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March 2006

The Knowledge

Continued from page 10

By Mark Williams
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Even those who are intimately involved with biodefense often support this view. For an insider's perspective, I contacted Jens Kuhn, the Harvard Medical School virologist. The German-born Kuhn has worked not only at Usamriid, and at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, but also -- uniquely for a Westerner -- at Vector.

Kuhn, like Ebright, is no fan of how the biodefense boom is unfolding. "When I was at Usamriid, it exemplified how a biodefense facility should be," he told me. "That's why I'm worried -- because the system worked, and the experts were concentrated at the right places, Fort Detrick and the CDC. Now this expertise gets diluted, which isn't smart."

Kuhn believes, nevertheless, that some kind of national biodefense program is needed. He just doesn't think we are preparing for the right things. "Everybody makes this connection with bioterrorism, anthrax attacks, and al-Qaeda. That's completely wrong." Kuhn recalled his time at Vector and that facility's grand scale. "When you look at what the Russians did, those kinds of huge state programs with billions of dollars flowing into very sophisticated research carried on over decades -- they're the problem. If nation-states start a Manhattan Project to build the perfect biological weapon, we're in deep shit."

But doesn't modern biotechnology, I asked, allow small groups to do unprecedented things in garage laboratories?

Kuhn conceded, "There are a few things out there" with the potential to kill people. But weighing the probabilities, he saw the threat in these terms: "Definitely more biowarfare than bioterrorism. Definitely more the sophisticated bioweapons coming in the future than the stuff now. There's danger coming towards us and we're focusing on concerns like BioShield. I don't think that's the stuff that will save us."

Is Help on the Way?
The 21st century will see a biological revolution analogous to the industrial revolution of the 19th. But both its benefits and its threats will be more profound and more disruptive.

The near-term threat is that genes could be hacked outside of large laboratories. This means that terrorists could create recombinant biological weapons. But the leading edge of bioweapon research has always been the work of government labs. The longer-term threat is what it always has been: national militaries. Biotechnology will furnish them with weapons of unprecedented power and specificity. George Poste, in his 2003 speech to the National Academies, warned his audience that in coming decades the life sciences would loom ever larger in national-security matters and international affairs. Poste noted, "If you actually look at the history of the assimilation of technological advance into the calculus of military affairs, you cannot find a historical precedent in which dramatic new technologies that redress military inferiority are not deployed."

Harvard's Matthew Meselson has said the same and added that a world in which the new biotechnology was deployed militarily "would be a world in which the very nature of conflict had radically changed. Therein could lie unprecedented opportunities for violence, coercion, repression, or subjugation." Meselson adds, "Governments might have the objective of controlling very large numbers of people. If you have a situation of permanent conflict, people begin contemplating things that the ordinary rules of conflict don't allow. They begin to view the enemy as subhuman. Eventually, this leads to viewing people in your own culture as tools."

What measures could mitigate both the near and the more distant threats of bioweaponry? BioShield, as it is now constituted, will not protect us from genetically engineered pathogens. A number of radical solutions (like somehow boosting the human immune system through generic immunomodifiers) have been proposed, but even if pursued, they might take years or decades to develop.
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Comments

  • The Knowledge Bioweapons Article
    Guest (eldestdeev) on 03/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    Superb piece, superbly told.  One hopes the government is secretly far ahead of public knowledge in combatting or pre-empting this.  Otherwise, massive death can be the only forseeable result.
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • Pandora's Box
      Guest (Gary Percer) on 03/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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      1
      Like Pandora's box, once the technology is disseminated, it cannot be re-gathered.

      Like Pandora's box, the box will be opened because of the nature of the human being.

      Like Pandora's box, we will suffer the consequences for all time.
      Rate this comment: 12345
      • Pandora's box
        Guest (Ueberluser) on 05/02/2006 at 12:00 AM
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        1
        Yes, that may very well be the case.
        It may also be that case that these technologies could save the entire race from a yet to be determined threat and as such would be a nessecary evil. Not that nessecary evils won't kill us all anyway...
        Rate this comment: 12345
    • Pathogens are not weapons
      Guest (Andreas) on 03/21/2006 at 12:00 AM
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      1
      This otherwise very good article only briefly touches the considerable difficulty of creating weapons from pathogens. While it concludes that biological agents will most probably be used in warfare, it completely omits a discussion of the effectiveness of biological weapons in war, which is probably not very good. Presumably the reason why biological weapons have never been used is that they simply are not that more damaging than conventional ones, but way more difficult to target. The same is probably true for chemical weapons, which have been used to some extent.
      Rate this comment: 12345
      • Biological Weapons Have Been Used
        Guest (AP) on 04/09/2006 at 12:00 AM
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        1
        Dear Sir - biological weapons have been used in war - one of the best examples is the use of small pox by the British during the French-Indian War, and other examples, historically documented, by US Forces against Native American groups - again, generally, small pox infected blankets.

        Also, note - I think you argument is valid, except, when you are dealing with asymetric warfare and terrorist agents - either domestic or foreign, given the fact that the rules of engagement are no longer binding, and you are dealing with zero-sum game theory. 

        Also, note - salmonella was actively used in the Dalles, Oregon in early 1980s to de-stabilize an entire town in order to effect political outcome of vote, and as well to target specific individuals.
        Rate this comment: 12345
      • Pathogens are not weapons?
        Guest (Frank) on 07/25/2006 at 12:00 AM
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        1
        Who says they haven't been used successfully? The last stage of the Black Plague in 1352 began during a biological, abeit cure one, in the Crimea of Russia. Before 1906 and the Sino-Russian war most of the deaths in all wars were attributed to disease. The South used biological warfare during the American civil war by contaminating the water supply of Norhern troops with dead animals. Typhus nearly wiped out Napoleon's army before it ever got to Moscow in 1812 and was responsible for 75% of the deaths in his army and his return to Poland set off a massive typhus epidemic that went as far as the English Channel.
        Rate this comment: 12345
    • DNA
      Guest (shri) on 05/03/2006 at 12:00 AM
      Posts:
      1
      The society is ultimately responsible. The Governments pof countries must co-operate
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • E coli o157
    Guest (richard katz) on 03/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    how come even in long articles like this nobody EVER mentions E coli o157 as a biowarfare agent? not only has it been used that way, successfully, but it sure looks like it was made in the recombinant mode that this article is all about.
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • E coli 157
      Guest (Frank Lowe) on 07/25/2006 at 12:00 AM
      Posts:
      1
      Check former research into HIV/AIDS in the 1980's. They studied it then.
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • Other equally or more important questions
    Guest (Alan Root) on 03/15/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    How do we identify and extinguish those features of our brains that impel us in self-destructive directions? Let's minimize the threats from asteroids coming at us from outer space! Let's maximize the threats from inner space! We need to reprogram our brains and our genes...
    Rate this comment: 12345
    • Assume the Worst, Work Backward
      Guest (AP) on 04/09/2006 at 12:00 AM
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      1
      Is there is anyone on this listing activly pursuing this issue? I have a research problem associated with assuming that these agents exists, and planning response.  I can't afford as per tasking to argue about whether or not the Soviets did this, or did that. I must assume they did, and deal with both foreign and domestic continued threat and release. 

      I also can't afford to assume that new technologies will save us. 

      I am willing to dialogue in other modes.

      AP
      Rate this comment: 12345
  • In the event that there is no defense...
    Guest (Shane) on 04/10/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    In the event that western civilization has no defense against such a threat, we rely on intelligence to alert us to the threat.  If any credible threat is uncovered...I daresay that we may live to see a pre-emptive tactical solution.  On what scale?  I think that would depend on the accuracy and detail of the intelligence.

    If we are successfully attacked on a global scale by a bioengineered pathogen that can spread from human to human and retains its' genetic sequence so it doesn't mutate out of its' weaponized form... well, let's just hope we don't see that day.  If we do, let me be one of the victims because I don't want to live in the kind of world that would follow such an event.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • The Knowledge article
    Guest (Guran Walker) on 04/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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    1
    The point was made, inferior military regimes resort successfully to the most potent weapon they can find - always. Now we draw near God in our molecular tinkering will the angels save us or destroy us? Scripture indicates they will seed the winds. But I feel this is only one of the scurges to be suffered by our Race. Nice to have the 'heads up' on the state-of-play. Sublimely written heh.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • My brief response to the article
    Guest (Robert Carlson) on 04/19/2006 at 12:00 AM
    Posts:
    1
    http://synthesis.typepad.com/synthesis/2006/03/the_knowledge.html
    Rate this comment: 12345
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