Still a Threat to the United States

The ten percent anniversary of the 9/1 1 attacks prompted reflections on the current precondition of the terrorism curse to the United States. One aspect of an assessmentthe threat posed by biological weaponsis especially challenging because of the unique division of these weapons. A prime distinction is the fact that exposure to minute quantities of a biological federal agent may go unnoticed, yet ultimately be the cause of disease and death.The Incubation period of a microbial agent can be days or weeks unlike a bombing, knifing, or chemical dispersion, a bioattack might not be ecognized until eagle-eyed after(prenominal)(prenominal) the agents release. Accordingly, bioterrorism poses distinctive challenges for preparedness, protection, and response. The use of a pathogen for hostile purposes became a consuming concern to the American flock soon after 9/1 1 . About a half-dozen letters containing splenic fever spores were send to Journalists and polltlclans beginning one week after the jetliner attacks.Four letters with spores and threat messages finally were recovered. All were postmarked Trenton, natural Jersey, which meant that they had been processed at the postal distribution decoct in nearby Hamilton. Two letters were postmarked September 18, one turn to to Tom Brokaw at NBC-TV and an otherwise to the editor of the New York Post. The other dickens letters were stamped October 9 and addressed to Senators Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy. As people became infected in September, October and November, local responses revealed gaps in preparedness for a biological attack.For example, the cast one confirmation of an anthrax case was on October 4, much than 2 weeks after the initial letters were mailed. Retrospective assessments later indicated that by and then ennead people had already contracted the disease. Their illness earlierly had been misidentified because of faulty diagnoses or erroneous research laboratory In the end, at least 2 2 people had become infected, five of whom died. Meanwhile, scores of buildings were belatedly plunge to be colly with spores that had leaked from the letters.At least 30,000 people who were deemed at risk required prophylactic antibiotics. 2 Millions more were fearful, many of them anxious astir(predicate) opening their own mail. Since the anthrax attacks, the U. S. disposal has spent close to $60 billion on biodefence. A big(p) portion of those dollars has gone to biological defence inquiry under he protective covering of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The NIAID work out for biodefence research has grown from $200 million in 2001 to an annual average of $1. 6 billion since 2004.United States safer from a bioattack now than at the term of the anthrax attacks? Has the spending been worth it? Key Questions, Discrepant Answers Opinions on these questions differ. While touch about the danger of backsliding, the authors of an article in P olitico now matte reassured about our preparedness for a biological attack. 3 At the same time, an opposing assessment was emblazoned in he title of a New York Times Magazine cover story Ten Years later on the Anthrax Attacks, We Are Still Not Ready. 4 A come off of biodefense efforts during the other(prenominal) 10 years in Science magazine blandly acknowledged the obvious debate continues over how much safer the country The congressionally chartered Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (WMD Commission) issued a report card in 2010 on efforts to address slightly(prenominal) of its previous recommendations. The administrations failure to enhance the nations capabilities for rapid response to revent biological attacks from inflicting mass casualties deserve a grade of F (meaning that no action was taken on this recommendation).Almost as bad was the D* given for continuing inadequate vigilance of senior game school-containm ent laboratories. Reasonable arguments can be made to support wide-ranging views about these issues, and all conclusions bear a degree of subjectivity. Yet an assessment of several broad critical contentions can offer clarification. The criticisms are largely explicit in the form of five contentions. lean 1 Funding for biodefense has meant fewer dollars for other deserving reas such as public health infrastructure and basic science research.In 2005, 758 microbiologists signed a letter to Elias Zerhouni, then director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), objecting to the diversion of funds from public health research to biodefense projects. Zerhouni, Joined by NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, rejected the letters put in of diversion. An assessment of disputed interpretations suggested that spending on biodefense benefited non-biodefense research as well, but the numbers were so convoluted that a clear intention was elusive. 7 An analysis of the biodefense budget for fisc al year 2012 indicates that tho 10% of the proposed $6. billion is dedicated exclusively to civilian biodefense. The other 90% is for projects with both biodefense and non-biodefense implications. The non- biodefense goals, according to analysts Crystal Franco and Tara Kirk Sell, include advancing other areas of science, public health, healthcare, national pledge, or international security. 8 This tilt toward dual-track benefits has been reflected in by budgets as well. A report in Nature magazine indicated that of the $60 billion pent on biodefense in the past decade, only about $12 billion went for programs pose benefited substantially from biodefense projects.Fiscal woes in new years have in fact resulted in rock-bottom resources for public health and related programs. Economic pressure threatens to shrink biodefense mount as it does funding for much else in the federal budget however, it is not clear now, nor was it in the past, if fewer dollars for biodefense would neces sarily scan into more for public health, basic research, or any other health-related programs. Contention 2 The growing number of facilities for research on take up agents qualify pathogens and toxins) has heightened chances of an accidental release. Statistics alone make this assertion unassailable.The chances of something going wrong in any enterprise, assuming no change in operational security, growing with the size of the enterprise. As the number of research facilities increases, so does the chance of an accident. A continuing weakness is the lack of clarity about the number of high security laboratories. In 1983, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) designated four levels of pencil eraser for laboratory work with biological agents. A Biosafety Level-I (BSL-I) laboratory allows for work on relatively innocuous agents and a BSL-4 laboratory on the most dodgy.The 2 highest containment facilities, BSL-3 and BSL-4, require special security measures including restricted access, negative pressure to restrain halo from flowing out of the room, and protective outerwear for operators. BSL-4 laboratories require supernumerary safeguards such as entry through multiple air-locked rooms and imperious pressure outerwear with a segregated air supply. A BSL-4 laboratory is required for work on agents that cause lethal disease for which here(predicate) is little or no treatment (for example, smallpox and hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola and Marburg).At present, there are 15 such U. S. facilities planned or in operation, triple the number operating in 2001. 10 Other chancy agents, including the bacteria that cause anthrax and plague, are worked on in BSL-3 laboratories. The number of these laboratories has skyrocketed since 2001, although the actual figures are uncertain. While an estimated 20 BSL-3 facilities were operating before the anthrax attacks, in the decade since the number has grown to between 200 and an astounding 1,400 or ore. 11 T he huge discrepancy is attributable in part to varied methods of calculation.Some assessments have counted all BSL-3 laboratories in an institution as a whiz BSL-3 facility, while others have designated each laboratory as a remove entity. Furthermore, some laboratories with a BSL-3 designation may lack safety features found in others, such as double doors and a requirement that two persons must be present. No national authority is now appoint to mandate a single system of counting or that even the lowest estimated number of BSL-3 laboratories (200) represents a 10- old increase in the past 10 years, and that safety precautions at some BSL-3 facilities are less morose than at others.Contention 3 The growing number of investigators with knowledge about subscribe to agents has increased the chances that an unsavory scientist could launch a bioattack. Along with more high containment facilities has come more scientists who handle select agents. Concern about dangerous individuals a mong them was heightened in 2008 when the FBI named Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Ivins was a veteran scientist who for decades had worked on anthrax at the U. S.Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Before charges could be brought he committed suicide, so his evil or innocence could never be established in a court of law. Still, evidence of his aberrational behavior, including alcoholism, depression, and self-described bouts of paranoia, evidently went unnoticed by his superiors. The Ivins case highlighted questions about the screening of workers with ready access to select agents. The number of those workers Just introductory to the anthrax attacks has been estimated at about 700.By 2008, however, the figure had climbed to more han As some have suggested, the greater numbers mean that the odds of one of them turn of events out to be a bad apple has increased. 13 Ironically, Ivins was not a new ly minted investigator, but a long-respected fgure in the armys biodefense program. Days after Ivins death, a USAMRIID spokesperson acknowledged that officials may have been unaware of his problems because they relied in part on self-reporting. 14 In 2011, a mental health review panel concluded that Dr.Ivins had a significant and lengthy history of psychological disturbance and diagnosable mental illness at the time he began working for USAMRIID in The Ivins case has raised concerns that other troubled or nefarious individuals might be working in U. S. laboratories. A recent government-sponsored forum on biosecurity called for periodic behavioral evaluations of personnel with access to select agents that include drug testing, searches for criminal history, and completion by selectees of a security questionnaire. 16 Even while acknowledging the necessity of security measures, the right to privacy and independence of scientific inquiry must be respected to the extent possible. In any case, behavioral monitoring can never provide living protection against the acts of a lever miscreant. Contention 4 Money for biodefense has been misapplied or otherwise failed to produce desired results. Project BioShield was established by congress in 2004 to acquire medical countermeasures against biological, chemical, and radiological vaccines and other drugs that have not necessarily been tested for efficacy on humans.Beyond the loss of time and money, the VaxGen failure was a public embarrassment. It became a symbol of ineptness proterozoic in the new program. Other biosecurity programs have also drawn criticism, including a $534 million surveillance project called BioWatch. This program included the placement of air amplers for detection of anthrax spores and other agents in more than 30 major(ip) U. S. cities. A committee convened by the National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2010 that the program was faced with serious technical and operational challenges. Others fla tly criticized its funding as wasted.