Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about the dangers of bioterrorism (germ warfare), in which some random group of fanatics gets the world’s attention by, say, using a crop-duster plane to spray Washington, D.C., with anthrax and wipe out a couple hundred thousand people. The articles say we’re totally unprepared, it’s just a matter of time, etc. But so far all the terrorism I hear about involves the usual bombs and bullets. What’s up, Cecil? Should I invest in face masks and tropical-disease inoculations, or will the Kevlar body armor be enough?
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A recent breakthrough has made it possible to create a “designer flu” using genetic engineering techniques. In an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org/cgi/ content/full/97/11/6108), Erich Hoffmann and associates describe an ingenious, but in principle not all that complicated, procedure that could be used to take a garden-variety flu virus and convert it into, say, the virulent strain that killed 20 million to 40 million people in the pandemic of 1918-’19. By enabling scientists to re-create strains of flu that currently seem threatening, the Hoffmann technique will speed production of the flu antibodies used in vaccines. But you can see where it would be handy for terrorists too.
Fears of bioterrorism are based in part on the revelation that prior to its collapse the Soviet Union had created a vast scientific enterprise called Biopreparat to develop biological weapons. With 50,000 employees at 47 secret facilities, Biopreparat assembled an immense stockpile of deadly biological agents (historical info from Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett, published this year). Following the Soviet collapse, the 50,000 workers drifted away. Where are they now? For that matter, where are the lethal bugs? Nobody’s sure. What with possible rogue scientists, designer germs, and the usual homicidal zealots on the prowl, lots of people are quaking in their Hush Puppies.
