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© Karl Simpson
 

Proliferation of biological weapons
risks and reality?

Given society's abhorrence of weapons of mass destruction in general - and familiarity with disease in particular - biological weapons (BW) will not be popular. Fear of natural plagues (Smallpox, Polio, HIV, Black Death, Ebola, Syphilis) is visceral and reaction to deliberate use will be considerable. Thus, it would be useful to address fundamental questions.
 

'What are the strategic objectives that might be assisted by the deployment and use of biological weapons?'


With the exception of toxins, BW cannot be immediately effective battlefield weapons. Living pathogens take from days to weeks to incubate. The strategic outcomes of toxin use are comparable to those of chemical weapons and invite similar outrage. However economic aggression - destroying food supplies or strategic capabilities - is another issue which might be ideally served by BW. What if future arms control efforts include BW targeted specifically at organic components of weapons systems (organic molecules might be degraded by genetically engineered bacterium)? For example a bacterium might be developed specifically to attack the lubricating oil used in a particular weapons platform (battle tank or jet fighter). Or if organic superconductors become widespread in highly developed societies, a microbe which destroys them might 'level the playing field' for a developing economy with access to advanced biology.

If the forces of law and order develop biological agents which destroy coca plants or opium poppies, should use of such agents be considered biological aggression? What if one sovereign state deploys such agents against the expressed will of another state harbouring cocaine production centres?

Capability means nothing without intent.
Intent is perhaps the most critical component of BW development. Every developed nation and many less developed nations have vaccine and biologicals production capability, associated specifically with public health objectives. These can be subverted - but how do we monitor such intent? My belief is that classical intelligence gathering is the main solution. Analysts, trained in both politics and biology would be an asset in this activity.

In the increasingly 'connected' economy of the planet - how does biology (and its potential for abuse) impact on the geopolitics of the 21st century? How are food production, public health, information management and economic growth linked?

Private sector industrial facilities are obliged to make money. Serving shareholders is simply not compatible with diverting resources to BW development - unless the shareholders want that. Who invests in industry? Where the primary shareholder is a government or terrorist movement there may be cause for concern!
 

The will, the means and the 'why?'
Thus two key elements contribute to the potential for proliferation of BW:
 


Unstated is the 'why?'. Why should any individual or organisation or state submit itself to the condemnation implicit in the use of BW? Since the dawn of recorded history the use of toxins and BW has attracted censure. Wherever written records of ancient warfare are encountered, in Egypt, India, Greece or the Roman Empire, nations and groups of nations have established accords proscribing the use of such weapons in war (although there seems to be a tolerance for use of toxins against individuals. No especial outrage is attracted by a wife killing her husband with rat poison!). The fact that such proscriptions were recorded, implies that the writers were aware of the consequences of such use and that there were those who ignored such proscriptions.

As an earlier article (The end of growth - worms and society) implied, society has evolved to a point where a radically different concept of growth must be envisaged. Warfare - like society - has evolved. Killing millions makes little sense when the old imperialist motivation itself is devoid of reason. Political power is in the process of becoming economic power.
 

Economic aggression

Although we tend to look at BW as an extension of swords, bombs and bullets, it can be something quite different. As Fidel Castro underlined recently (when a US registered light plane was perhaps seen to spray something over Cuban crops), an overflying aeroplane can deliver biological agents which eliminate agricultural productivity and impose an economic handicap. Even the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America stands almost naked before the risk of bio-economic aggression. Too many of America's standing crops are genetically homogeneous, offering a substantial risk of elimination by specific biological agents, naturally or deliberately disseminated. The 1969-70 Southern Corn Leaf Blight wiped out over 15% of the USA's maize crop. This was a wholly natural fungal infection. The 1845 Irish potato famine, also a fungal infection, decimated the economy of a nation, leading to wide-spread starvation and personal ruin. Only today - over 150 years later, in the 21st century - can Ireland be said finally to have emerged from the shadow of that affliction.

In the USA alone crop losses caused by microbial diseases and other parasites probably amount to between US$2 to 5 billion per annum (depending on how the financial impact is calculated and who is affected). A major harvest lost in the USA, or China, or India or Russia, represents an economic opportunity for those nations capable of exporting the missing staple food. Mismanagement of cereal harvests in the former Soviet Union provided a major source of income for European, Canadian and US cereal farmers.

So, there are two forms of BW, anti-human and anti-economy (including anti-animal). Most debate and interest centres on biological agents as anti-human weapons. Crops and animals too can be targets. In the First World War, British biologists studied the potential impact of anthrax on horse-drawn transport, which still provided the backbone of German military mobility at that time.

Economic aggression is difficult to identify
Most plants have some natural pest. Used peacefully this principle is exploited in the technology of 'biological control'. Generally speaking, biological control involves the identification of a natural pathogen affecting a nuisance species. On Lake Moondarra in Australia, a choking water hyacinth was eliminated by an amazonian beetle which specifically eliminated the hyacinth. With the disappearance of the water hyacinth the beetle had no alternative host and itself disappeared. In Israel and other parts of the world crop damaging insect pests are being attacked with natural bacterial pathogens such as Bacillus thuringiensis. Moving onwards to natural economic pests we can cite again the example of Southern Corn Leaf Blight in the USA or that of Veroa mites which are decimating commercial honey bees. If next year the USA loses half of its maize harvest, what can we do to establish a cause or malicious intent, when the pathological agent is widespread and natural? Clearly the evidence of a genetically engineered pathogen would be convincing, but it is rare that nature cannot herself do better than human genetic tinkering.
 

The will
 


The Gulf war between Iraq and allies of Kuwait illustrated that there are individuals willing to develop and deploy "weapons of mass destruction". This phrase is usually taken to refer to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It is widely understood that the appropriate ripostes for use of 'weapons of mass destruction' against a nuclear capable nation includes a retaliatory nuclear strike.

Appropriate responses?
What however, does this mean when a terrorist group within an allied sovereign nation executes the attack? Would the UK 'nuke' the USA because US terrorists used biological agents to disrupt an economic summit in London? The Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan did not limit its interest to chemical agents, such as sarin. Members of the sect travelled to Africa with the objective of obtaining samples of Ebola virus for culture in their laboratories. How would we identify an Ebola outbreak as malicious? What would be the appropriate riposte to a sect which wiped out half of the European population?

Treaties, such as the 'Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention' (BTWC) can only be imposed if there is a willingness to comply and a mechanism for ensuring compliance. At the level of sovereign nations, how can any nation, signatory to a treaty, ensure that its errant citizens obey such laws as are imposed by international obligations? The inability to ensure compliance has been a major weakness. Certain individuals or regimes will always exploit such weaknesses. Can a nation be punished for the wrongdoing of a single madman (as in Japan, Shoko Asahara leader of Aum Shinrikyo)? What if the madman is the ruler of that nation (as in Iraq, Sadaam Hussein)?

Will is a complex issue and invokes complex responses. If the will emanates from a head of state such as Sadaam Hussein, the tortuous path of implementation leaves a spoken, electronic and paper record. Such a record is the stuff of national intelligence gathering agencies. Reporting conversations and electronic eavesdropping of dangerous individuals is complemented by on-the-ground providers of human intelligence. Egos such as Hussein's will always generate antagonism which will be manifest by a desire to undermine such authority.

In a sect composed of willing fanatics, the paper trail and internal dissidence will be harder to pick up and exploit. In the case of a single madman there may be no trail confirming intent.

Today about 20 countries are suspected of having the will for BW development, according to the US Office of Technology Assessment. These most probably include Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Korea (North and South), Laos, Libya, Pakistan, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the ex USSR, in particular Russia which has still not allowed visits to all of its secret biological research centres (according to the April 2000 GAO Report; Biological Weapons - Effort to Reduce Former Soviet Threat...). Other nations might choose to add the USA to this list. It cannot be overlooked that every G7 nation - and many others with advanced health-care programmes - have the capability of moving from commercial fermentor-based production of vaccines and biologicals to offensive BW in just days.
 

The means

BW agents include viruses, bacteria, fungi, other organisms and toxic molecules. The very nature of living pathogens is to reproduce. Thus wherever there is a suitable host or culture medium, they can multiply from an undetectable background level. In reality it usually takes some thousands of bacteria or virus particles to trigger an active infection - or weeks for a parasitic fungus to wipe out a crop. This can eliminate the fighting power of an army or the productive power of an economy. The necessary response is the development of detection systems which can react reliably to the presence of virus, bacterium, fungal spore or molecule in a large volume of air or water, or food material (or blood transfusion, plasma or plasma derived medication etc.).

Were an individual, state or organisation to wish to make BW, how would they set about it? There are several key issues:
 


Given the above constraints and the nature of biological agents what next?

Access a suitable biological agent
Nature has shown that She is capable of developing the most horrendous pathological agents, such as HIV or Ebola viruses, not to mention scores of parasites, bacteria and fungi with pathogenic potential. There is no need to develop novel genetically engineered organisms, although the former USSR BW programme did show that genetic engineering could produce bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics! Almost every commercially relevant species has a number of natural pathogens. Man has thousands of known pathogens ranging from the common cold to Anthrax or HIV. If we consider all species of economic importance we have barely begun to identify all pathogens of relevance.

Many pathogens can legitimately be obtained from public and commercial repositories of micro-organisms. As a private individual, reasons should be suspect. This did not stop US citizen, Larry Harris, from ordering bubonic plague bacteria from a commercial supplier with his credit card as payment reference! He was only caught because he was impatient to take delivery and raised suspicions through his telephone enquiry barely days after placing his order.

For each objective a suitable agent! Clearly there is a difference between manipulating a terribly dangerous agent such as Ebola virus and a fungus which only attacks crop species. Ebola requires containment conditions which protect the manipulator, whereas plant-pathogenic fungi do not. However, the spread of plant pathogenic fungal spores and the resulting crop damage could indicate the location of the manipulator. Good training in laboratory hygiene could eliminate much of this risk.

How is it possible to trace the sourcing of pathological organisms?
 

Create a production capability

There is real potential for assembling a biological aggression capacity in complete secrecy. It is not a trivial issue, but obtaining the relevant 'dual-use' technologies will not necessarily stimulate the awareness of surveillance agencies.

Hundreds or thousands of companies conduct bona fide business in the supply of equipment and technologies which could be misapplied (fermenters, containment, piping, equipment etc.). Although some of the companies will have legitimate business in suspect states, normal export reporting practices probably limit their unwitting participation in untoward activity.

If I wished to set up a BW plant in a client organisation or state, I would probably avoid using established fermentation suppliers and bioindustry filtration experts. I would probably try to use chemical industry technologies adapted to biological applications and 'shell' biotech companies in Europe or the USA funded only to obtain access to technologies.

A biotech 'shell', that is a start-up biotech company, will be eagerly welcomed onto many of the world's burgeoning science parks. Not too many questions will be asked. If one day, no-one turns up for work and all the equipment is gone, what is there to do?

Clean room technologies represent the best chance of monitoring untoward activity. The very specific needs of biological containment make it probable that appropriate facilities would have to be continually re-supplied with filters and other consumables. Relevant anti-BW and anti-terrorist authorities might like to monitor legitimate P3 and P4 facilities to see just how important such consumables are. Where an order comes from a previously unknown client in a suspect location, concern might be justified.

How might the nature or need for biologicals facilities be dissimulated? Hospital clean room installations, antibiotics, vitamin, single cell protein manufacture - and perhaps unusual containment or air pressure needs for micro-electronics manufacture or aerospace. There is much in common between the controlled environment needs ('white rooms') of all 'clean' industries.

Monitoring production intent?

Storage, Delivery and weaponisation

Weaponisation and delivery of biological agents is non-trivial. Although some non-peptide toxins may share features with chemical agents, peptide-based and many other biological compounds show extreme sensitivity to heat (upper temperature limit say 55 °C) and chemical conditions (pH, solvent etc.). Proteins, nucleic acids and living organisms are even more sensitive, although some microbial spores and viruses are quite tolerant. Living agents cannot easily be stockpiled in weapon form - they rapidly consume nutrients and die off, even at the lowest temperatures compatible with metabolism. Perhaps 1 month would be an outside figure for stockpiling of living weapons (as opposed to cultures). Clearly non-living agents (viruses) and some microbial spores (anthrax) are more rugged. Classical delivery systems (projectiles) are not well adapted. The crop spraying aircraft might usefully serve, but this suffers from obvious drawbacks.

Look at efforts to deliver vaccines. 'Cold chain' considerations have been a primary contribution to the non-eradication of polio. If, with the best will in the world, the developed nations cannot deliver health-care to the poorest, how will our enemies, or terrorists, store and ship BW to potential theatres of conflict. How will they then be delivered by a weapons platform? If the military agencies say this is not an issue, we might ask them to take over polio eradication efforts!
 

In conclusion

Thankfully BW remains more of an issue than a current reality. However efforts to develop such weapons in the former USSR and in Iraq demonstrate that society requires a platform for monitoring such activity. The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention underscored the then current concerns about such activity and led most nations to abandon BW development. However the BTWC has no teeth. It relies on sovereign nations honouring a bit of paper. Recently steps have been taken to give teeth to the BTWC by introducing a protocol which would permit active verification of compliance along the lines of the chemical weapons convention. Unfortunately it appears - for the moment - that key nations are unwilling to implement the protocol. This is a pity for an effective protocol, backed by an independent verification agency, would offer reassurance to many.

Biology is a key component of any nation's economy. Some 30% of global economic activity (ignoring recent inflation of the economy by 'virtual' stocks) is based on agro-food activity, forestry, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, fisheries, bio-energy resources etc. etc.. Arguably there should be a re-valuation of biological production.

Activities in the area of the life sciences, especially as expressed in the modern pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors have led to concerns about the BTWC. Will compliance measures limit the ability of bona fide commercial ventures to conduct confidential R&D leading to better health and food production for all?

The rush to implement a BTWC verification protocol has raised concerns not just in developed world companies, but also in developing nations, which see yet another G7 mechanism for blocking economic growth and access to new technologies.

All well-intentioned nations and individuals understand the need for a BTWC with teeth, but the recent rush to action has perhaps failed to acknowledge key needs and concerns of both sovereign nations and internationally active health-care and food production companies. I believe that the demise of the current round of negotiations is a regrettable necessity, for a treaty cannot be meaningfully enacted if only a minority of nations signs up.

Perhaps a verification protocol can be delivered within the next five years. In the meantime the will to engage in public debate and negotiations highlights the issue and incidentally achieves many of the goals sought.

Weapons are undesirable, but that simple statement ignores the reality that there is a continuum between weapons and tools that benefit society. Gunpowder kills, but it also provides a powerful tool for economic exploitation of valuable resources. Botulinum toxin kills, but it is also a wonderful medication for a number of neurological and neuro-muscular ailments.

A healthy society is one which confronts its ethical issues. On balance our society is doing things right with regard to the proliferation of biological weapons. The risk is real, but the reality - so far - shows that we control those risks.

A Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention with an effective verification protocol will be an asset for all of us, but it must have the support of society if it is to achieve its goals.

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