into something elegant.

Hence the emphasis on genetic engineering in these scenarios from scientists: it's the current hot thing for an academic, and even in money-making biotech.

But as we worked out scenarios with all those details (which can still be used to make a threat look much more dangerous than it it), it became clear that terrorists would seek weapons that can easily be prepared with equipment and materials you can buy in your local hardware store and supermarket and whose development can be hidden.

The degree of effectiveness and numbers of deaths that a terrorist would want depend on their objectives. Back in the 1970s, those objectives were more limited. Even now, we ought to be asking whether enormous death and destruction are the only objectives terrorists are going for.

In any case, ANFO rules.

[Mark Pontin]

"f you look at the record, over a thirty year period (1975-2005) there have been two successful BW terrorist incidents."

If you look at the record, before the Wright brothers flew in 1903 there were no flights of powered, heavier-than-air craft. Then the technology changed. You have no idea how fast biotechnology -- especially the technologies of synthetic and computational biology are now advancing. The comparison is somewhat 'apples and oranges', but when you graph the pace and proliferation of their advances, these technologies are now outpacing Moore's Law and IT.

Just how much easier does all this make biological manipulation? The Whitehead Institute at MIT, for instance, was a couple of years ago employing Tibetan immigrants, who possessed absolutely no technical backgrounds and had been in the US for six months, to do the routine work of running their DNA synthesizer batteries. The advance, proliferation and increase in ease of use of these technologies is happening very fast. It's nonsensical to point to a time before these technologies existed and claim that it provides a reliable indication of what the future will bring.

Besides pounding out the usual cliches about why biological weapons wouldn't work without thinkng them through, you're also cherrypicking from what Milton Leitenberg and that Tech Review article said to support those cliches. Leitenberg and the Tech Review article both point to the fact that there is no non-dual use biotechnology (for instance, gene therapy and bioweapons both employ viral vectors)and both point out that current US biodefense research effectively represents a massive upswing in research into bioweapons applications. Neither Leitenberg and the Tech Review article buy into the current bioterror hype. Both point out that bioweaponeering has historically been the province of nation-states and militaries, and that this is likely to continue.

Genomics has in the last five years unleashed a revolution in targeting specificity. The potentials are vast and unprecedented. In terms of bioweapons applications, what we are looking at today is not your father's germ warfare. Any biological effect can, in principle, be targeted and turned off or on -- memory, schizophrenia, etc. This is 2006, for all that many of us still think as we did in 1996 or earlier. We are in the biotech century, which will likely be at least as disruptive as the 19th century's industrial revolution and will have its dark side.

[J.]

My correlation with the 1975-2005 period is that this is when terrorism grew up and cut its teeth on the public, and all through this time period, there were those doomsayers suggesting that because biotech was increasing and global economy was expanding, bioterrorism was inevitable. Yet nly two successful events, and very small ones at that. Yes, maybe sometime in the future, someone will. But Jonathan Tucker and Milton Leitenberg both make powerful arguments why mere technology availability isn't enough to create a bioterrorist event, and why the US response is both overly hyped and actually dangerous to ourselves.

[George Larson]

I agree that it is going to get much easier to create pathogens, but creating one that would be useful to terrorists is something else. Not only must it be theoretically effective it must really work in the real world. A deadly disease that does not infect its victim when spread by the terrorist is not going to be effective problem. A highly infectious agent that the environment neutralizes or is neutralized by its metod of dissemination is not going to be effective. An agent with a brief storage life is not desirable. A terrorist needs to weaponize his agent and that takes more than genetic engineering expertise. It takes time and realistic testing on an extensive basis. Ideally it will require people experienced in dealing with the specific problem and fortunately they are few and getting fewer. What is the best way to spread it to minimize his risk and maximize its effectiveness? This is not a problem that lends itself to theoretical solutions. How can the perfected agent be produced in a safe way without reducing the very deadly properties you want to enhance? It is far easier for a terrorist to be effective with small arms, high explosives, chemical weapons or nuclear weapons than biological weapons. I think biological terrorism will be a black swan for a long time into the future. We can’t ignore it, but there are better and easier means available to our enemies.

[Alex]

It's the economics (stupid). Biological weapons cost serious money, take a long time to prepare, and are subject to large upside and downside risks - it is likely to either oversucceed or fail. Not to mention the risk of getting the germ yourself and the fact that it will burn your bridges politically.

Homemade explosives are cheap, certain and controllable. And with systems targeting, not so much less destructive.

[George Larson]

Goodpoint! Yes, it boils down to economics. I really like your term: oversucceed.

[J Thomas]

I agree with everybody here.

It will continue to get easier to create new organisms with unpredictable effects. Very likely these things will usually be mostly harmless.
we owe it to the Iraqi people to do the best we can for them here on out.
It's expensive to get something "weaponised", arranged so you can infect a bunch of people who won't themselves be particularly infective. And then the result of that expensive work is likely not much more than far cheaper explosives.

On the other hand something might come up with is very good at infecting people by itself. Cheap to get it started, but if you have a population somewhere in the world you want to protect from it, you don't know how ahead of time. You don't know what you've got until it's gone, until it's spreading. If it happens to spread at all.

This is not a good weapon for terrorists, unless their political goals are limited to revenge on the world population. Something on the order of "You watched while my people were genocided and did nothing. You can all come join us." And even then it's very very unreliable. But on the other hand we can't rely on it to fail.

[J Thomas]

I don't know where that inserted line came from.

we owe it to the Iraqi people to do the best we can for them here on out.

It was in my insert buffer, I was quoting somebody in a different context, half an hour ago. Maybe my 3-year-old in my lap triggered it when I didn't notice.